Your new favorite cooking show might draw its name from the mamaloshen. And it’s streaming on a device near you.

Nosh with Tash is the multi-platform project of Los Angeles chef Natasha Feldman. Incorporating a sleek website offering enticing recipes, weekly YouTube videos, and a swoon-worthy Instagram feed (think flat lays of LA’s finest cuisine and charming candids), Nosh delivers a variety of appealing culinary content.

“I use the term ‘nosh’ all the time. When I was trying to think of a name for this new cooking video, I learned that a lot of the dictionary definitions of ‘nosh’ had to do with eating enthusiastically,” said Feldman, 30. “Instead of eating small amounts, you’re talking about being enthusiastic about little bites here and there.”

A departure from her previous endeavor, Cinema & Spice―a Webby-nominated cooking show inspired by movies and TV shows like the Harry Potter series and Breaking Bad―Feldman’s new project focuses on easy-to-follow recipes aimed at the kitchen novice. For every Nosh episode, she uploads three different cuts to her channel: a long-form video (which runs between 3-6 minutes) to illustrate process and technique, a quick-cut of the recipe, and a bonus video with extra tips. For example, in episode 1, “Brown Rice That Doesn’t Suck,” Feldman teaches the viewer how to make tasty herbed brown rice from start to finish and offers bonus tips about how to use up leftovers. Whether she’s addressing her Vitamix in a British accent or talking about her baller storage containers, she balances clarity and quirk

“I was so tired of cooking shows giving people a false idea of what it’s like to cook,” said Feldman, noting the behind-the-scenes prep work that occurs on scripted shows. A fan of Yotam Ottolenghi, she also recognizes that the average person’s pantry is not likely stocked with specialty items such as harissa and za’atar. “I wanted to break down all those barriers,” she said.

For Feldman, who grew up in a town outside Portland, Oregon, with a small Jewish population (her bat mitzvah was held in a church because there were no nearby synagogues), her connection to Judaism has always come from food. She recalls eating her grandma’s matzo ball soup during visits to Long Island and cites Passover as her favorite Jewish holiday thanks to the unique dishes and ritualistic elements specific to the seder.

Culinary prowess also runs in the mishpachah. Feldman says that her great-great-grandmother, Clara, was apparently a caterer in her village in Poland. When she immigrated to New York, she would bake numerous cakes and cookies for family members.

“My mom has some of her very old recipes that are insanely delicious, like a sour cream coffee cake,” she said.

While the cleverly-named recipes presented on Nosh aren’t strictly Jewish―think zesty New California flavor with a pinch of schmaltzy Old World comfort―they’re all as vibrant as Feldman herself, who was audibly enthused about the project during our phone conversation. From “Serial Kaler Salad” and “Kabocha Squash (the Patriarchy) with Sticky Maple Syrup” (see below!) to “Everything Bagel-Style Pumpkin Seeds” and “Wine-Drunk Short Ribs,” her recipes are equally suitable for your next girls’ night and Shabbat potluck.

“They’re designed to be broad enough so you can extrapolate what you learned to other recipes,” Feldman said. “The idea is that the recipes are malleable and fluid. Once you have the skillset, you can go off and have more fun.”

To get you started, go forth and (kabocha) squash the patriarchy yourself!

Serves four:

Ingredients:

• 1 kabocha squash (or delicata if you can’t find kabocha)
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• A few sprigs of sage (roughly chopped)
• 2 tablespoons safflower oil
• A few pinches of salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Line a baking sheet with tinfoil or a silpat
3. Place squash on the sheet and coat with olive oil , sprinkle with salt, and drizzle ½ of the maple syrup
4. Roast for 20 minutes until the underside is golden brown and flip em over
5. Add the rest of the syrup and sage
6. Cook until both sides are golden…. now that there is syrup all over that squash careful you don’t burn it!

Serve hot with a touch more sage and salt or chop it up once it’s cold and add it to your fav grain salad.

Enjoy!

Photo courtesy Natasha Feldman

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I wrote a poem when Ariel Sharon fell into a coma: it just started dictating itself to me as I walked down the street and I had to pick up stationery at my wife’s yeshiva when I got there to write it down. We left Israel six months after Disengagement and I read one of his biographies and was moved by his mother’s life, then wound up with a sequence of poems by different witnesses, a curious history of the state. This is the view of Yitzhak Rabin— whose birthday on the Hebrew calendar falls this evening, Rosh Chodesh Adar— who promoted him on condition that he behaved himself, and later as PM employed him as a security advisor to decide what land to cede in the Oslo Accord, while Sharon loudly decried the Oslo Accord in public. As PM Sharon also ceded territory and also faced threats to his life.

You’ve got no tact

To play a part

In any joint decision;

You’ve got no heart

For staying out

Of any bit of action.

You do not listen.

When a military policeman

Tells you “no”

You do not show any discipline, chew him out

To your men, make sport

Of his private life, walk, limp, receding hairline.

These things don’t go unmentioned

When it comes to discussing promotion.

How you talk does not improve the situation.

When you go behind his back

Or over his head to the kitchen cabinet

Because you have Ben-Gurion’s private line

Or some other way to get your own back

It isn’t intelligent.

Every time you get your way

Another enemy is waiting.

The army is like playing a game of chess

You need to see where pawns

Are waiting to take your Queen.

Now Ben Gurion is gone

Who will you go to?

Who can you call when your latest plan

Is foiled because the next man up the totem pole

Remembers exactly what you mean by discipline?

You’ll never make a good officer

You do not have the patience.

I’m giving you the Northern Command.

Get out of here. Prove me wrong.

Behave like a human being.

One day you might have the chance

To be a man instead of talking to the mountains.

On that day remember me.

You do not have to always win

To be a good statesman.

Image via Wikimedia

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Based on the short film of the same name, the new Freeform series Alone Together, created by and starring Jewish LA comedians Esther Povitsky (AKA Little Esther) and Benji Aflalo, doesn’t take itself too seriously. With Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone of The Lonely Island on the production team, madcap antics are to be expected.

In a very quotable pilot, we meet Povitsky’s and Aflalo’s fictional counterparts, also named Esther and Benji, as they are discussing the morality of one-night stands. “I’ll have you know that the walk of shame is an anti-feminist construct,” Esther tells Benji, who has just picked her up at her date’s house, to which he replies, “You’re just too lazy to walk.”

Throughout the episode, Esther and Benji find themselves in a variety of humorously uncomfortable situations, from being insulted by a green juice-slinging goddess at a trendy juicery (“I’m only a lesbian to guys under 5’10,” she tells Benji as Esther stockpiles spirulina chips) to joining an escort service to get paid to eat mac and cheese at an upscale restaurant in sweatpants (watching Povitsky act opposite Parks and Rec’s Jim O’Heir, who plays her date for the evening, is a hoot).

But those looking for the SoCal millennial equivalent of the Golden Globe Award-winning Marvelous Mrs. Maisel will have to look elsewhere. On screen, Povitsky — who you might recognize as Maya from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — deals in pathos rather than moxie. And, as her scene partner and platonic life partner, so does Aflalo. Think of Esther, the character, as Midge Maisel’s antithesis (Midge’s drunken debut at the Gaslight notwithstanding): unpolished in style and bearing, quick to make a self-deprecating remark about her appearance, and all too eager to have one-night stands with chubby guys to raise her self-esteem.

We’re meant to sympathize with the show’s pretty-darn-Jewish-looking heroes, short, brown-haired, and blessed with assets other than conventional Hollywood looks, but there’s nothing clever or innovative about body-shaming. Even if Esther calls herself a feminist and defends Benji at that elitist juice spot (“Shaming a guy ’cause he’s short is like shaming a girl ’cause she’s overweight”), she feels highly insecure.

“The name Esther isn’t like really for a hot girl, so I feel like I’m Esther pretty because that’s as pretty as you can be with the name Esther,” Esther tells O’Heir’s character when he asks her to tell a joke. At a pool party his sister throws, Benji offhandedly mentions Esther’s stomach flab. “We call it her equator,” he jibes.

Still, as a character study of two neurotic outsiders trying to find their place — platonically, of course because, as Esther phrases it, “Just because we’re both small and undesirable doesn’t mean we should date” — the show succeeds. The repeated put-downs may be tough to chew, but you’re ultimately glad that Esther and Benji have each other to binge-watch Daria together while noshing on nachos. They can’t seem to assimilate to the superficial reality of LA, a world peopled by shiksa goddesses and svelte clothing designers (among them Benji’s sister, played by Ginger Gongzaga, whose comparative height and flawless complexion are a genetic mystery).

There is, if you look closely, power even in our most pathetic foibles. With the bar set so low, Esther and Benji are bound to succeed in life eventually, one poor decision at a time. Who needs spirulina chips or a juice cleanse to achieve that “hot girl” glow when a healthy dose of schadenfreude will do the job?

Alone Together airs Wednesday nights at 8:30.

Image via Freeform

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Full disclosure: I have never watched an episode of the The Bachelorette, nor an episode of its sibling series, The Bachelor. What I do know is that there are roses involved and that the array of contestants tend to be rather gentile and white (with a few notable exceptions).

And through the foolproof methodology of Jewish geography, it has come to my attention that several of this season’s Bachelorette stars are Jewish, which piques my interest about a reality TV phenomenon I would normally dismiss for being too contrived.

On Monday night, viewers met Grant Hubsher and Jack Stone, two of the 31 suitors vying for the affection of Rachel Lindsay, a 32-year-old Dallas-based attorney and the first black Bachelorette in the show’s history (she previously competed on The Bachelor).

Although *spoiler alert* he went home in Week One, Hubsher, 29, looked like a great potential beau on paper. An emergency-medicine physician from New York City (by way of the Tampa Bay area), he revealed in his official bio that he used to perform “Ice Ice Baby” at his friends’ Bar Mitzvahs. Perhaps appearing on reality shows runs in his blood: His younger sister, Cher (yes, really), was on the MTV series My Super Sweet 16 and Exiled. According to an interview with Glamour, she was also the one who sent in his Bachelorette submission.

Like Lindsay, Stone, 32, is an attorney from Dallas. His bio isn’t particularly Jewy, but he does express in interest in WWII history. Plus, he scores major points for listing his mom, who battled cancer, as his biggest role model. With everything they have in common, it seems like he and Lindsay could hit it off.

Through the magic of social media and Jewish geography, we here at Jewcy have also learned that Stone once went on a trip to Germany through AJC, and that Hubsher went to Jewish Day School, went on USY on Wheels when he was in High School, and was active in Hillel when he was a student at the University of Florida.

Remember, ladies, Hubsher got sent home already, so he’s available!

Photos (Stone on the Left, Hubsher on the right) via Facebook

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Back in February, we learned that a dream team of producers―including two members of the tribe, Jeffrey Seller and Jason Katim―was set to bring Drama High, Michael Sokolove’s inspirational non-fiction book about the theater program at his working-class high school, to the small screen. At the center of the story is Lou Volpe, the life-changing drama teacher who advocated for bringing edgy musicals like RENT and Spring Awakening to his community.

The NBC show, now titled Rise, has found its Volpe (now named Lou Mazzuchelli). And none other than Ted Mosby will step into the mentor role.

That’s right, folks: your favorite half-Jewish architect AKA the pretty-darn-Jewish-in-real-life Josh Radnor will have another TV vehicle to charm viewers. Radnor has always been close in touch with his Jewish identity; he was raised Conservative, attended Orthodox day schools, and even participated in a volunteer program in Tzfat. Plus, a few years back, in an article for ReformJudaism.org (he’s really covered all the denominational bases here), Radnor professed his belief in God and offered a pluralistic prayer for B’reishit.

This past winter, Radnor also appeared on stage at Lincoln Center Theater as a Jewish writing teacher in Richard Greenberg’s play The Babylon Line. Although his new character isn’t Jewish, in a JTA interview about Greenberg’s work, Radnor draws on a Tony Kushner comment about why reading the Talmud is like reading a play.

“There’s a surface read and then digging underneath the text,” he said. “I feel having this background, having this love of literature, looking at something on the surface and excavating and finding out what more can be gleaned from it, you get from a Jewish way of learning.”

The rest of the Rise cast may not be as notable, Jewishly speaking, but Radnor will be joined by rising star Auli’i Cravalho (of Moana fame) and Rosie Perez, whose long career has involved starring in Larry David’s play Fish in the Dark in 2015.

Photo of Rosie Perez and Josh Radnor. 2017 NBCUniversal Media, LLC

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By all counts, the music video for “Als Ding hot a Soff, nur baym Wursht senen zway,” Joe Fleisch’s Yiddish cover of the ’80s German New Wave hit “Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei” (“Everything Has an End, Only the Sausage Has Two”) is bizarre. Shot in black and white in an evocative nod to the aesthetics of James Bond, the video―a collaboration with producer Ori Toledano and director Guy J. Bolandi―alternates between shots of Fleisch singing eerily and shots of naked, androgynous women (in a secluded forest!) who have the song’s lyrics projected or painted on their bodies.

For the casual viewer who stumbles upon Fleisch’s erotic odyssey, some context would be helpful. Joe Fleisch is actually the pseudonym of 54-year-old German author and entrepreneur Jossi Reich, whose other musical endeavor, the Tel Aviv-based band the Jewish Monkeys, is likewise unorthodox. While the band’s name might call to mind the cheerful pop vibe of the Monkees, Reich’s group performs a “distinctive mishmash of rock, klezmer, funk, and Balkan music, sung in English, Spanish, Esperanto and Yiddish,” in the words of Tablet contributor Dana Kessler. From a raunchy ode to Romania to a multicultural mashup (“The Banana Boat Song” meets “Hava Nagila,” with some politics thrown in for good measure), nothing, it seems, is musically off limits.

“It’s a personality split. It’s a complete other thing,” Reich told Jewcy, delineating his musical personae. “Jewish Monkeys is a punk rock band and very satirical and very funny and is kind of an orchestra with eight people.”

For Bolandi, who has directed projects for major TV networks like Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, “Als Ding hot a Soff” was more personal than his commercial work. “The entire concept of the video was about translation,”  said Bolandi, 35, referring not only to linguistic translation, but translating high-tech concepts―computerized designs typify the New Wave ethos―into lo-fi iterations. “In a way, this is a reference to technology, actually painting on the bodies.”

Reich’s interest in the song stems from his obsession with German New Wave music growing up, such as the theatrical stylings of Nina Hagen and the political incorrectness of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (German-American Friendship). “The music was absolutely German, very monotonous,” he said.

In “Als Ding hot a Soff,” Toledano, whom Bolandi introduced to Reich, provides the sonic heart of the project: klezmer clarient and computerized music samples. Coming from a musical household (he’s the son of Israeli singer and Eurovision contestant Avi Toledano), his prowess is no surprise. Plus, as the founder of Snowstar, a production company, it’s his job to tell stories by marrying visual media and music.

“I do Americana, Blues. I don’t have one genre,” said Toledano, 32. “I could work on a wide range of different genres and be something else every day and work with as many people as possible on different productions.”

Even if everything does have an end (or two, for sausages), let’s hope this creative partnership’s is far in the distance.

Experience the delightful weirdness that is the music video below:

Image via YouTube.

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One of Broadway’s newest hits is Come From Away, a musical about the 6,500 plus airplane passengers who were welcomed into Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11 when U.S. airspace was shut down. With a versatile cast of 12 who portray passengers and the people of Gander alike, a bluesy rock score played by a band on stage, and a heartfelt message about kindness and community during a trying time, Away has all the ingredients to be both entertaining and timely.

The show, written by the married creative duo Irene Sankoff and David Hein, has been getting a ton of press, ranging from rave reviews to accounts of the performance that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended with Ivanka Trump and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley last Wednesday. (Trudeau wasn’t just in New York for a night on the town. Some of the same community members who invited the “come from aways” into their homes 16 years ago have recently helped four families of Syrian refugees adjust to life in Gander, and the prime minister spoke before the show about their generosity. “The world gets to see what it is to lean on each other and be there for each other through the darkest times,” he said.)

Although it’s tough to top anything involving our northern neighbor’s charming leader, what’s more noteworthy to us here at Jewcy is that Sankoff and Hein’s previous musical was an autobiographical project called My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, based on Hein’s experience of his mother coming out to him and then attending her real-life nuptials. In addition to the rousing title song, which Hein says is about “Hot lesbian action…and my mother,” other numbers include “Don’t Take Your Lesbian Moms to Hooters” and “A Short History of Gay Marriage in Canada.” If only there were video evidence of this project!

Oh, wait.

As for the newer, decidedly more serious, play, Come From Away also has a Jewish touch: a rabbi character based on Rabbi Leivi Sudak, who is in charge of Chabad of Edgware, near London. Rabbi Sudak, who flew to New York to visit the grave Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson in advance of Rosh Hashanah in 2001, was among those stranded in Gander.

Singing rabbis? Jewish wiccan lesbians? Sankoff and Hein are a duo to watch.

Image via Facebook

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