Till the Nineteen Sixties, each era needed to uncover vegetarianism and non-procreative intercourse by itself. Logically, you may assume that when our ancestors encountered both one other bare human physique or a meal of nothing however greens and legumes, they didn’t all the time shut their eyes and consider England after which swallow rapidly. They could have, like us, loved the expertise.
However deep down most of us don’t actually imagine this. Why else would we get so excited after we discover proof that individuals within the olden days had intercourse and averted meat as a result of each of these issues made them joyful?
So right here’s a enjoyable truth: Vegetarianism not solely existed in Thirties Lithuania, it was celebrated, particularly in Vilnius, the place one of many hippest eating places on the town was Dieto-Jarska Jadłodajnia, loosely translated because the Vegetarian Bistro.
A few of this devotion to greens got here from necessity. Vilnius was roughly one-third Jewish from the late 1800s till the outbreak of World Battle II. Lots of these Jews saved kosher, which required a strict separation of dairy and meat and, by necessity, some meatless meals. However the Nice Despair had additionally hit Vilnius exhausting. Individuals have been ravenous. Beggars stationed themselves on the doorsteps of eating places and cafes. The American historian Lucy Dawidowicz, who studied Yiddish there within the late Thirties, wrote in her memoir that she principally lived on root greens and legumes; inexperienced greens have been scarce and kosher meat was much more so, particularly after authorities shut down the kosher slaughterhouses in 1935. Even drinks have been horrible; espresso was produced from chicory, and the milk was unpasteurized and wanted to be boiled.
However Fania Lewando, the chef at Dieto-Jarska Jadłodajnia, wasn’t a vegetarian as a result of she couldn’t get ahold of meat or didn’t really feel like sustaining two separate kitchens in an effort to accommodate kosher legal guidelines. Lewando was a real believer in vegetarianism, and she or he was decided to point out all people in Vilnius that greens weren’t only a placeholder for meat. They have been a more healthy selection, and a extra ethical one: They didn’t require killing. Most significantly, greens have been scrumptious — festive, even.
Lewando used each alternative to show the ability of greens: in her restaurant, within the cooking courses she taught, on the posh cruise throughout the Atlantic the place she ready all of the meals, within the recipes she tried to promote to the H.J. Heinz firm in England, and particularly within the cookbook she wrote. She was a power. Guests from as far-off as Los Angeles and Buenos Aires ate at Dieto-Jarska Jadłodajnia. The restaurant, which was owned by Lewando’s husband, Lazar, was a favourite of native artists, writers, and intellectuals who wrote about it and quoted each other about how good it was. I think about it as form of like Dimes, although primarily based on the restricted photographic proof, the purchasers have been much less handsome. However hey, it had Nobel Prize winners and Marc Chagall, and so they all signed the guestbook! (Don’t search for depictions of Lewando or her kitchen in any of Chagall’s work. The painter apparently solely visited as soon as and wrote this within the guestbook: “They are saying the meals right here is scrumptious, however sadly I got here with a fragile abdomen and was solely in a position to style a tiny bit, and it was scrumptious nonetheless.”)
The guestbook and a blurry {photograph}, sadly, are concerning the sum of what we find out about Dieto-Jarska Jadłodajnia. We all know barely extra about Lewando. She was brief and stout, and had a form face and an air of authority. She was born in Poland round 1889 and stayed behind when her household immigrated to England in 1901. She and her husband settled in Vilnius round 1920 and opened their restaurant. Regardless of a number of makes an attempt to get visas to the U.S. or England, together with the enterprise with Heinz, they have been trapped in Vilnius after the beginning of World Battle II, when Lithuania was annexed by the united states. The Nazis invaded in June 1941 and, that September, ordered all of the Jews to maneuver right into a ghetto. Lewando and her husband tried to flee and have been captured by the Soviets. Nobody in Vilnius ever noticed them once more.
Lewando printed her one and solely cookbook in 1938. She referred to as it Vegetarish-Dietisher Kokhbukh: 400 Shpeizen Germakht Oysshlishlekh enjoyable Grisn (Vegetarian-Dietetic Cookbook: 400 Recipes Made Completely From Greens), and claimed that it was the primary vegetarian cookbook ever printed in Yiddish. This was not true. That honor goes to Vos zol males esn?: Vegetarishes kokhbukh (What Ought to One Eat?: A Vegetarian Cookbook), a 30-page pamphlet printed in 1907 by N.J. Kvitner. However Lewando’s guide was extra substantial and enticing: It was illustrated by brightly coloured portraits of greens from outdated seed packets. Additionally Kvitner was susceptible to doubtful pronouncements akin to “the extra scrofular and tubercular the meat, the tastier and juicier it’s,” so possibly Lewando was making an attempt to make a degree.
Even on the time of its unique publication, Vegetarish-Dietisher Kokhbukh was a uncommon merchandise as a result of its restricted print run. It grew to become even rarer after the warfare just about exterminated Lithuania’s Jewish inhabitants and tradition. However by some means a single copy discovered its method to an antiquarian bookstore in England, the place it was found in 1995 by a married couple who purchased and donated it to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Analysis in New York (which, by the way, had existed in Vilnius similtaneously Lewando and her restaurant however had migrated in 1940). There it remained for practically 20 years, till Barbara Mazur and Wendy Waxman, two members of a YIVO guide group, got here throughout it throughout a go to to the uncommon guide room.
Mazur and Waxman have been struck each by Lewando’s story and the guide’s superb illustrations, and so they organized to have it translated into English by Eve Jochnowitz, a Yiddish scholar and culinary ethnographer. As soon as they might really learn it, they have been additional impressed by the modernity of the recipes. It was greater than a relic: It was a guide that an individual within the twenty first century may really cook dinner from. There have been the anticipated kugels and cholents and stewed cabbage, sure, however there have been additionally contemporary salads, frittatas, and pre-Vitamix-era juices. The world wanted to see it.
After some research, Mazur and Waxman found that Joan Nathan, the queen of Jewish cookbooks in America, could be giving a lecture close to them in Westchester County, and so they chased her down within the car parking zone so they might actually put the manuscript in her palms. Nathan was additionally impressed by Lewando’s guide and used her connections to convey it to the eye of Schocken Books.
The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook (re)appeared in 2015 with a brand new introduction by Nathan, a biographical essay by Lewando’s great-nephew who occurred to be a literature professor in Israel, and some selection excerpts from the Dieto-Jarska Jadłodajnia visitor guide (“It didn’t destroy my expensive little liver”). Schocken recreated the restaurant for the publication celebration, full with a klezmer band, and the menu featured chilly blueberry soup, eggs filled with marinated mushrooms, and rye honey cake with candied orange peel, which appeared to show everybody’s level about how the 80-year-old guide may nonetheless communicate to up to date tastes.
“With phrases that also ring true at present,” Nathan wrote in her introduction, “Lewando created a Jewish culinary palette that celebrated nature’s bounty. In meatless meals, lengthy considered as indicators of hardship and sorrow, Lewando discovered brilliant taste and the important thing to well being and well-being.”
The unique Yiddish textual content was a lot much less self-congratulatory. Lewando’s introduction, addressed “to the housewife,” lays out her fundamental argument that vegetarianism is a extra healthful and ethical method to eat and features a few easy floor guidelines: “The produce have to be of the highest quality,” “Throw nothing out; every little thing could be made into meals,” and, lastly, “Put together every little thing exactly as instructed within the recipes, and don’t depend on others.” That is adopted by an article by a Dr. B. Dembski, reprinted from a Yiddish journal, referred to as “Why Are Fruits and Greens So Essential for the Organism?” and a short essay referred to as “Vegetarianism as a Jewish Motion” written by two Dieto-Jarska Jadłodajnia regulars who embrace themselves in an inventory of distinguished vegetarians. (It reads just like the work of highschool college students who cribbed closely from Wikipedia.)
And, lastly, the recipes! The translator Jochnowitz acknowledges in her personal introduction that this isn’t a guide for individuals who don’t already know cook dinner, at the very least a bit. The recipes are all temporary, and Lewando didn’t trouble to incorporate little issues like oven temperatures — Jochnowitz advises readers to imagine 350 levels until informed in any other case — or prep directions, like how small to cut an onion or roast beets for borscht or cook dinner crepes and fold them into blintzes; clearly, her readers would already know. Each recipe within the frittata chapter ends, considerably endearingly, “cook dinner like a frittata.” As a result of how else would you cook dinner it?
I prefer to assume that this cookbook was really Lewando’s personal private recipe file, largely as a result of it resembles my very own. It begins, within the salads and soups chapters, with an earnest try to supply a whole and arranged listing of recipes, nevertheless it rapidly devolves into haphazard groupings: blintzes, stuffed meals (is a blintz not a stuffed meals?), puddings, substantial puddings. The longest chapter by far, apart from soup, is miscellaneous dishes, which ranges wildly from rice with strawberries to beefsteak, from contemporary mushrooms to raspberry mousse, as if Lewando couldn’t consider anyplace else for these recipes to go. And, in what looks as if a grudging concession, there are simply eight recipes for Passover. A kind of recipes is a torte, as a result of some issues are everlasting. (There may be additionally wine soup, in case you occur to have an additional bottle of Manischewitz.)
The factor that basically makes me assume that this guide began life as a recipe file, although, is how repetitive it’s. This should have been by necessity in a time when most produce was seasonal and everybody relied on issues that could possibly be saved for lengthy durations, like potatoes, cabbage, and dried mushrooms. Lewando had a seemingly infinite variety of methods to mix them with eggs, milk, and flour and switch them into blintzes or dumplings or noodles or soups, form of like the best way Taco Bell has created an infinite menu from numerous mixtures of beans, cheese, floor beef, and tortillas. What a lifesaver for a pissed off balabusta with nothing within the pantry in addition to a bushel of getting old potatoes!
Nonetheless, many of the dishes I produced from The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook depressed me. None of them could possibly be described as “brilliant.” All of them had a bland sameness, one thing I blame fully on the dearth of seasoning. If solely Lewando had entry to chile peppers! Salsa would have carried out wonders for a few of these egg dishes. And picture a bit grated lemon peel blended with the farmers cheese within the blintzes (and forgive me, Fania, I disobeyed you and consulted the web to learn to make a crepe). Even a smidge of garlic, please? Additionally, the one leavener that Lewando apparently had entry to was yeast; when you use this guide, be ready to whip lots of egg whites, even when you’re making blintzes or an omelet.
My favourite a part of The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook was studying about issues I do know I’ll by no means, ever make, just like the particular bread for a stomachache. I do know I’ll by no means make it as a result of the recipe requires 55 cups of whole-wheat flour and I don’t personal a vessel massive sufficient to combine that a lot dough, not to mention to offer it sufficient room to rise. (Jochnowitz didn’t check it, both, however in an editor’s be aware, she invited readers to share their findings.) However I just like the thought of it. A mini loaf of contemporary baked bread sounds a lot nicer than a saltine.
Much more spectacular are the recipes for pickles and preserves, all of which start with the instruction to pull a barrel to the cellar and fill it with whitewash (a paint produced from slaked lime, or calcium hydroxide, that has delicate antibacterial properties; Lewando most likely didn’t have sterilization tools or refrigeration). How a lot cabbage would it is advisable fill the sauerkraut barrel? What number of eggs would get your loved ones by means of the winter? Perhaps that is, in itself, concurrently a sensible argument towards meat — life is difficult sufficient with out it — and a celebration of the ladies of valor who stuffed these barrels 12 months after 12 months. It additionally offers all of the satisfaction of the homemaking scenes within the Little Home books: You may get pleasure from a way of accomplishment with out doing any precise work your self.
Which makes you assume: Perhaps essentially the most spectacular factor shouldn’t be that vegetarianism existed in Thirties Vilnius however that one lady nonetheless had the vitality to advertise and write a cookbook about it.
Aimee Levitt is a contract author in Chicago. Learn extra of her work at aimeelevitt.com.
