This Cookbook Was Banned in Russia

Before the era of glasnost, writing a Jewish cookbook in the Soviet Union was a dangerous undertaking. Distributing one was equally precarious. Soviet Jews couldn’t even sit down to a Jewish meal without fear of reprisal. Those who owned Jewish cookbooks had to keep them hidden, and cooking Jewish meals became an act of resistance.

One underground Jewish cookbook that existed in the U.S.S.R. before glasnost --actually, a sheaf of papers--was “The Aleph-Bet of Jewish Cooking” by Tamara Krasnilokova. It was secretly compiled and surreptitiously circulated. Each copy had to be handwritten or individually typed, usually at night in different people’s living rooms, because few had access to copy machines or printing presses. “We typed thousands of copies,” Krasnilokova recently said from her current home in New York City, “but there was never enough.”

Now Krasnilokova’s cookbook is being published in a new Russian-language edition, this time properly bound in hardcover and with illustrations, by Shvut Ami, an Israel-based organization of former refuseniks. Eight hundred copies will be sent to Soviet Jews; the rest will be distributed among settlers in the United States and Israel.

For Krasnilokova, who left the Soviet Union three years ago, compiling a Russian-Jewish cookbook was no simple matter of doing research in a library--Jewish cookery is not catalogued in Soviet libraries. Neither could she go to Jews who knew how to prepare the traditional foods their grandparents had eaten. This was a generation without a memory of the cultural customs of their heritage.

Instead Krasnilokova, who then lived in Leningrad, began collecting Jewish cookbooks from American Jewish tourists. At the time, Krasnilokova was a member of a refusenik group that gave secret classes to Soviets interested in learning about Judaism. Visitors from Jewish organizations in the United States often found their way to Krasnilokova’s group and would offer their knowledge. But since the reality of Soviet life included a very limited number of ingredients, many recipes had to be adapted.

“I used the recipe for Challah from “The Jewish Catalogue” (published in the United States by Sharon and Michael Strassfeld),” Krasnilokova said, “and I still use the same recipe. I like it because it’s not so sweet--it’s really bread.”

Other recipes came from those very few Soviet Jews who had their Jewish heritage passed down from their mothers and grandmothers. A woman in Leningrad gave Krasnilokova one of her favorite recipes in the book: gefilte fish. “It’s very different from the gefilte fish in America,” she said. “And much more delicious.” Krasnilokova’s version is closer to the original concept of gefilte, which means stuffed. Instead of shaping the fish into balls, she’d pack the gefilte into the fish skin.

The new edition of the 70-page cookbook contains additional recipes from former Soviet Jews. Helen Nash, a Polish-born American Jewish cookbook author (“Kosher Cuisine,” “Helen Nash’s Kosher Kitchen”) and a supporter of Shvut Ami, has been instrumental in providing Krasnilokova with guidance--the book is dedicated to her. But the book will not be available in English immediately.

“Our main emphasis is getting (the book) inside the Soviet Union,” said Grigory Wasserman, a leading member of Krasnilokova’s refusenik group, and the person who first got Krasnilokova interested in her own Jewish identity. “(But) this book will (also) be of interest to many who are resettling in the United States, even though they have a much wider selection of ingredients, as do the Israelis.”

Last week Krasnilokova returned from Israel where she met a lot of her old friends from the Soviet Union. The cookbook is part of a Shvut Ami program under which books on Jewish subjects are sent to the Soviet Union. Rabbi Randy Eaton, executive director of Shvut Ami, expects the cookbook to receive as enthusiastic a response as the previous six books of Russian-language Judaica that have been sent. One letter Eaton received from Riga told of 60 people reading one copy of another book that Shvut Ami had sent.

“It’s impossible to know how many people might be affected (by Krasnilokova’s book),” Eaton says. “Cooking has the potential to raise the Jewish identity of thousands of Soviet Jews.”

Shvut Ami is located at 10 Belilius St., P.O.B. 6141, Jerusalem. American Friends of Shvut Ami is at 1025 Fifth Ave., Suite 3ES, New York, N.Y. 10028. “The Aleph-Bet of Jewish Cooking” (written in Russian) is available from Shvut Ami for $18.