I am Jewish AMA

[Bells3032]

Following answering some Q&As on a thread about the programme Unorthodox thought i'd do an AMA here. I have looked and don't think there's been one since like 2018.

I am a traditional/modern orthodox Jew so not Hasidic like the show but I actually do talks on Judaism as part of my job and I so my knowledge is fairly good and I am rarely embarrassed or offended by questions.

So go ahead AMA

[Elladisenchanted]

I am happy to post the challah recipe I use if anyone wants but it uses 14 cups of flour and I knead by hand in a giant bowl (creatively called my challah bowl ) so it's a pretty large quantity. Also it is braided in a very specific way with 6 large strands.
This pic is of an unbaked challah from a few weeks ago.

[Ginfordinner]

14 cups . We have a flour shortage where I live. Do you have a recipe using weights rather than cups?

[Elladisenchanted]

I've struggled to find flour sometimes too at the mo. The recipe I use is cups sorry. It's a very big dough!

[GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman]

I have a challah recipe from my Jewish landlady long ago if anyone wants it (scaled down by a third):
1.5oz fresh yeast
2lb strong plain flour
2tsp salt
2 eggs
Half a cup of oil
Half a cup of sugar
Enough water to make a smooth dough (about 2/3 pint total

[Ginfordinner]

Fresh yeast is as rare as hen's teeth where I live. I haven't seen fresh yeast for years.

[GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman]

Fresh yeast is as rare as hen's teeth where I live. I haven't seen fresh yeast for years.
You don't see it here, either: you have to ask in bakeries.

[PikesPeaked]

Nooooo! Bourekas are different. Nice, but different. Flakier, puffier, somehow stodgier. A bit like a cross between a vegetarian cheese pastie and a spinach-less spanakopita. Though you can have spinach in them. Or anything else vegetarian.

A knish has bite to it. The pastry is harder than a boureka, munchier, and a lovely contrast to the soft stodgy inside.

Also bourekas are largish triangles, whereas knishes (dm's, at least) are shaped like kreplach (ltortellini?) so you get a biscuity effect where the pastry points are pinched together.

[PikesPeaked]

I've no idea where you can get them, sorry. I've probably only ever had them hand-made in someone's home. I did once buy some frozen (probably Tesco Brent Park) and they were a sad disappointment. Neither knish nor boureka, but some confused in-between thing.

[Elladisenchanted]

Oh lol guess I've not eaten knishes! We grew up eating bourekas instead

[Destroyedpeople]

You can get fresh yeast in the fridge section of Polish shops.

I am always struck by how similar Polish and Jewish cuisines are....minus the pork of course...

Chicken soup for example.

[bluebump]

I cook a lot from Fress by Emma Spitzer if anyone is still looking for a cookbook recommendation. I make my challah from the recipe in it and have made bourekas as mentioned above from it too.

[Ginfordinner]

Polish shops are also as rare as hen's teeth where I live Destroyed.

[Destroyedpeople]

There are Polish shops literally everywhere from rural villages to small towns to the big cities. So I find that kind of hard to believe.

[Ginfordinner]

There really aren't any where I live. There are sections in the supermarket with Polish foods on the shelves, but no Polish shops in my part of rural South Yorkshire.

[Ginfordinner]

I have just googled and found one in a town several miles away. It looks like it hasn't been open very long.

[Destroyedpeople]

They do pop up in the oddest places honestly...

[Destroyedpeople]

There was one in my smallish village in rural west Wales for example.
..local meat factory you see...

[Ginfordinner]

Our village has just one shop, which is very much a locally owned Yorkshire shop. The Co-op in the next village is the only shop there, and the local market town definitely does not have any Polish shops.

I lament the fact that the area we live in has one of the lowest ethnic monorities in the country. In the last cencus, of the 1389 people living in our village, just 16 people were classed as not white.

Later today I will be taking a 34 mile round trip to go to an Asian supermarket.

[Quillink]

How do you do a six strand plait Elladisenchanted? That looks very professional!

[Elladisenchanted]

@Quillink I learned from doing it with my mum as a kid so I kind of know it in my hands not my brain if that makes sense? I'll try describe it :

Make 6 long fat sausages (my mum rolls each piece with a rolling pin first and then rolls into sausages - I don't because I'm usually whizzing and doing it at top speed).

Pinch together at the top.
Label them 1-6 from left to right. Take the second strand and move it to the far right (after strand 6) Then take strand number one and move it to in between strands 4 and 5. Now go to the right. Again label them 1-6 starting from the right this time. Take strand 2 and move it to the far left, then strand 1 and put it between 4 and 5. Then go back to the left and repeat. And keep switching side to side. Pinch at the ends and roll a bit. Try keep it taut if possible.

[Elladisenchanted]

There's more than one method. This is just how my family does it. It doesn't really matter which you use.

[cupoftea84]

OP so you can have lights on/off on Saturdays have you considered hive or something similar so it's automated? Would that be considered cheating?

[samG76]

cupoftea - timeswitches aren't considered cheating.They are essential, and there is a discussion of an early equivalent in the talmud. Of course, if you have a toddler around you find them turning things on and off anyway. The it's a matter of training them....

[belfasteast]

m.youtube.com/watch?v=31CH36LsVvg

Did anyone watch this? I'd like to know how the Hasidic community viewed Gaby and family, they seemed as if they had their own interpretation of laws (hand shaking being one) and Is also like to know what Avi was up to!

[sashh]

A friend of mine has this theory that you’re either a Pogrom Jew or a Holocaust Jew (apologise for the harshness of the wording). Meaning your family fled from/survived one or the other

I was watching a documentary about the Eichman trial this week. As you can imagine it wasn't an easy watch but one thing that struck me was someone who had been in a concentration camp, he had emmigrated to Isreal, he said he didn't speak hebre 'yet' but could understnad it. He was talking to someone about his experience and heard someone speaking in Hebrew saying, "these Holocaust Jews, they cannot tell fact from fiction" he said other people had similar experiences.

I was really shocked. Obviously this is one person's testemony but apparently experiences like that were why the trial had witnesses from every place Eichman had been in WWII.

I have a couple of questions.

I worked in a private hospital where we had a lot of Jewish patients. Doing a test on one lady I saw the number tattoed on her arm, I didn't say anything but I wasn't sure if I should. But what could you say?

The other is about the switching things on and off. Why can a person press the buser to get a nurse to come in to swith a light off, but they can't switch the light off themselves.

Is the nurse call button different because it is seen as medical?