Recipes for a New Beginning. Transylvanian Jewish Stories of Life, Hunger, and Hope

Having realized that, with the exception of cholent and flodni (a Jewish multilayered poppy-seed pastry), she knew nothing about Transylvanian Jewish cuisine, Kinga Julia Kiraly set out on a three-year project to fulfill her own cravings for authentic flavors - but, more profoundly, to learn about prewar recipes and customs and to find out what remained of kosher households in Northern Transylvania. She conducted some three hundred hours of participant-observer interviews, sometimes spiced with cooking sessions, with ten survivors who had experienced the Holocaust as teenagers or children. At the heart of Kinga Julia Kiraly's work are the simplest things, the minutiae of everyday life. Tiny details, which, in the recording, are transformed into something of huge significance. She created handholds of remembrance for the last surviving members of a minority.