Our Chanuka celebration

Thanksgiving feasting is done - on to Chanuka! We hope you can make it to our Chanuka celebration on Thursday, December 6 at 7pm! As usual, we will be enjoying home baked latkes, collecting gifts for Matanot Libenu (Fran Rosenfeld's gifts from the Heart), and having our annual gift exchange. To our traditional activities, this year we are adding poetry. Please either compose your own poem on the theme of light or find words written by others to share during our celebration.

Here is a poem to inspire you to write or find something better:
   To show off their might
   The Assyrians wanted to fight
   Judah the Hammer said "NO!"
   And defeated the foe
   And that's why we kindle eight lights

If you can contribute latkes to our celebration or if you can volunteer to setup or cleanup, please let Karen Pelmont know - 818-635-9996. If you wish to participate in the gift exchange, we suggest you bring a wrapped gift with a value of around $15, but if the gift exchange is not to your liking, please come anyway - there will be other activities to participate in and enjoy.

In honor of great Jewish cooks (there have been so many!) we tell of Evelyn Rose, 1925-2003, who was the first woman commissioner at the British Meat and Livestock Commission, and was made an MBE* in 1989. She was also an honorary life fellow of the Institute of Home Economics, and a former chair of the National Guild of Food Writers. Rose wrote a weekly food column for the Jewish Chronicle from 1963 (never missing an issue) and wrote a food column for the wine magazine Decanter. Her magnum opus on Jewish cuisine, the Complete International Jewish Cookbook, was published in 1976, and has been revised three times since, most recently in 2011.
 
Her obituary in The Guardian described her singular accomplishment as the melding of "contemporary cooking with Jewish dietary laws, regulations that not only prohibit the use of pig meat and shellfish, but also the mixing of dairy products with meat". Evelyn Rose was also "highly aware of the changes in culinary trends, particularly the move away from the fatty foods so typical of traditional Jewish cooking ... her modern, health-conscious recipes exemplified the changes that had taken place over her long career."

Born in Manchester, Rose lived in the city all her life except for four years that she spent in the United States as an evacuee. During her time in the United States Rose worked as a secretary at the MGM studios in California. She was invited to audition for the lead role in National Velvet, which was won by Elizabeth Taylor.
Rose was an amazing and accomplished woman! 
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*MBE is The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. It is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organizations, and public service outside the Civil service.