The Jewish Holiday Table: A World of Recipes, Traditions & Stories to Celebrate All Year Long

For many Jews, the meal is the holiday

Collected by the Jewish Food Society, an organization dedicated to preserving Jewish cuisine around the world, the 135 recipes and accompanying stories in The Jewish Holiday Table are a dazzling expression of all the ways we celebrate through what we bring to the table.

Discover menus for a Persian Rosh Hashanah feast, a Ukrainian-Mexican Seder, an Iraqi spread for Purim. And a memorable Hanukkah tale of grandmothers competing in a doughnut duel, with one’s Moroccan sfenj recipe challenging the other’s Egyptian zalabia. Reflecting three thousand years of love and loss, culture and change, each dish captures the soul of what’s served in a Jewish home on a Jewish holiday.

Naama Shefi is a kibbutznik and New Yorker whose work sits at the intersection of food, culture, community building, and art. In 2017, she founded the Jewish Food Society, a nonprofit organization, which preserves and celebrates Jewish culinary heritage through a digital recipe archive and dynamic events. In the summer of 2021, she launched Asif: Culinary Institute of Israel, a center in Tel Aviv dedicated to exploring the diverse and creative food culture of Israel. She lives on the Lower East Side with her husband, Ilan, and their daughter, Ella.