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Barbara Bensoussan’s article about bonding with her mother-in-law over cooking brought back memories for me. I did not know how to cook, but when I got engaged, my mother z”l endeavored to teach me the Yiddishe basics we had always relied on her to prepare for our small family. We spent many hours perfecting chicken soup with matzah balls and a number of Shabbos classics such as roast chicken with carrots and potatoes or brisket with sauce. I remember when I dropped the entire dinner on the floor one Friday afternoon as a newlywed and thought it was the greatest tragedy that had ever occurred.
I also gained much cooking acumen from my mother-in-law, who will b’ezras Hashem be 100 in September. She was a survivor who lived a number of years behind the Iron Curtain, where her three sons were born. She complimented my chicken soup as being much more flavorful than hers, because having always been on a strict budget, she did not have that much chicken in her soups. Then there was dessert. She made cakes and named them after each of her daughters-in-law, according to what they loved. My Clarisse cake was a mocha roll, creamy on the inside and outside.
Barbara Bensoussan writes that when her mother-in-law was older and would come to her, they would continue cooking and sharing knowledge about their backgrounds. Unfortunately, as my mother experienced the onset of Alzheimer’s, her cooking became less frequent and poor. My mother-in-law also began to send over fewer and fewer items for us every Shabbos as she grew older. Our weekly Thursday night dinners diminished and then disappeared. These changes made me sad but Mrs. Bensoussan’s article brought back fond memories of happier times.
Clarisse Schlesinger
Los Angeles
Thank you, Miriam Ribiat, for writing your story. It resonated deeply with me — not because I had multiple losses in my family, as you did, but because I was zocheh to be chosen by Hashem to have had multiple challenges.
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