Migrating Bagel: Jewish, Lithuanian, American, or Israeli? While the jury is out on this one, let’s have a talk about the differences and similarities between New York, Israeli, and Lithuanian dishes! How did the bagel travel from Lithuania to the US, and has it been perfected in New York? Are latkes exclusively Jewish food? Chicken soup is chicken soup, right? What shared historical narratives and overlapping cultural undercurrents does this food actually hide?
Join The Vilna Shul live on Zoom as we present Israel's leading culinary journalist and a popular TV personality Gil Hovav in conversation with Lithuanian food blogger Nida Degutienė. Moderated by journalist and Jewish-foodie Shira Springer, this incredible worldwide conversation will trace the history of these three specific foods and what makes them unique to each nation and culture.
This event is organized in collaboration with Lithuanian Culture Institute, General Consulate of Lithuania in New York and Embassy of Lithuania in Israel.
Gil Hovav is an Israeli author and tv presentor. He was born in Jerusalem in 1962 and lives in Tel Aviv with his partner and their daughter. Recently, one of his memoirs, ‘Candies from Heaven’, was published in English and Chinese.
Nida Degutiene is an experienced businesswoman, devoted food blogger, writer and freelance journalist. Hailing from Lithuania, she arrived in Israel in 2009 as the wife of the Lithuanian Ambassador to Israeland South Africa and immediately fell in love with Jewish food, culture and traditions. Once she discovered that many nostalgic dishes from her childhood are actually Jewish culinary heritage, blended over centuries into Lithuanian cuisine, she begain to share this knowledge and her experience of living in Israel on her blog (www.nidoreceptai.lt). She currently has 30 000 unique followers and boasts more than 40 000 visits per month. Over the past five years Nida has written over 300 articles covering lifestyle, travel, culinary arts, culture and business for Israeli and Lithuanian newspapers and magazines, and has her own column in Lithuania’s leading monthly lifestyle magazine. In 2014 Nida published her first cookbook, A Taste of Israel in Lithuanian and it reached the Top-10 seller list in that country.
Shira Springer brings a lifetime of experience cooking and eating Jewish food to the panel. (Mostly eating.) For the record, her mother makes the best blintzes and kugel. And nothing tops her great-grandmother’s challah recipe, even though it requires a block of cake yeast, five pounds of flour and eight hours to do right. She watched her Zadie make gefilte fish from scratch (including carp in the bathtub, yes, really) and learned the art of pie-making from her Oma. She’ll take a piece of sable on rye any day. In her professional life, Springer covers stories about culture, history and sports and teaches journalism at Boston University. As a Boston Globe staff writer, she shared in the paper’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings. Her coverage of the Celtics and the NBA, as well as the larger sports world, earned national awards for investigative journalism, breaking news and feature writing. Her radio storytelling for NPR and NPR affiliate WBUR won national awards for sports reporting and narrative sports features. Springer wrote about the 1936 Berlin Olympics for The New York Times best seller “Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History” (2018, Hachette Books/Twelve). She contributed to the essay collection “Our Boston: Writers Celebrate the City They Love” (2013, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). She also authored a chapter for the book “A History of Jewish Connecticut: Mensches, Migrants and Mitzvahs” (2010, The History Press).