Edna
Born: Bucharest, Romania, 1931
Mother Tongue: Romanian
Grandchildren: Shira, Maayan, Rotem, Yuval, Amit, Itsan, Hagar, Neta, Adili, Ido, Boaz, Brit
What they call her: Sabta
This is a dish I like to make because it’s simple, easy and instantly reminds me of my childhood growing up in Romania. It’s usually something we will eat as a starting dish or as an accompaniment to a main meal and it’s really very typically Romanian. We can use green and yellow bell peppers too for this - I just chose red for today.
We didn’t like it so much in Romania because we were Jews and it was a hard time because of the war. I was just a little girl when we left for Palestine, towards the end of the second world war. When we arrived it suddenly struck me that everyone was Jewish. It was nice to finally belong. Nobody was going to call us names or be racist towards us, finally.
In Romania we suffered a lot of prejudice, even being from a good family. My father had a factory for printing silk and we were less endangered than other Romanian jews because we were from a well-to-do family.
It was when we were moved from our mixed school to an all-Jewish school that I began to notice the changes that were happening around me. I was just a girl but it was impossible to ignore the names that they would call us. We came to Palestine because we thought that we would like it better here and we were lucky that we had enough money to afford an apartment and go to school. It was also very smart of my parents to ensure I learned Hebrew before we came to live here.
I wasn’t afraid of leaving Romania but I was sorry about leaving my friends. It was lucky that we were young and could actually adapt to a new life and culture. Tel Aviv was built then and I lived in a city from the start so the city life didn’t scare me at all.
My mother knew to cook very well and she cooked what she would usually make for us in Romania, including these marinated peppers. When she didn’t cook, she’d send us to a chain of stores that sells dairy products just below our apartment and we’d go there and have puree of potato with an egg. I remember they’d cook the egg so that part of the white was done and the other part was not done. It was not good.
I can crochet, I can sew, I do ceramics, I can make shoes, I paint and do glazing and enamelling - I’m very into crafting and I’ve taken many courses. I knit almost every day. I can’t live without doing something. It may be what keeps me going. I think my husband is the reason I feel young. I always told him I’m not your mother, I can’t cook like your mother, but he has always eaten everything I make and is happy with my food.
When I was 17 I met him on a Kibut, which is basically a commune we’d gone to work on for the summer. I had this old camera I’d had since I was 12 and he made the first move by asking if he could play with it. I gave it to him and he played with it for ages but I didn’t mind because I liked him. I still have the camera, actually.
He was a nice man - a real man - and I liked him from the beginning. At the Kibut we were put in the same group and the sleeping arrangements were very relaxed. Boys and girls all slept in the same room together so on the first day he asked me, “Where do you want to sleep?” I said, “I don’t mind.” So then he responded saying, “Maybe you sleep there and I sleep here then?” and pointed to two beds next to each other. And so we did. We didn’t touch at all but the whole time I could feel he was next to me.
No-one believes how in love we are all these decades later. I love him exactly as I did when I was young. He’s a special man. He’s just something out of this world. I don’t know what the secret is but we never parted. I still want to embrace him and to kiss him. We are in very good relations. All I know is that if you don’t compromise, you don’t move forward. You must also look for an honest man that loves you. You just feel it. I can’t explain it in words but the feeling sticks to you. I really do love him today like I loved him the first day.
The most important thing in life is to have good relations with people, which isn’t easy. Everyone has their own character but we can’t depend on only ourselves. It’s hard here because it will never be a love story between the Palestinians and the Jews. It feels like it has been like this a long time but we are trying to live together peacefully and not be fighting all the time. What we see on the news doesn’t seem to translate to the Palestinians and Jews here that really do live alongside each other as neighbours.
Try Edna’s Pickled Peppers recipe here
Many thanks to Frank London and Visit Tel Aviv for facilitating our trip out to cook with Edna and grandmother Ester.
