Blog posts about the Rabbi Aviva Cohen Mysteries and their author Rabbi Ilene Schneider

Once upon a time – a long time ago – when I was young, one of my favorite Passover treats was carrot candy, not to be confused with candied carrots. It was basically carrots, sugar, and ginger, boiled and then cooled until it solidified and could be cut into small triangles. I loved it. So, as a young adult, with my first apartment and eager to cook, I asked my father’s mother for the recipe.

My memory of her directions is: “It’s easy. You peel and grate [by hand, of course] ten pounds of carrots. Put the shredded carrots into a sauce pan with five pounds of sugar and constantly stir over a low heat for two hours.” It was then that I realized Grandma Gert and I had very different definitions of “it’s easy.”

After my grandmother died in 1988, I was sorry I hadn’t written down the recipe, just to have it. My mother had inherited her mother-in-law’s recipe box, but I’m not sure I ever asked her to look for it. It’s possible I did ask her and she couldn’t find it. It was one of those recipes my grandmother didn’t have to look up. (My mother took possession of the recipe box because her sister-in-law, my Aunt Joan, used her refrigerator only to store batteries, nail polish, film, and yogurt; I can’t recall every seeing her cook, but have a lot of memories of going to restaurants with her.) I then began a lengthy and futile online search for the recipe. All I could find, however, were directions for making candied carrots, a totally different recipe.

Then, one day a few years ago, I came across an article in the Jewish Forward by a food writer from South Africa about favorite Lithuanian Jewish recipes. Grandma Ida, my great grandmother, who had taught her American-born and very assimilated daughters how to cook, had come to the US from Kupishok, Kovno, Lithuania, at age 18 in 1896. And, according to family oral history, she had quite a few half-siblings who settled in South Africa instead of the US.

One of the recipes sounded just like what I remembered of my grandmother’s instructions, but with “only” six cups of grated carrots, three-and-a-half cups of sugar, and one hour of frequent stirring. (See recipe at the end of this story.)

The biggest difference was the name. It wasn’t carrot candy, but ingberlach. “Of course,” I thought, “makes sense. After all, ‘ingber’ is Yiddish for ‘ginger,’ from the German ‘ingwer.’”

More frustrating is when I mentioned the name to my father and he said, “Sure. Ingberlach. Grandma made it all the time.” It would have saved me hours of searching if I’d thought to ask him instead of my mother. It never crossed my mind that both Grandma Ida and Grandma Gert almost always referred to food by the English not Yiddish names. In fact, Grandma Ida denied she even had an accent and refused to speak Yiddish because “I’m a Hamerican.”

So, I took out my food processor (no hand-grating for me) and spent an inordinate amount of time and effort to make carrot candy. It never solidified, even after I put it into the freezer. I think I was so worried about scorching it and ruining the sauce pan that I didn’t allow the liquid to evaporate completely. The flavor was okay, but the consistency wasn’t and it was very sticky. No one else ate it, and even I gave up after a while.

I never tried again, until a few days ago. Guess what? Still not as I remember. But I used more ginger, so the flavor is better. But it’s still too soft and sticky.

I now have both my mother’s and grandmother’s recipe boxes. I think it’s time to go through them. Maybe I can figure out why the taiglach – small balls of dough boiled in honey – another specialty of Grandma Gert’s, but for Rosh Hashanah not Pesach, always come out hard and dry.

Ingberlach (Ginger-Carrot Candies)

Slightly adapted from “The New International Goodwill Recipe Book,” published by the Women’s Zionist League of South Africa (1981).

6 cups peeled and grated carrots (from about 2 pounds of carrots)
3 1/2 cups sugar
juice and zest of 1 lemon (or 2 tbsp juice, 2 tsp zest)
juice and zest of 1 orange (or 1/3 cup oj, 2 tbsp zest)
2 teaspoons ginger, or more to taste

1) Place the carrots and sugar in a medium saucepan set over medium-high heat.

2) Bring to a boil, then lower heat to medium-low and cook, stirring often, until mixture turns thick and jammy, about 40 minutes.

3) Stir in the lemon and orange zests and juices, and the ginger, and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until mixture turns very thick and all of the liquid has evaporated, approximately 20 more minutes.

4) Mist a baking sheet lightly with water, then spoon the carrot mixture on top; gently smooth with a rubber spatula to a 1/2-inch thickness (if candy is sticking to the spatula, wet it with a little water).

5) Allow the candy to set, uncovered, in the fridge, then cut into rectangle or diamond-shapes. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

MORE MOVIE THOUGHTS

Caution: Results may vary.

These are slightly offbeat categories.

They are not the usual “my favorite movie” categories. Those would be: GOAT (Casablanca), best made (Citizen Kane), ground-breaking (tie between M and Metropolis), comedy (Some Like It Hot), musical (Dancin’ in the Rain).

Favorite TV series made from a movie: MASH; The Odd Couple

Favorite movie franchises made from a TV series: Star Trek: TOS, TNG, and the reboot; The Muppets

Favorite superhero franchise brand: MCU

Favorite DC movie: Wonder Woman

Favorite, albeit uneven, long-running sci-fi franchise: Star Wars

Favorite streaming sci-fi series based on movies: The Mandalorian, Andor (Star Wars); Loki, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (MCU)

Favorite Jewish themed, non-schmaltzy generational/cultural clash movies: Hester Street, Crossing Delancey, Frisco Kid

Favorite based-on-a-Shakespeare-play movie: West Side Story

Favorite Nazi/Holocaust foretelling movie: Cabaret

NB: These are my favorites, not a list of all that I’ve watched.

MOVIE REMAKES

I caught the end of a discussion on NPR about movie sequels, and it got me thinking about movie remakes. The ones I enjoy the most – in no particular order, because I keep changing my mind about which is my favorite – are:

*all the various remakes of “The Front Page,” whether starring Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien or Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau or Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday;”

*the remake of my favorite classic madcap comedy “Bringing up Baby,” starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, updated as “What’s up, Doc?”with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal;

*”To Be or Not to Be,” remade by Mel Brooks and Anna Bancroft from the original which starred Jack Benny and Carole Lombard,

Honorable mentions:

*the 3 remakes titled “A Star Is Born,” reinterpreted from the original “What Price Hollywood?”;

*”King Kong,” cheesy but enjoyable.

*“Planet of the Apes,” with an interesting backstory;

NB: I’m not including Disney’s live action remakes of animated films like “Beauty and the Beast,” or foreign language films transformed into English versions, such as “La Cage aux Folle,” which became “The Birdcage.”

There are several problems with writing a series: internal consistencies with plots, descriptions of continuing characters, dates; not repeating names or favorite phrases; divulging enough explanation of past events to inform new readers without giving away the endings of previous books in the series; supplying enough of a back story for continuing characters for new readers to understand their stories without boring readers of previous books.

It’s now 2023. But for Easter (another “movable feast”) to occur a few days after Purim instead of Passover, as is the usual pattern (it’s explained in the book), the book occurs in 2008.

 The solution to the mystery in Killah Megillah relies heavily on forensic evidence. Many of the techniques used, including the fairly new discipline of historical genealogy, which was instrumental in discovering the identity of the “Boy in the Box” who was found in Philadelphia in 1957 and was the “Unknown Child” until 2022, had not yet been developed in 2008.

Here’s where literary license enters the picture. I generally try as much as possibly to describe now common technology, such as cell phones or social media, as it existed in the years when the books take place, not when they were written or published. But I decided to bend the chronological “rules” in this book and have the investigators use forensic science that may not have been available fifteen years ago. 

So, those of you a lot more knowledgeable than I am, when the book is finished and published, please suspend your sense of disbelief enough to enjoy the book, scientific anachronisms and all.

*Chanukah Guilt – takes place in early Dec, 2002; first edition copyright 2007

Unleavened Dead – takes place in early April, 2004; first edition copyright 2012

Yom Killer – takes place in early Oct., 2006; copyright 2016

Killah Megillah – takes place in early March, 2008; copyright 2023 (?)

When I submitted the first draft of “Triangle,” my short story for the anthology JEWISH NOIR II, the editor Ken Wishniak suggested I condense or even delete several paragraphs of backstory, which he felt stopped the story’s momentum and pacing. After several attempts, and a switch from a third person to first person narrator, I finally found the story’s voice, and the addition of a twist last line gave the story its “noirish” flavor. But, fortunately, I had saved the earlier versions.

Fortunately, because after I volunteered to read a seven-minute long story at Noir at the Bar at this year’s Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity conference, I realized I had nothing short enough to read. I did write a new story, but, try as I might, I could not cut out enough of it to make it fit the time frame and not sound like a synopsis or outline. So, I opened the saved files of the early drafts of “Triangle,” copied the backstory I had deleted, retained the third person narrator, and constructed a backstory/prequel.

SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT READ THE STORY OR HAVE FORGOTTEN ITS OPENING: The last line of the backstory/prequel is the first word of the full story. (Available at tinyurl.com/y7kcvubj)

Hope you enjoy it.

From the first day of kindergarten, Rose hated her life. Her family. Her neighborhood. Her school. Even her friends, not that she had any. In other words, her … everything. And it was all the fault of her name. What kind of name was “Rose” anyway? She had been born in 1979, not 1879.  

            Lots of kids had weird names. There was even a Rainbow in her class. But Rose was the one the other kids in school always made fun of. “Ring around the Rosie,” they would taunt.

            “Stop!” she would scream, which made them laugh harder. Yet she would be the one who would get into trouble, be sent to the principal’s office, referred to a series of therapists to deal with her “anger management issues.”

            Her parents couldn’t understand why Rose hated her name so much. “You should be proud to be named in memory of your great-great grandmother,” they said every year when they lit the yahrzeit candle in memory of the hero who had died in some fire in 1911.

            But all Rose knew about her namesake was that she would never be able to live up to her example, so why even bother to try? After all, how often does one get the chance to sacrifice her own life to save that of others? It’s what her great-great grandmother, a twenty-six-year-old widow with three children, did during what was immortalized in history as The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

            One day, Rose had reached the breaking point. She had flown into a rage, torn all the family photographs, including one of the Original Rose, and set the pile of scraps on fire, burning down the house. It was then that she was sent to a residential treatment center for violent offenders ages ten to fifteen. It was there that she was raped.

            On paper, the home seemed ideal. It was clean and well-staffed, offering individual and group therapy, classroom instruction and tutoring. Each “resident” – the word avoided the stigma of “patient” and wasn’t as impersonal as “client” – had a private room.

They also had a good-looking, charming, charismatic, twenty-five-year-old maintenance worker, who was tall, blond, buff, and had a habit of seducing naïve young adolescent virgins. Rose was one of his victims. It wasn’t discovered until an astute nurse realized Rose hadn’t come by for sanitary napkins for a couple of months and called in a gynecologist to make sure she was okay. She was, if a four-month pregnant thirteen year old can be considered “okay.”

The pregnancy was terminated and Rose had her tubes tied. What should have been a medically simple procedure turned out to be serious when Rose contracted an infection and had to have her tubes not just tied, but removed.

             The rape was never reported to the police and certainly not to the state regulatory agency, but handled by the lawyers for the parents and the facility. Rose’s parents were mortified and sure Rose had been the instigator. They wanted to avoid more negative publicity about their wayward daughter, publicity that would reflect poorly on them and, worse, on their perfect daughter Jennifer, only a year younger than Rose. The rapist, of course, was fired without references, and left the area. The facility agreed to a lump sum payment, in the form of a trust fund, to which was added the huge malpractice settlement from the hospital. Rose’s parents would be executors and pay her a suitable monthly allowance. The fund would revert to Rose when she was twenty-five, but only if she were found to be mentally stable.

By the time Rose was eighteen, she had aged out of the residential centers she had continued to live in. She was considered fully “cured,” or, at least, controlled, through prescription drugs. Better living through chemistry. Against all odds, she had gotten a decent education and decided to go to nursing school. Her parents claimed to be proud of her. Their Rose was going to follow the example of her great-great grandmother by helping save the lives of others. But Rose knew better.

            She was still filled with hate – of her name, her job, her life, everything. Before the rape, whenever the latest in her long line of therapists would ask Rose why she always felt angry, she would shrug, knowing how ridiculous it would sound to say, “My name.” But now she had a reason the therapists could accept. And as if the rape weren’t enough of a reason, there was the embezzlement that nearly depleted her trust fund.   

            Rose knew nothing about the trust fund until she was close to thirty. Her parents had both died shortly before her twenty-fifth birthday, and her sister Jennifer was made the executor of the trust fund. Jennifer continued to pay out the allowance, which was a nice bonus to Rose’s salary, but not enough to afford to live in Manhattan, which Rose longed to do. Even after Rose’s twenty-fifth birthday, Jennifer didn’t tell her about the trust fund. If she had, she wouldn’t have been able to continue to collect the very generous stipend she felt she was owed for administering her sister’s assets, as well as for the mental anguish of being related to such an embarrassment.

            Rose found out when a quarterly statement was misaddressed to her instead of her sister. She immediately reported her sister to the fraud division of the state’s attorney general’s office.

            In the end, Rose’s victory over her sister was almost too easy. By this point in her life, Rose was adept at faking mental stability. She refused to accept mediation and insisted on a public jury trial. Her lawyer, with her permission, detailed the rape and its aftermath. The jury admired how well she had overcome her early trauma. Jennifer was found guilty by the jury and the press. She was humiliated and vilified for violating her fiduciary responsibilities and taking advantage of her sister. She was sentenced to jail and had to make restitution, which amounted to bankruptcy. Jennifer’s husband divorced her and was granted full custody of their child.

            Despite the huge amount Jennifer had stolen from the trust fund, the remaining money still was enough that Rose could have quit working and lived comfortably on the interest alone. But she didn’t know what she would do instead. She had acquaintances and co-workers, but no real friends. She hated to travel. She had no hobbies. And she actually enjoyed her job. She moved out of her overpriced, tiny apartment furnished with thrift shop leftovers in the Bronx and bought an equally overpriced, tiny apartment with newer furniture in Manhattan. But she still felt empty – and angry. Then she found something that helped relieve her hatred and control her anger.

            Murder.

MY GUEST ESSAY

My thanks to Jeff Markowitz for letting his co-contributors to Jewish Noir II know about Art Taylor’s blog “The First Two Pages,״ and to Art for accepting my essay. Enjoy!

https://arttaylorwriter.com/2022/09/06/the-first-two-pages-triangle-by-rabbi-ilene-schneider/

I, along with other contributors to JEWISH NOIR II (available Aug. 23) will be on a panel Zoom presentation sponsored by the Center for Jewish History, Wednesday, September 7, 6:30 pm ET.

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

Jewish Noir II: Tales of Crime and Other Dark Deeds – Live on Zoom

A Panel of Editors and Authors

Wednesday, September 7, 6:30 pm ET

Jewish Noir II: Tales of Crime and Other Dark Deeds is a new collection of short stories by Jewish and non-Jewish writers, including numerous award-winning authors, exploring the light and dark sides of religion and culture, examining such issues as the enduring legacy of negative stereotypes amid rising anti-Semitism, prejudice, assimilation, and questions of regional, national, and ethnic identity.

Co-editors Chantelle Aimée Osman and Kenneth Wishnia as well as contributors Maria Bivens-Smith, Robin Hemley, Rabbi Ilene Schneider, and Xu Xi will be in conversation with Lauren Gilbert, Senior Manager for Public Services at the Center for Jewish History.

Program registrants will receive a code for 20% off the cost of the book.

Tickets: Pay what you wish; register at programs.cjh.org/tickets/jewish-noir-2-2022-09-07 for a Zoom link

Presented by Center for Jewish History

NEW INTERVIEW




It’s now live! And I actually sound like I know what I’m talking about! 😁

Please check it out:

NEW – CHATTING WITH AUTHORS

Hosted by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger

YouTube 30-minute program.

Today we are chatting with Rabbi Ilene Schneider. She talked about the pitfalls and advantages of writing an ongoing series, cozy mysteries, and character development.

Go to: https://youtu.be/tRwYA8B374U

UPDATE TO PREVIOUS BLOG

About two weeks ago, I wrote a blog entry about the difference between identifying and recognizing both birds and people, thoughts inspired by my ruminations at Starbucks about baristas, one of whom I would know with or without his mask, and the other of whom I doubted I’d recognize. I ended the post by saying, “I really hope if I ever bump into Jess without her mask, I’ll know her from her smiling eyes.”

Today, at the Evesham Township, NJ, Cultural Day festival, my hopes were not met. No, I did not recognize nor identify Jess, until she introduced herself to me.

In my defense, she wasn’t wearing her Starbucks baseball cap, which covered both the tops of her heart shaped glasses (I thought the frames were rimless ovals) and her purple-tinted hair that was pulled back into a ponytail when she was working.

But, yes, her smile, framed by a well-proportioned chin and displaying nice teeth, was a perfectly matched accompaniment to her smiling eyes.

My mind works in strange ways. I make connections that are obvious to me, but not to others. So please bear with me as I describe how I made the leap from bird identification to people identification to Starbucks baristas to masks and human facial recognition.

Among birders, there’s a difference between identifying a bird and recognizing one. When identifying a bird, we gather GISS – a general impression of size and shape – plus other field marks such as plumage, habitat, time of year. We then compare these characteristics to those of other birds, whether through memory or an illustrated bird guide. Sometimes we make an educated guess. Sometimes, we find a positive match. Sometimes, we give up and decide it’s a little brown birdie or a generic hawk (species).

When we recognize a bird, we don’t need to go through those mental gymnastics. We look at a familiar bird and think, “Blue Jay” or “American Robin,” and can tell at a glance that we’re looking at a Red-bellied Woodpecker, not a Red-headed one.

We do the same when we see people. Sometimes we have to make polite inconsequential chit chat while we desperately try to put a name to a familiar looking face; other times, we immediately know who the person is.

About a year ago, a new Starbucks opened not far from my house – not that there aren’t other nearby ones, too, but this one is closer and easier to reach (less frequent traffic jams to endure). There’s a young, new barista there, Jess, who greets me by name and knows my regular orders (either a mocha mint frappuccino – before they ran out of mint and couldn’t get more delivered, when I switched to mocha – or a mango dragonfruit lemonade). A few months later, another barista, Matt, was transferred from a different nearby branch, which I frequented pre-Covid. I immediately recognized Matt from there.

Both baristas wear masks. Despite their having half their faces obscured, I recognize both of them and don’t confuse them with the other baristas. But one day I realized that even though I would be able to recognize Matt if he weren’t wearing a mask, since I first met him before mask regulations were in effect, I would not recognize Jess. Maybe she has crooked teeth or perfectly aligned ones. Maybe she has a receding chin or a pointy one or a round double one. Maybe she has dimples. I have no idea.

I have had no problem recognizing masked people when I bump into them in a store or see them at the synagogue. I may do some quick identification data gathering first – most likely GISS – but except for a few grey-haired balding men, I haven’t been puzzled by who someone is.

And my conclusion: I understand now how facial recognition software works, even if I’m looking at my phone screen while I’m smiling or frowning or eating or turned slightly to the side. It, too, is relying on GISS, but more so, on the eyes. The old saying about the eyes being the windows of the soul is true. It is through the eyes we recognize people and how we can tell their mood, even when they wear masks.

I really hope if I ever bump into Jess without her mask, I’ll know her from her smiling eyes.