![Chocolate Trail Broadens: “Semi[te] Sweet: On Jews and Chocolate” Travels](https://rabbideborahprinz.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/IMG_2409.jpg)
I am very excited that the NYCs Bernard Museum exhibit, "Semi[te] Sweet: On Jews and Chocolate" based on my book, On the Chocolate Trail, will now be forging new paths as it travels around the country. We selected On the Chocolate Trail as the book title for a number...
Excerpted from my remarks at Opening Night at Temple Emanu-El, NYC, October 20, 2017: Some people have books optioned for movies. I am so delighted that my book, On the Chocolate Trail (2nd Edition, 2017) has become a museum exhibit... Thank you, Warren Klein, for...
Every day is Jewish Labor Day. Jewish tradition expounds the importance of work and those who do it. Even God worked for six days and only then rested on Shabbat. Chocolate is one medium for uncovering themes of worker equity, food justice and ethical kashrut. Many...
Fathers, Dominicans that is, helped bridge the New World’s chocolate to the Old World. In 1544 Padres tantalized the Spanish court with chocolate prepared and presented by a Kekchi Maya delegation of New World natives. Fatherly faith indeed aided in spreading...
Bartons Chocolate Pops. Bartons Almond Kisses. Do you long for these and other iconic Passover favorites made by Bartons Chocolate? They exist because of the March 12, 1938 Nazi accession of Austria (Anschluss) when Stephen Klein fled Vienna for his life. A Nazi...
Little did I realize when writing On the Chocolate Trail, how eerie the connections between Jews and chocolate might become. My choco-dar (internal radar for chocolate experiences) led me to a hauntingly personal story. In 2009, a very kind scholar, learning of my...
Sephardi Jews contributed to the availability of drinking chocolate when that became a very popular substitute for politicized tea in North America around the time of the 1773 Boston Tea Party. The Gomez family members (NYC) and Aaron Lopez (Newport) were among the...
In 1939, well before I was born, my father, Louis Kwechansky was already into chocolate production in Montreal. He had patented a machine to make a product that would seal his fame. He invented a chocolate lollypop on a stick, called a “Chocolate Pop.” He hired the...
Yes, they do, according to a story told by our colleague and friend, Rabbi Mo Salth, first recounted by radio commentator, Paul Harvey. A mother decided that her family should eat more healthfully and alerted her children that she would no longer be purchasing sugary...
"Did Jews 'Invent' Chocolate?" An Exclusive Interview with Deborah Prinz by Walter Bingam for his radio program “Walter’s World” at Israel National Radio about my book On the Chocolate Trail: A Delicious Adventure Connecting Jews, Religions, History, Travel, Rituals...
In 2012 consumers in the United States spent an average of $152 dollars for Mother's Day gifts. A good portion of that was spent on slathering our mammas with chocolate treats. Earlier generations of women, some of the them childless due to their religious callings,...
If, as one of my friends has taught me, food is love, then chocolate manifests the densest, deepest and sweetest of loves. When we slather our mothers with chocolatey tributes in a few days, we will be stepping onto a chocolate trail pioneered by Jewish mothers before...
Surprisingly, according to some chocolate mavens, it may have been Jews in France, known as expert chocolate makers in Bayonne, France, who first developed chocolate Easter eggs. These, they say, were passed around during church services to provide morsels of...
I hope that you enjoy this version of the traditional four questions at Passover. 1. How might I use chocolate to create new approaches to my Seder? You may wish to experience the ancient Seder and Passover themes through chocolate and related issues of child...
Not only was it fun to share content from On the Chocolate Trail, West End Synagogue, NYC, made an entire evening and successful fundraiser out of it. Hot chocolate, chocolate beer and peppered-chocolate bits welcomed and warmed the guests. I shared nuggets about Jews...
This week will haunt Jewish parents with ambivalence about ghoulish begging for treats and taunt many of us with temptations of free, sugary treats. Despite my inner Halloween scrooge, my children enjoyed creative costuming and hoarding of the goodies as kids....
This year make room for chocolate in your Sukkot celebration. Sukkot’s theme of openness symbolized by the leafy ceiling and flimsy walls tempts creative approaches to menus, decorations, and customs. Deuteronomy 16:14’s challenge “v’samachta b’chagecha" (to rejoice...
I was surprised to learn that another topic omitted from my Jewish education--all the years of religious school to seminary to the active rabbinate--I had no idea that Jewish texts discussed chocolate. It turns out that they do. In Jewish literature’s legal genre...
Shavuot’s dairy customs celebrating the revelation of Torah at Mt. Sinai beckon me towards milk chocolate. As Janna Gur, Chief Editor of Israel’s Al Hashulchan–The Israeli Gastronomic Monthly explained to me in a phone conversation, Israelis love chocolate and have a...
I thought mine was the only one. A supply of chocolate secreted away in a drawer at the office, just in case, just a little break, just for those moments. This other drawer was disclosed to me by chance, when I spoke to the HUC-JIR First Year students about Jewish...
Kosher L’Pesach certification does nothing to improve the quality of the chocolate for the festival celebration and actually limits choices, increases costs, diminishes taste and undermines the powerful messages of the Chag. While Passover themed chocolate in the...
Our family Shabbat dinner chocolate-tasting spontaneously turned into a form of kiddush (the blessing using wine which welcomes the Sabbath). In part I was thinking about Jews in Colonial period Mexico who sometimes used drinking chocolate for kiddush when wine was...
After trying for weeks to get confirmation for our Rosh HaShanah reservation at the Pines in Fire Island–to pray in a new setting, to be with friends, to be at the beach, to have a break–we decided we had better go to our fall back option: Switzerland! So it was...
In response to a recent request: (fuller information in my forthcoming book Jews on the Chocolate Trail: Stories of Jews and Cacao) 1. Some people think that Jews brought chocolate to France. 2. In the eighteenth century, Jews were thought to be specialists in...
“Things are seldom as they seem” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore rang true as we explored England’s chocolate in Oxford, Birmingham, the Lake District and York in March of 2009. Our search for historic and significant chocolate had us schlepping 262 miles to...
Perfecting the hand to mouth wandering at the Chocolate Show in NYC in Fall of 2009, I had to catch myself before I grabbed from a pile of samples of chocolate covered bacon. I pulled back just in time to avoid the traif (unacceptable food) temptation at neighboring...
Today's tough economics send many of us to sweets and chocolate to find comfort on tighter budgets. Candy satisfies us today; in the Colonial Period in North America, the daily menu often included drinking chocolate. In 1747 a minister only identified as “Your humble...
In the pioneering days of chocolate in our country, pastoral ministrations using chocolate took several forms. Judge Samuel Sewall, (March 28, 1652 - January 1, 1730) a Massachusetts judge involved in the Salem witch trials, (he later apologized) recorded in his diary...
A serious chocolate lover has to wonder why Judaism today has neither serious ritual celebrations nor customs using good chocolate, especially at Rosh Hashanah when we emphasize the sweetness we anticipate and long for in the coming New Year. On Rosh Hashanah, we...
June 20, 2007 Poblet We had read a text panel at the Barcelona Chocolate Museum explaining that chocolate arrived in Spain in 1520, one year after Cortez arrived in Mexico. A Cistercian monk, Fray Aguilar, shipped chocolate with the recipe to the Monasterio de Piedra...