In Memory's Kitchen

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. (Hebrews 10:19-24 ESV).

One day in 1969, Anny Stern, a 62-year-old woman living in Manhattan, received a phone call that made her tremble. Years later as she related it, she still grew teary eyed. “I have a package for you from your mother,” the caller said. Stern’s mother, Mina Pachter, had been dead for twenty-five years. She died in Terezin, a Czechoslovakian concentration camp. But Stern learned that shortly before her mother’s death, she had entrusted a package to a friend, hoping he might be able to get it to Stern. Now, after all this time and many intermediaries, the gift had finally arrived. Stern opened the package but couldn’t bear to examine the contents. She put it away for nearly a decade. Finally she took up the parcel again and lifted out some letters and poems that had been written by her mother, and a crumbling, handsewn copybook. On every page, recipes had been scribbled. There were recipes for plum strudel, breast of goose, torte, and eighty more! Hungry, sick, and brutalized, Pachter and the women around her had created a cookbook.

In Memory’s Kitchen: a Legacy from the Women of Tarazia was edited, translated, and published soon after. It is not merely a guide to making strudel and tortes, but much more. It is the story of life in the kitchens of these women, the skills they had amassed, the flavors they knew so well, the passion for family that kept them stirring and kneading and tasting day after day. It was much of what they owned and the heart of what they had to give. By the time they scrawled those recipes, such dishes were only dreams. But to write them down was to insist on a real-world future, to insist that their daughters would receive their legacy. The women of Terezin were not the only camp inmates who collected recipes even while they were living on potato peels. It gave them hope.

It is so tragic that many people have no such hope. After a very wealthy young actress took her life, a fan was overheard to say at her memorial, “She had so much to live for.” “No,” replied a bystander, “she had so much to live on, but so little to live for.” Hope is not found in our surroundings or our circumstances. It is found in the presence and purpose of our Savior, Jesus Christ. That is a hope that will never disappoint us nor abandon us. Turn your attention to Him today and rejoice in your hope!