Growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, Michal Nahman thought her family were unique — an island of Sephardi Judaism living in an overwhelmingly Ashkenazi community.
Now she’s running Bristol’s Mizrahi Food Project, bringing Jews of all backgrounds together to share her family’s cuisine, develop cultural links and combat antisemitism.
“From what I’ve observed here in Bristol, our Jewish communities are very diverse, with Jews from Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Chile, Yemen, Iraq and Iran,” Ms Nahman told the JC.
“Yet this isn’t reflected in daily life of the wider Jewish community. And I think this is an issue that needs redressing, as do the people I’ve started talking to.
“They have said there is a sense of racism in some Jewish spaces, or that they feel marginalised or unnoticed.”
The University of the West of England anthropologist and experienced outdoor chef first became aware of the concealed depths of Jewish cultural diversity back in Toronto as she gradually discovered the Moroccan, Chilean and Egyptian family backgrounds of her classmates.
Ms Nahman’s own family come from Turkey, Romania and Egypt, via Israel and then on to Canada.
She aims to explore “identities, people’s ideas of home and belonging or not belonging” and to preserve the old recipes that people have had handed down to them from past generations.
To achieve this, she founded a Middle Eastern Supper Club alongside Vivian Bowell, whose family hail from Egypt, part-Kurdish Natasha Orson, and falafel cafe owner Edna Yeffet.Together they dreamed up the idea one Sunday over a “potluck feast” of Mizrahi cuisine.
Ms Nahman said: “We knew we wanted to cook together as a way of creating a space of learning and presence for Mizrahi and Sephardi people in public arenas, identifying as Jewish and therefore expanding the wider British public’s idea of who we Jews are.
“We knew there is important interfaith work to be done on the ground, and the group, made up of foodies, cooks and writers wanted to put this into practice.”
Their first collective meal — titled ‘What does home taste like?’ — was a hit, with 45 people present. Muslim friends attended too, with halal meat served and alcohol absent.
Other events have featured Ladino songs and stories of Ms Nahman’s father selling burekitas and sahlep on the streets of Tel Aviv in the 1960s.
And, she says, this is only the beginning. A cookery book is in the pipeline, as is an online archive, photographic exhibition, and collaboration with Britain’s black Jewish community.
