About This Item

  • Call NumberBJHP_0293
  • Summary(00:40) Jennifer Abadi tells us how her first book came about. Speaks about her family, the Syrian Jewish Community in Bensonhurst, and their cuisine -- (08:45) Cuisine of Aleppo, located along the trade routes connecting Asia to Europe and North Africa and incorporating those culinary influences -- (11:25) The Jewish Syrian community had to adapt their cuisine to new ingredients they found in America.
  • Date2020-02-05
  • Physical Description1 audio file (17 minutes) : digital, MP3
  • CreatorAbadi, Jennifer
  • CollectionBrooklyn Jewish History Project
  • Cite AsBrooklyn Jewish History Project, Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History
  • Formatsound recording-nonmusical
  • Genreinterviews
  • NoteTitle supplied by cataloger. Audio interview conducted 2020 February 5, by Ariane Loeb. Collected through the Brooklyn Collection Jewish History Project of Brooklyn Public Library. This project is funded by the David Berg Foundation.
  • SubjectJews--Identity ; Cookbooks ; Cooking--History 
  • LocationAleppo (Syria)
  • RightsThis work is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Users are free to share and adapt the work for non-commercial purposes as long as appropriate credit is given to the source and new material created with this work is shared under the same conditions.
  • TitleThe Hidary and Abadi families. The Abadi and Hidary family collection. Oral history interview with Jennifer Abadi conducted on February 5, 2020
  • Biographical NoteThe Hidary and Abadi families arrived from Aleppo, Syrian at the turn of the 20th century, lived first in the Lower East Side before they settled in Bensonhurst. Annette Hidary parents were married and moved to Colorado, then Oklahoma City where father had a store. They came back to Brooklyn in 1945. Later on, they got divorced and Annette, her sister and her mother moved to Manhattan at the Chelsea hotel as Annette's mother was involved in the artistic scene in New York. Annette became a teacher. Later, when the interest into ethnic food started to being in fashion, Annette become interested in learning from her mother and grandmother about Syrian Jewish cooking. She then started a project of gathering recipes in order to preserve then but later one passed on the project to her daughter Jennifer Abadi, a graphic designer, to make a book. Today Jennifer is a cookbook writer and culinary Instructor, and has written two books: "A fistful of lentils" and "Too good to Passover."