Books
As a writer, Schwartz co-created the award-winning audio dramas “The Witches of Lublin” and “Debs in Canton” for Suemedia Productions. She contributed a chapter on klezmer vocal technique to “Shpil: The Art of Playing Klezmer” (Scarecrow Press). Her recipes of Jewish food can be found in “A Wandering Feast: A Journey Through the Jewish Culture of Eastern Europe” (Jossey-Bass), “Zydzi Od Kuchni” (Austeria) and “It’s Always About the Food” (Harper Collins).
Select books by Elizabeth Schwartz are available for purchase by contacting her directly, or third-party vendors linked below.
COMING SOON
The Sweet Fragrance of Life & Other Horror Stories
Written by Elizabeth Schwartz
Published by Olniansky Tekst, 2023
This remarkable debut collects a trio of horror tales starring Jewish characters. Friedl Bamberger, in this book’s title story, lives a comfortable life in Germany before World War II. She revels in the wealth from her father’s successful department store and is perhaps a bit snooty. Her apartment building’s new porter, Henrik, catches her eye, and she’s ecstatic about the possibility of a new romance. However, Henrik’s arrival coincides with unforeseen changes as tenants start to disappear.
“The Rebbe’s Prayer is Answered” follows a seemingly disenchanted rebbe in Poland whose loving wife can’t bear children. He pines for a merchant’s 15-year-old daughter and, since he’s unavailable for marriage, goes to disturbing lengths to get what he wants. In “The Jonah,” a new job in Palestine in 1941 may allow 16-year-old Cili to escape poverty in Romania. On the voyage over, however, she shares space with a reputedly “anti-Semitic, brutish and resentful” crew. These men soon unleash a horrific assault that leads to a violent end for all involved. Schwartz, who offers all three stories in English and Yiddish, delivers enthralling character-driven tales that gradually darken as they go on. The main characters, for example, are all fascinating—even when don’t evoke any sympathy; Friedl is unabashedly self-centered (as when she plays piano in spite of the downstairs neighbor’s complaints), and the rebbe is loathsome.
The author weaves in rich historical particulars, from the political climate of decades past to an account of a real-life incident that inspired one of the tales herein. Smooth, descriptive prose (“And there he is, his wavy hair catching glints of the afternoon sunlight, his powerful arms shoveling mulch in the garden”) makes these short stories fly by. Siewert’s black-and-white pen-and-ink illustrations (one per tale) boast simple but crisp details, including one particularly daunting and bloody image. This exceptional collection’s brevity is sure to leave readers wanting more. A set of mesmerizing stories that wraps up way too soon. - Kirkus Reviews
It's Always About the Food
By Monday Morning Cooking Club
The bestselling, passionate and unstoppable women of the Monday Morning Cooking Club return with their third book of much loved and favourite Jewish diaspora recipes.
It's Always About the Food is a delicious and rich, story-filled snapshot of cooking in the global Jewish diaspora, which gathers together the very best cooking and favourite recipes from the global Jewish community, reflecting the Jewish people's love for food and cooking, and the importance of the family table. This book is all about the food, flavours and the most delicious family recipes - not from a restaurant or a test kitchen, but from the heart of the home.
Ultimately, in this big, fast world, food is the connective thread that joins us together, and all over the world, the ritual of cooking grounds us, connects and nurtures us.
Zydzi Od Kuchni
Jews From the Kitchen, Stories Around the Family Table
After realizing that she wasn't the only Jewish family that came together to cook pre-war Jewish recipes, author Hanna Merlak searched the globe to find the dishes that brought people together.
"Sometimes the very smell of certain dishes evokes beloved people and places, evokes emotion, or allows you to better cope with longing. Perhaps cooking together will allow you to feel connected with the pre-war world of Polish shtetls, synagogues and yeshivas."
Shpil
The Art of Playing Klezmer
Both a history of this popular form of traditional Jewish music and an instructional book for professional and amateur musicians. Since the revival of klezmer music in the United States in the mid-1970s, Yiddish songs and klezmer dance melodies have served as the soundtrack for a resurgence of interest in Ashkenazic Jewish culture across the globe. Klezmer has taken root not only in America’s major urban centers—New York City, Chicago, San Francisco—but also in emerging Jewish music hotspots like St. Petersburg, Buenos Aires, Krakow, and Tokyo. Its high energy, emotionally driven sound, and evocative Yiddish lyrics have found audiences everywhere.
A Wandering Feast
A Journey Through the Jewish Culture of Eastern Europe
An original and uplifting view of a world lost, reborn, and rediscovered This is a delightful book that welcomes the reader to a wonderful journey through the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe: the still-vibrant villages and homes, the Yiddish folkways, the toe-tapping Klezmer music, and heart-warming traditional food. Yale Strom documented his journey--organized around fourteen specific visits to authentic villages in Eastern Europe--with a fascinating travelogue that includes inspiring stories, photographs, music that has never been printed, and recipes. He reveals that a culture long feared to be gone forever is still very much alive.
