Joan Nathan

My mother-in-law remembers the kapparah tradition in Poland. Early in the morning of the day prior to Yom Kippur, a fowl was whirled about her head, while she thought about turning over a new leaf. Her father would whirl a rooster, her mother a hen, and her brothers and sisters a pullet or a cockerel. The ceremony was repeated for each child. She was always frightened by the fluttering feathers. After the whirling, her mother would race to the shohet and have the fowls ritually slaughtered to make food for the meal before the fast. All the fowls would be cooked, and any extras given to bachelor relatives or to the poor. Chicken soup would be made for the kreplakh and the boiled chicken eaten as a mild main dish.

Yemenite Jews also eat chicken before the fast of Yom Kippur, but much earlier in the morning, at about 10:30. Their soup is dipped with the kubbanah bread.

Note: Making a children's version of hawayij is a great introduction to Middle Eastern spices. Take the children to a spice store where they can pick out the spices themselves. Hawayij is basically a combination of cumin, coriander (omit if using fresh), curry powder, ginger, black pepper, and turmeric. Add spices according to your children's tolerance for strong and unusual flavors. You can omit them altogether if you wish.

This is a colorful variation on the classic potato latke.

"One thing I cannot get out of my head" said Ben Moskovitz, owner of Star Bakery in Oak Park, Michigan. "Was the food better growing up in Czechoslovakia or were the people hungrier there? My mother made a honey cake for the holiday, and it was so delicious. Honey was too expensive for us, so my mother burned the sugar to make it brown. Here I use pure honey, but I still think my mother's cake was better and I know I am wrong. The taste of hers is still in my mouth."

Mr. Moskovitz's European honey cake follows, with a few of my American additions. Other European Jewish bakers interviewed for this book also bake with white rye flour and cake flour when we would use all-purpose flour. I have included both choices.

This is one of those recipes that has pretty much disappeared in the United States, but those who remember it rave about it. A fluden, which comes from fladni or fladen, "flat cake" in German, is just that, a flat, double-or often multilayered flaky pastry filled with poppy seeds, apples and raisins, or cheese. It was originally common to southern Germany and Alsace-Lorraine, later spreading east to Hungary, Romania, and other Eastern European countries. Often flavored with honey, it was eaten in the fall at Rosh Hashanah or Sukkot and is symbolic, like strudel, of an abundant yield. I have tasted apple two-layered fluden at Jewish bakeries and restaurants in Paris, Budapest, Tel Aviv, and Vienna, sometimes made with a butter crust, sometimes with an oil-based one. But only in Paris have I tasted the delicious fig rendition, a French fig bar, from Finkelsztajn's Bakery. (Figs, my father used to tell me, were often eaten in Germany as the new fruit on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.)

This recipe is a perfect example of the constant flux of Jewish foods. Today, with the huge population of Tunisian Jews in Paris, it is no wonder that the Finkelsztajn family spike their fig filling with bou'ha, a Jewish Tunisian fig liqueur used for kiddush, the blessing over the wine on the Sabbath. You can, of course, use kirsch or any other fruit liqueur instead.

This Parisian version of a Bialystoker tsibele (onion) pletzel, also called onion zemmel, onion pampalik, or onion board, is very similar to an Italian focaccia. Try this flat bread sprinkled with rosemary, and you will see how very close it is.

Taiglach (little pieces of fried dough dredged in honey) are eaten for celebratory occasions like Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, Chanukah, Purim, weddings, and births. Ceciarchiata means "chickpeas" or "little bits" in Italian. This festive taiglach is similar in nature to the French croquembouche, though it's a crown, not a mountain. It is a spectacular centerpiece with its clusters of dough and nuts, and is totally addictive.

It's customary to serve jelly doughnuts at Hanukkah, since they are are fried in oil to symbolize the miracle of the oil that lasted for eight days instead of one.

It was years ago that Charles Fenyvesi first told me about this extraordinary layered honey torte. Jenny was deported to Auschwitz, where she died. Mr. Fenyvesi's mother experimented for twenty years until she came up with the following formula. Here is the recipe, a tribute to Hungarian Jewry and to Mr. Fenyvesi's late cousin Jenny.

The New Prospect Café, a health-oriented restaurant and catering company in Park Slope, Brooklyn, includes these curried sweet potato fritters on their Hanukkah menu. Add some fresh grated ginger to the pancakes for an Asian touch. Sweet potatoes need the flour to give the pancakes body.

This is definitely American — with dark brown sugar and pecans! Your guests will love it.

If you like light, airy matzah balls, you'll like this recipe. It's my son David's favorite, especially when his grandmother makes the matzah balls.

When I was a little girl, my aunt Lisl always made butter cookies at Hanukkah time. We decorated them. The cookies were stored in her garage in airtight containers. Sometimes we got to take some of them home. Other times, we just nibbled on them at her house. One of the best things about cooking with relatives is that it's a great time to ask for family stories. While we baked, Aunt Lisl told wonderful tales of my father's boyhood in Germany.

(Southern German and Alsatian Italian Plum Torte)

This torte is served traditionally at the high holidays in early fall, when small blue Italian plums are in season. In southern Germany and Alsace the pie was made from zwetsche, a local variety of these plums. My aunt Lisl always used to make a murbeteig crust (a short-crust butter cookie dought) for this tart, and sliced each Italian plum into four crescent shapes. She lined the tart with breadcrumbs and then apricot preserves, which protected the dough during baking, leading to a crispy crust. She went light on the cinnamon, a spice she felt was overused in this country. (I agree with her.) My aunt's results, simple to prepare, were simply delicious.

In my family we always inaugurate the Jewish New Year with our first apple dessert of the fall season. The tradition in Andra's home is to begin the year with a round challah and to end it with a cake topped with concentric circles of sliced apples. This dessert is very similar to Jewish apple cake, a Polish dessert that was very popular in church cookbooks throughout Maryland. I believe it is called Jewish because it is an oil-based rather than a butter-based cake. Andra's version is particularly easy, attractive, and delicious.

Jews from Persia (present-day Iran) are especially proud of Queen Esther's role in the holiday of Purim. A favorite dish of Iranian children is halvah, which they eat after they break the fast of Esther, observed on Adar 13. At nursery school, Merissa learned this recipe for halvah from an Iranian teacher. In between tastes, the children played with Esther and Ahasuerus marionettes they had made with the help of their teacher.

Sephardic Jews from Turkey, Greece, Morocco, and other countries of the Mediterranean region say seven special blessings over seven different symbolic foods at their Rosh Hashanah dinner. Five of these blessings are over vegetables — apples (candied or dipped in sugar or honey), leeks, beet greens or spinach, dates, and zucchini or squash. These blessings symbolize their hopes for the New Year. Many of these Jews trace their ancestors back to Spain, which is called Sepharad in the Bible. Over the centuries, the Sephardic Jews took advantage of the abundance of vegetables available in the Mediterranean countries, often throughout the year. Among these vegetables are sweet potatoes and squash, great favorites of my family. The special blessing you can say over your sweet potatoes and squash at the beginning of your Rosh Hashanah dinner goes like this:

Yehi ratzon mi-le-faneha Adonai Eloheinu ve-lo-hei avoteinu she-tik-rah ro-a gezar dinenu ve-yi-karehu lefa-neha za-hee-yo-teinu.

May it be thy will, Lord our God and God of our fathers, that you should tear up any evil decree and let only our merits be read before You.

This is an updated version of the chremslach passed down in my own family. I have never had a seder without it. A heavier version stuffed with cranberries appeared in many early American Jewish cookbooks as Kentucky grimslech.

Gefilte fish is one of those recipes where touch and taste are essential ingredients. A basic recipe goes this way:"You put in this and add that." If you don't want to taste the raw fish, add a bit more seasoning than you normally would. What makes this recipe Galicianer (southern Polish) is the addition of sugar. For some reason the farther south in Poland, the more sugar would be added. A Lithuanian Jew would never sweeten with sugar but might add beets to the stock. I have added ground carrot and parsnip to the fish, something that is done in the Ukraine, because I like the slightly sweet taste and rougher texture. If you want a darker broth, do not peel the onions and leave them whole.

This tsimmes created by Chef Lenard Rubin of the Phoenician Club in Phoenix, Arizona, is so good that I sometimes serve it alone without stuffing it into the chilies.