The Most Important Cookbook You’ll Ever Own:
Holocaust Survivor Cookbook Raises Money for Israel Soup Kitchen and Preserves Survivors’ Stories and Recipes

To raise money for Carmei Ha’ir, a soup kitchen/restaurant in Israel that serves 500 meals a day to the needy, Joanne Caras and her family spent two years collecting recipes and stories from Holocaust survivors, compiling them into an amazing cookbook. “If these recipes were not collected soon, many of them, along with the courageous accompanying stories that came from all over the world, would have been lost forever to future generations” explains Caras. “Each story and each recipe is a miracle!” To find out more about the compelling cookbook and fundraising project, SocialAction.com interviewed Caras.

SocialAction.com: What got you interested in the Holocaust Survivor Cookbook?

Joanne Caras: My son Jonathan made Aliyah [moved to Israel] three years ago. He now lives and attends school in Jerusalem. In 2005, when I visited Israel, he took me to lunch at a restaurant in Jerusalem called Carmei Ha’ir.

It looked just like all of the other restaurants that we had eaten in. But after the waiter came and gave us the menu, my son said to me, “Mom, this is the soup kitchen where Sarah [his wife] and I volunteer.” I was shocked because my vision of a soup kitchen was nothing like this.

SA: What did it look like?

JC: People sat at dining tables, ordered from menus, and were served by waiters. Everyone was treated with dignity and respect. At the end of the meal, if you could afford to pay, you leave money at the door. If not, you just left without paying. No one knew who paid or who didn't.

SA: How many people are served by Carmei Ha’ir?

JC: The manager told me that the soup kitchen serves over 500 meals each day, mostly to the poor, and for many diners it is the only meal they eat all day. In addition, each week, before Shabbat, the Soup Kitchen delivers freshly made meals for poor families to prepare at home.

SA: What was your response?

I asked her how I could help, and she suggested that I might want to become an ambassador and raise money to help support the soup kitchen. I came home from Israel determined to do whatever I could do to help. Jonathan then suggested that I put together a cookbook to raise money for Carmei Ha’ir because I had done that successfully a few years ago to help poor children in Delaware.

SA: Where did the idea of the Holocaust Survivor Cookbook come from?

JC: A few weeks later my daughter-in-law Sarah’s grandmother passed away in Belgium. Sarah’s mother Gisela sent me a very moving email about her mother. In it she explained that her mother was the only member of her family to survive the holocaust, and that she had been hidden during the war by nuns in a convent. That is when the idea hit me to combine great Jewish recipes with the stories of holocaust survivors.

SA: Where did these stories, photographs, and recipes come from?

JC: Over the past two years we have collected 129 stories and more than 200 recipes. We have amazing stories from as far as Australia, China, New Zealand, South Africa, Europe, Israel, Canada, South America, and more than 20 US states.

SA: Please share a couple of those stories.

JC: One woman told me that she and her mother were starving in Auschwitz because each day they were only given one bowl of dirty broth and a piece of bread that looked like coal. The only way they survived was to create dream meals together. In their minds they peeled potatoes to start their soups, cooked meats and vegetables, and even set the table for Shabbat dinner. She sent us her story along with two of her “dream recipes” for the cookbook.

Another woman told us that when she was very young her mother was taken away to a concentration camp, never to be seen again. She doesn't remember her mother’s face. The only thing this woman remembers about her mother is the smell of her chicken soup. She said that even today, when her sister visits they make the soup together, and the smell makes them feel like their mother is in the kitchen with them. The chicken soup recipe and this moving story are in our cookbook.

SA: Why is so important that you sell this cookbook?

JC: We have four goals with the Holocaust Survivor Cookbook:

• To raise one million dollars for the soup kitchen in Jerusalem, in order to continue to feed the needy.
• To raise millions more for Jewish groups all over the world. Every cookbook will benefit Carmei Ha’ir and another Jewish group. (Any group that wants to sell the cookbook as a fundraiser can buy them from us at the wholesale price on $18.00 and then sell them to their members for the retail price of $36.00. All they need to do is purchase a minimum of 50 cookbooks to qualify for the wholesale price.)
• To publish a cookbook of great Jewish recipes.
• And, perhaps most important of all, to keep the memory of those brave holocaust survivors alive for generations to come!

To order the Holocaust Survivor Cookbook, visit the web site www.survivorcookbook.org.