Fania's World of Flavors, Smells, and Colors
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Film Screening
Co-sponsored by American Friends of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Polish Cultural Institute New York Admission: $15 |
The documentary Fania’s World of Flavors, Smells, and Colors tells the story of Fania Lewando, a Polish Jewish woman born in 1886 in Kowal. Before World War II, she ran the popular Dietojarska Jadłodajnia in Vilnius, where she served vegetarian specialties rooted in Ashkenazi cuisine. She combined unusual flavors with a focus on healthy cooking, believing that a meat-free diet rich in vitamins was essential to good health. Her culinary talents became widely known and admired, attracting prominent visitors, including the young and then little-known Marc Chagall.
Lewando was also the only woman invited to serve as a chef aboard the Polish ocean liner M/S Batory, where she prepared kosher meals for the ship’s passengers. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, she published a cookbook in Yiddish and Polish featuring 400 vegetarian recipes. The book quickly became a bestseller and found its way into homes far beyond Poland.
Tragically, the outbreak of the war brought Lewando’s international career to an abrupt end. In 1941, Fania Lewando and her husband perished, and her cookbook was lost amid the chaos of the war. Decades later, a copy was unexpectedly discovered at an antiquarian book fair. Reissued in New York by YIVO, the cookbook became a bestseller once again and has since been published in Lithuanian, Polish, and Czech.
Join us for the New York premiere of this documentary followed by a Q&A with director Andrzej Ciecierski, moderated by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.
Buy Fania Lewando’s The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook.