Community hamantaschen-bake comes to New Haven

By Cindy Mindell

Every year for the past two decades, Linda Cedarbaum has prepared 1,000 hamantaschen for Purim, but she’s not a professional baker.

She began the tradition with her young children and family friends while living in Larchmont, N.Y., distributing the pastries to residents of the Sarah Neuman Nursing Home in nearby Mamaroneck. “Growing up, we didn’t have family in the local Jewish home for the aged,” says the Detroit native. “It was important to me that my children understand that we’re all connected and that there’s something we can do in the community.”

The Cedarbaums continued the tradition when they moved to San Francisco for five years in 2007. Friends would come by the house on the Sunday before Purim, learn the family recipe while helping to bake, and take home the recipe and a few hamantaschen to enjoy on the holiday. The Cedarbaums would bring the rest to the Jewish Home of San Francisco.

Cedarbaum and her husband relocated two years ago to Woodbridge, where she says she “hit the ground running,” looking for a Jewish communal organization interested in the hamantaschen project that combines fun and ruach with “dor l’dor” community-building and awareness. Early on, she met Vivian Kantrow, director of development and community relations at Tower One/Tower East senior housing community in New Haven, where Cedarbaum volunteers. Kantrow envisioned the project as a community-wide activity.

Together with Shelley Gans, director of the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, Cedarbaum and Kantrow designed “Baking for Good: The Art of Making Hamantaschen,” to be held on Sunday, Mar. 9, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. at the JCC.

Participants sign up for a 30-minute time slot and are assigned to a fully-supplied workstation with a mentor, where they make a small batch of hamantaschen to be delivered to Jewish seniors in the community. Participants will take home a small sampling of hamantaschen and a copy of the recipe for them to bake at home.

“When Linda brought this project to The Towers, we immediately recognized it as a great way to do a mitzvah for the community and introduce the best hidden secret to New Haven – which, of course, is Tower One/Tower East, the best affordable Jewish housing community with services in the area,” says president and CEO Mark Garilli, who will be among the baking mentors, along with board chair Dr. Alan Siegel and others. “The significance of an event like this is simply sharing tradition at a community level. Oftentimes, we find ways to celebrate our traditions within the comfort of our family surroundings but not beyond. Linda was kind enough to share her family tradition with The Towers but, after discussing its potential impact, we felt it should be larger than that. Offering the community an opportunity to take part in ‘The Art of Making Hamantaschen,’ while serving isolated seniors, brings the tradition home to so many who no longer have a family. For me, the value is priceless.”

Cedarbaum says that the goal of the baking project has always been to transfer the knowledge and skills of this “lost Jewish art” to others so that the tradition is passed on and becomes embedded in the communal memory. The baking mentors at the Mar. 9 event will train a group of people who will then be equipped to replicate the project throughout the Jewish community.

“It’s hard to take a whole day to volunteer, but this is a 30-minute experience you can do with your spouse, child, sister, or neighbor and bring joy to someone,” Cedarbaum says. “And you’ll be reminding yourself that the elderly are part of our lives and community as well. The elderly get lost in the shuffle of busier and busier lives, and the generations separate. So hamantaschen can be an activity that connects people, not just something you buy.”

Cedarbaum says that she hopes the event becomes an annual tradition in the New Haven area, growing over time to include more people and communal organizations.

Kantrow is reaching out to area synagogues and BBYO to help package the hamantaschen, which will be distributed to New Haven-area seniors through the Towers’ kosher Meals on Wheels program, launched a month ago.

Garilli says that he and fellow Towers organizers hope that participants feel a sense of pride in community service and gain an understanding of the volume and unmet needs of isolated Jewish seniors in the Greater New Haven area.

“I want to see that all these people around me feel that they own this experience and can share it with their children and grandchildren,” she says. “This is about activating those skills and traditions that are already here in the New Haven Jewish community and reaffirming them for another generation.”

“Baking for Good: The Art of Making Hamantaschen,” Sunday, March 9, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., JCC of Greater New Haven, 360 Amity Road, Woodbridge. For registration and information call Linda at (203) 772-1816, ext. 350 or email linda@towerone.org or Vivian at (203) 772-1816, ext. 290 / vivian@towerone.org. 

Another opportunity to learn the disappearing traditional recipes of Eastern European Jewish baking: “Inside the Jewish Bakery:” Sundays, March 30, Apr. 6 & 27, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Temple Sinai, 458 Lakeside Drive, Stamford. For information call (203) 322-1649.