You are Here. In Her Hands
A welcome post telling you about this newsletter and the person behind it.
In her hands are the strands of dough that she plaits into a challah on Friday afternoon. In her hands is a sprig of dill that she holds up to her little boy’s face, so that he knows what her childhood smells like. In her hands is a black-and-white photograph of her great-grandmother, which she shows to her daughter, so that the little one knows who she is named after. In her hands is the history of her ancestors, which she weaves into a colourful tapestry of scents, flavours, and stories—to make sense of, and make the most of, her own life here and now.
Welcome to my new endeavour. I am so grateful that in the myriad of options on Substack, you made the choice to be here with me. After working professionally in the world of food for ten years, I felt a new calling. Following a wider trend set by so many food writers I admire, I have started my own newsletter. Here, I will try to give you a taste of what’s to come, and share a bit about my family and my own creative journey. I hope that some of it will resonate with you.
Many years ago, I created a photography project that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would become one of the most meaningful things I have ever produced. It was my A-level graduation exam, simply entitled Autobiography. Without much hesitation, I focused the project on my great-grandmother, Rosalia. It was 2001, and she was in her early 90s. I travelled back to my hometown in Siberia and spent a few hours in her small Soviet-era flat, taking portraits of her in the kitchen. She was a bit self-conscious and confused, failing to see what was so special about her that merited a dedicated photo session.
And then I looked at her hands.
They became the key subject of my project. Hands That Raised Me became the title of the show, and the central image was a black-and-white photograph of her hand, resting palm-up on the kitchen table. I printed it as large as the school photo studio would allow, and suspended it in the air on a fishing line, to give the impression of weightlessness—of timelessness. It felt as if, if you quieted your mind enough, you could hear the photograph speak to you. The hand was pillowy soft, with deep grooves that held so many stories. It was the hand that comforted me to sleep when I was a little girl; Rosalia, who shared a room with me, put me to bed every single night. It was the hand that fed me my first meals. It was the hand that held mine when I walked to school.
It was as if the photograph called out to me—it knew it had to be taken—for it would become the very last photograph ever taken of my great-grandmother. She passed away later that year. The photograph itself also disappeared; it somehow got lost in the twenty-odd years since it was exhibited in my school show. I still have the other images from that photo session in her little kitchen, but the hand itself is gone. At times, I feel regret and anger on a visceral level for losing it; other times, a calm acceptance washes over me, and I appreciate the fleeting nature of life, of people, of objects.
Rosalia’s hand—and her life story—have guided me ever since that photography project first showed me the value of understanding one’s past in order to make sense of one’s present identity. Often, when I reflect on my career, I feel embarrassed by its seeming lack of coherence: cultural events organiser, film history scholar, budding university lecturer, translator, caterer, cookbook author. Yet there is a thread that, at times, comes to the fore more prominently and at other times recedes into the background. It is the exploration of my family’s lineage—our story—as a lens through which to explore and try to make sense of the bigger picture.
In my early twenties, when I worked in cultural and film exhibition, I attempted to write a film script based on Rosalia’s and my grandfather Yuri’s wartime experiences. The idea remains etched in my memory, and to this day I can recall the scenes and recite lines from the script, even though the document itself was lost in a sudden laptop crash.
In my late twenties, I embarked (perhaps a bit prematurely) on a PhD research project exploring cultural memory and the history of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. After earning my doctorate, I made a U-turn and decided to cook for a living. I have never felt closer to Rosalia than I did at that point—she too earned her living working in various Soviet-era canteens. Sharing her story on the radio—a genuine pinch-me moment to this day—was the first step toward my career in food writing. The first cookbook I wrote, in 2019, was dedicated to Rosalia, the woman “who showed me that the act of feeding is the act of love.” It featured many of her much-loved recipes.
You’d think that by this point I might have felt satisfied enough to leave the subject in peace. But the reality was completely different. The more I did, the more I felt it wasn’t enough. A nagging, sometimes anxiety-inducing feeling often left me frustrated. And then Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Soon after, October 7th happened. My world—already fragmented—was blown apart. The ensuing pain, bewilderment, and solitude made me long for the childhood comfort of Rosalia’s hand, stroking my hair at bedtime. Her Ukrainianness and her Jewishness became the two staples holding up the crumbling foundation of my identity.
Rather than continuing to berate myself with the useless question—“Why can’t my identity be more uniform?” “Why can’t I be comfortably and proudly from just one place?”—I finally opened up to the painful complexity of my identity. I carry labels like Ukrainian, Jewish, Russian, Soviet, immigrant, British.
As a diligent former PhD student, I continue to formulate key questions in my (re)search.
Today, the question looks like this: What does it mean to be a descendant of a Ukrainian-Jewish woman who lived most of her life in Siberia under the Soviet regime? What was it about her presence and her contribution to my life that compels me—sometimes obsessively—to lean deeper into the Jewish part of my roots? To ensure that my children feel connected to this lineage?
From a halachic perspective, I am not Jewish. The strict Orthodox system that governs Jewish law recognises only the maternal line as the determinant of Jewish identity. Since it was my mother’s father who was Jewish, technically, I am out. And yet, had I lived during the Nazi era, the very existence of my Jewish maternal grandfather would have been enough reason to eliminate not only me, but my children too. That same fact would also suffice for Israeli citizenship, which my family acquired over 25 years ago.
Perhaps, if Jewish history weren’t so rich with complexity—spanning spirituality, philosophy, law, survival, adaptation, and world-shaping events—my interest might eventually have waned. Perhaps, if it weren’t for the near-random coincidence that I grew up in the same house as Rosalia, or that her son, my grandfather Yuri, was closer to me in childhood than my own father, whose family I barely knew.
Perhaps it’s because my Jewish ancestors are preserved in family memory through beautiful black-and-white photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I grew up with their images gracing our home. To this day, I see my great-grand-aunt Lily, her piercing eyes framed by thick dark eyebrows, every time I visit my parents. The whole family used to comment on our uncanny resemblance (oh yes—those eyebrows! I hated them as a teenager, plucking them into a thin doll-like line).
I see my grandfather’s grandparents, Leib and Lyuba, in their finest clothes, posing proudly with their beautiful little girls, Rosalia and Lily. They died in the early 1930s, never having met their only grandson, Yuri. Yet they’re always with us. They are my family.
Sometimes I feel like an imposter; other times, I am overwhelmed by a powerful sense of purpose. I know, I feel it in my bones, that I am here to preserve this lineage and pass it on. My daughter and I recently watched Pixar’s Coco,a fun yet deeply profound meditation on family traditions, on our connection to ancestors, and on how actions in the present are influenced by and can even reshape the past. How we have the power, perhaps the duty, to lay our ancestors’ tortured souls to rest.
I wept, to my daughter’s surprise, as I thought that my seemingly inexplicable obsession with my family’s Jewish lineage, my passion for Jewish history and food, might be the very way my ancestors call out to me. They need to be remembered. Lily was murdered by the Nazis in one of the many “standard” ethnic cleansing operations carried out across occupied Europe during WWII—what later became known as the Holocaust. She had no children. So today, as I mark special occasions with my loved ones, I think of her. I chose her to be part of my family.
I don’t know if she felt alone or terrified in her final moments, marched to the edge of a pit in the woods. I don’t even know if I believe in the concept of a soul. But I hope—beyond all rational limits—that in her last moments, as she was being stripped of dignity and humanity, some inexplicable energy enveloped her and soothed her with the knowledge that she would not be forgotten. That her life would matter to me. That her existence would inspire me to learn, to cook, to speak—for all of us.
Food is my language, and memory is the main ingredient in my kitchen. I hope this Substack will allow me to delve deeper into the questions of identity and belonging, womanhood and motherhood, Soviet, Ukrainian and Jewish history—and how food can help us connect to ourselves and one another. I will try to do this through essays, recipes, and cooking videos—offering culinary ideas rooted in Eastern European and Ashkenazi culture, alongside my own improvisations and inventions. I’ll share the voices of other women with similar lineages, whose perspectives inspire me. You’ll also find (cook)book reviews and discussion forums, and as I work toward a new book idea, I look forward to sharing my experiments with you!