DATE: Wednesday, October 1, 1997            TAG: 9709300043

SECTION: FLAVOR                  PAGE: F1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LISA RICHMON, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:  129 lines

HOLIDAY FEAST JEWISH HIGH HOLIDAY MEALS SYMBOLIZE HOPE FOR A SWEET FUTURE

IT WAS A STABLE GOVERNMENT, not American cuisine that lured Joan Joffe and her family from Cape Town, South Africa, to Virginia Beach. Thirteen years later, as she contemplates the Jewish New Year and foods she'll prepare for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Joffe still longs for the delectables she left behind.

Like other Jewish families who settled in Hampton Roads from Morocco, France, Tunisia, Iran and Israel, Joffe found here an easy pace, access to other cities and the promise of a stable future. But the most inviting of all the area's features was tucked away in the spirit of its intimate Jewish community.

During the Jewish High Holidays, beginning tonight at sundown with Rosh Hashana and ending with the Yom Kippur postfast meal, Jews throughout Hampton Roads will experience a heightened sense of family and tradition. Observance of the holidays include temple services, fasting on Yom Kippur (the day of atonement) and home-based rituals where cooking, baking and feasting take center stage.

While the time between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is one of self-scrutiny and introspection, it is also a time of optimism for the future. One need only glance at the tabletops in any country to absorb the holiday's true flavor.

Some of the abundantly sweet and colorful dishes served around the world on Rosh Hashana include apples and honey, challah with raisins, carrot casserole, fruit-filled kugel, yams with cranberries, Moroccan cigares, streusel, honey cake and apple cake. There are no bitter foods. In fact, Moroccan Jews forbid any dark or potentially bitter foods like olives or eggplant at their holiday repast.

A ritual performed before the Rosh Hashana meal is to say a blessing over the fruit dipped in honey, a symbol of hope for a sweet year ahead. After symbolic foods are blessed, the meal begins with a blessing over the wine and a round bread called challah, to represent a full year ahead.

Cookbook author Joan Nathan points out in ``Jewish Cooking in America'' (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994) that all ethnic groups, not just Jews, seize their culinary roots on holidays. Eating traditional ethnic foods is one way to help people recapture their past. For Jews, food has a strong symbolic value dating back to the ceremonial foods of the ancient Israelites.

Joffe's holiday cooking influences can be traced both to German and Russian ancestors and her own South African sensibilities.

An aggressive domestic chef, Joffe says, ``I love to cook gourmet but this is the time of year that I want to cook just the way my granny and my ancestors did before me. After eating healthy all year, it's time to pull out the fat, the oil and the honey.''

While living in Cape Town, Joffe often indulged guests with platters of whole baked fish, embellished with artichokes, asparagus, pickles and green mayo. ``We had the most amazing fish there,'' says Joffe, recalling her two favorites, ``steenbrass'' and ``kabeljoe.'' Her creamy green sauce was composed of dill and borage she grew in her garden.

In Cape Town, all Jewish businesses are closed for the holidays. ``Here it is more casual and everything is disposable. I still use my best china for the occasion because I have always had strong feelings for yontif,'' she says, using the yiddish word for holiday.

``My family feels it, too. What became our Cape Town tradition was to visit friends who were in the wine business and toast the New Year with a very special old bottle selected for the occasion.''

For Rosh Hashana, Joffe collaborates with her mother, Hilde Deutsch, who makes apple ``schalet'' and a German-inspired red cabbage dish that is adored for its sweetness and texture. Joffe also bakes kichel, a flat wavy cracker topped with chopped herring. The herring is Joffe's alternative to the prosaic Jewish gefilte fish.

Possibly the polyester of all fish, gefilte fish - chilled fish balls - is a classic American-Jewish dish originally eaten by Eastern European Jews on holidays and the sabbath. It can be whitefish, pike or haddock poached with sugar, onions and seasoning. Some type of fish is typically served at the head of the meal, having earned its place at the table as a symbol of fertility.

Rafael Halioua, owner of a Virginia Beach hair salon, and his wife Dinah will eat Moroccan-style at his mother's home. The meal is comprised of an elegant Moroccan lamb stew with white truffles, saffron and cinnamon bar; a soup with seven vegetables, challah and a variety of cold and warm salads.

Dinah will prepare a native Tunisian dish called ``pekila,'' made with fried spinach and navy beans. It's hardly a hit with her Moroccan in-laws.

``It's dreadful to them,'' says Dinah, ``that I serve something dark on such a happy occasion.''

In her Norfolk home, Farideh Goldin prepares Rosh Hashana meals according to her native custom, a full Iranian ``seder,'' the Hebrew term for ordered meal. ``We have apples and honey and the blessing over the challah. Then we eat eight other symbolic foods over which blessings are made,'' she says.

``The pomegranate is a symbol of the hope that our good deeds in the coming year will multiply like the seeds of the sweet fruit,'' Goldin says. She also makes many different rice dishes, known in Iran as ``polou,'' mixing in symbolic foods. On this occasion, she slices the sweet carrots in coin-like disks to represent prosperity for the coming year.

In an effort to blend cultures with her American-born husband, Norman, Goldin breaks Iranian tradition and prepares her mother-in-law's recipe for a corn-beef brisket glazed with honey, brown sugar and mustard.

Goldin says, the customary main meal in Iran consists of many rice dishes with vegetables, beans and nuts. ``We never have a big roast or large bird. It's only a small amount of meat or chicken on the side, if at all.''

Sonia Stein left her native France when she was 20. ``I was in charge of setting the table and making the platter look good,'' she says. ``I never cooked a thing until I got married and my mother-in-law taught me to put food on the platter.

``I remember Rosh Hashana as a time my mother went to a lot of effort to please my father and his family. She would buy a whole fresh carp, which was really a delicacy, to serve with the gefilte fish. The carp lived in the tub for days before served. To this day, I can't stand the sight of carp,'' Stein says.

Stein admits she doesn't follow her mother's approach. And the foods are heavier than she likes. It seems her family's palate is more American than European.

An exception is Passover, the spring Jewish holiday. That's when she returns to her mother's shepheardic customs, preparing couscous with butter and sticky pastries, fried and rolled in honey, figs and nuts. ``On Passover, I do it my way,'' she says.

In another home after much preparation and the meal is finished, Joan and Eric Joffe will call friends in Cape Town to wish them a happy New Year and ask an important question.

``What vintage did you pour?'' MEMO: Lisa Richmon is a freelance writer living in Virginia Beach. ILLUSTRATION: VICKI CRONIS COLOR PHOTOS/The Virginian-Pilot

For the holidays, Diana Halioua of Virginia Beach...

Photo

VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot

Virginia Beach resident Joan Joffe prepares chopped herring with

chives for her holiday meal.

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