Created 02 Dec 2018  

Abi Gezunt (As Long As You Are Healthy)

Life was never easy for Tanta Yetta. Her first husband, Hershel Krafchenko, was apprehended and crucified by anti-Semites in Russia when she was pregnant with their first child, Harry Kraff.

In America she met and married Max Blum. Max was a widower with three children. Their sons, Max's son and Yetta's son were both named Harry. Both boys were eight years old. Harry Kraff was academically talented. He dreamt about learning to fly. He built beautiful model airplanes from balsa wood, covered with tissue paper. They were works of art. He went to Hebrew school and became Bar Mitzvah.

Harry Blum was the opposite. He was not academic. His father had him working in the junkyard from the time he was a small boy. He grew strong as a bull. Max did not urge his Harry to attend Hebrew school. He did not have a Bar Mitzvah. The two boys were always fighting. The years passed, the boys grew up, and went into the army. The two girls married and then there was only Teddy, Max and Yetta's son that they had together.

Max, Yetta, and Teddy moved to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. In those days Stroudsburg was a small picturesque town in the northern Pennsylvania mountains. There was only one synagogue in town and no kosher butcher. Tanta Yetta had to telephone the kosher butcher in Scranton to order her meat. The Greyhound bus brought the meat to Stroudsburg. Only Aunt Yetta got kosher meat a la Greyhound.

I adored my Aunt Yetta. When I was a child, I would visit her for a week in the summer. She was the world's best baker. I have never tasted cookies as good as the ones she baked. She made pinwheel cookies and chocolate-chip cookies, my all time favorites.

Aunt Yetta taught me to make grilled cheese sandwiches from Velveeta cheese. Not even a New York deli could make pickles as delicious as Aunt Yetta's pickles.

Talking about cookies reminds me of another story. It was 1947. My older sister Matya (Matilda) and her husband Mordy (Mordechai) were moving to Israel to help build a Jewish state. In those days you took a boat across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean Sea.

Aunt Yetta remembered how seasick she was when she crossed the Atlantic coming from Europe to America. She felt like she would die. She wanted to save Matya from that pain. Yetta was convinced that garlic could drive away seasickness. She told Matya to string a couple of cloves of garlic on a string and to wear it like a necklace. Matya would not listen. Yetta tried to slip some garlic into Matya's trunks. Matya found the cloves and threw them away.

Just before they boarded the boat, Yetta gave them a huge can filled with her famous chocolate-chip cookies. On the first day at sea, Matya opened the can and smelled garlic. The cookies reeked of garlic! Yetta had added garlic chips to her famous recipe. Matya told me they never got seasick. Maybe garlic works.