Wartime Diaries
Episode 70
Soul Food
- 58:03
- 2021
While we (sadly!) won't be sampling fried okra, collard greens or macaroni and cheese, our seventieth episode introduces us to two women for whom soul and food are completely intertwined.
While “soul food” has come to mean a specific type of cuisine, for the women we encounter in today’s episode, there is no soul without food. Food has gotten them through marriages and divorces, it has been with them as they crossed oceans and continents, it has comforted them in times of pain and anchored them in moments of joy.
Prologue: Sol Food
Mishy joins his 18-month-old niece, Sol, for dinner. He tries, with partial success, to find out what her favorite food is.
Act I: Seoul Food
If there’s one thing Bung-Ja Ziporah Kim Rothkopf loves to discuss, it’s food. “I can leave my land,” she says, “I can leave my family. But I could never leave my food.” It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that she is the woman behind KOKO, and the owner of Seoul House – a kosher Korean restaurant in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City. But what Yochai Maital initially thought would be a sweet and curious culinary tale of fermented kimchi, quickly turned out to be an international saga that touches upon questions of fate, trauma and identity
Act II: Sole Food
For some people, such as Tali Aronsky, life is a meal: It starts off with exciting little tastes, it progresses to heavy dishes and main courses, and it’s ultimately resolved with the sweet flavor of wanting more. So how can chicken drumsticks, kubeh soup, hard boiled eggs, lamb biryani and lahme bi ajeen tell a story of love, loss, despair, hope and finally freedom? Zev Levi treats us to an unusual seven course “meal of life.”
Credits
Yochai Maital and Zev Levi scored and sound-designed the episode with original music and music from Blue Dot Sessions. Sela Waisblum created the mix. Thanks to Niva Ashkenazi, Oren Harman, Dalia Weil, Erwin Prabhu, Wayne Hoffman, Esther Werdiger, Sheila Lambert, Erica Frederick, Jeff Feig and Joy Levitt.
The end song, ABCD, is sung by Shaizee, Abie and Sol Harman.
