arts & culture
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
T his year, Beth David Reform
Congregation wanted to ring in the
new year a little diff erently than with just
apples and honey.

Last week, members of the Gladwyne
synagogue made and canned 300 jars
of Tunisian pumpkin jam, a spin on a
Sephardi dish, to be distributed to con-
gregants. Th e project used 75 pounds of
pumpkin. Originally, synagogue leadership
wanted to give the nonedible gift of a can
opener to congregants within their High
Holidays gift bags — a representation of
the reopening of society aft er COVID
restrictions and the opening of one’s
heart during the month of Elul.

But now equipped with can openers,
congregants then needed cans to open.

Rabbi Beth Kalisch tapped synagogue
Vice President Jane Horwitz, an experi-
enced canner, to conjure up an additional
sweet treat to the requisite honey.

Along with Cantor Lauren Goodlev and
Educational Director Rabbi Elisa Koppel,
Kalisch and Horwitz decided on pumpkin
jam, also called ma’ jun kra, which uses
ingredients common in North Africa and
Sephardic cooking. In addition to repre-
senting a sweet new year, the jam would
be an opportunity for the synagogue to
expose congregants to diff erent types of
Judaism beyond the AsŠ enazi default.

“In our eff ort to stay connected and
do things together, why buy something
when we can sort of have an activity and
get people connected in making the jam
together?” Goodlev said.

Horwitz got to work. First came the
recipe selection and testing. Using but-
ternut squash from her garden, Horwitz
tweaked recipes, adding orange juice to
acidify it, which would enhance
the fl avor of the sweet and
smooth pumpkin, and apple,
which is high in pectin, the nat-
ural thickening agent that adds
glossiness and mouthfeel.

As she did the math on how
much jam she would need
to make, it was clear that the
squash from Horwitz’s garden
Over fi ve days, Jane Horwitz and her
wasn’t going to cut it. She picked
team canned 300 4-ounce jars of
up crates of pumpkins. She
pumpkin jam.

bought additional ingredients,
too: 50 pounds of sugar, vanilla bean ning pots in tow; many had been passed
paste — diff erent from extract — and down for generations.

rose essence to perfume the jam.

Over the next fi ve days, the team
Next came the spreadsheet, a meticu- churned out four batches of jam a day,
lous timeline and delegation of tasks for with some peeling and chopping pump-
those who signed up to help Horwitz, a kins, others stirring jam pots, others still
group of nine, many of whom had pre- boiling and sealing jars and Horwitz’s
vious canning experience. Th e jammers husband dutifully cleaning the kitchen
showed up at Horwitz’s house with can- each night.

“Th ere was jam schmutz all over my
kitchen!” Horwitz said. “Jam was every-
where ... the sweetest thing is there’s no
more sweetness on the walls of my kitchen.”
It wasn’t all about the destination,
however. Jam-making is a meditative
and refl ective process. Sometimes, you
don’t have a choice but to stand over a pot
and stir for hours.

“It made me slow down and focus,”
Horwitz said. “Doing this preservation of
food on such a huge scale was, for me, the
closure to the year.”
Ending an arduous project has its
rewards, too. Aft er distributing the jam
jars to congregants, Horwitz planned
to donate left over jam to Bethel AME
Church in Ardmore, hoping it will lead
to other opportunities for partnership.

Horwitz isn’t interested in another
large-scale jam-making project for a
while, but the activity laid the blueprint
for congregants to reconvene aft er a cou-
ple of years of distance and be creative
in programming moving forward to
accommodate a diverse community.

“If the pandemic taught us anything,
it’s the metaphor of throwing spaghetti
on the wall and seeing what sticks,”
Goodlev said. “I guess if you throw jam
on the wall, a lot of that is going to stick,
too.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com 24
SEPTEMBER 29, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Courtesy of Jane Horwitz
Synagogue Hopes For Jam-packed
Sweet New Year