A Night at Lewando’s: The Book Launch of The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook: Garden-Fresh Recipes Rediscovered and Adapted for Today’s Kitchen | From the YIVO Archives

In 1938, Fania Lewando, the proprietor of a popular vegetarian restaurant in Vilna, published a Yiddish vegetarian cookbook including 400 recipes, impassioned essays about the benefits of vegetarianism, and lush full-color drawings of vegetables and fruit. Enchanted by the book, YIVO commissioned a translation, making Lewando's charming, delicious, and practical recipes available to a contemporary audience.

On June 2, YIVO officially celebrated the publication of The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook, published by Schocken Books on May 26. The book is translated from the Yiddish by Eve Jochnowitz, and includes a foreword by Joan Nathan. The original Yiddish edition of Vegetarish-Dietisher Kokhbukh: 400 Shpeizn Gemakht Oysshlislekh fun Grinsn (Vegetarian-Dietetic Cookbook: 400 Recipes Made Exclusively from Vegetables) can be found in the YIVO Library, to which it was donated by Pessl Beckler-Stern and Hank Stern. The translation was sponsored by Ruth and David Levine.

The evening included tastings from the cookbook, prepared by The Gefilteria in collaboration with the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts, and live music performed by Frank London and Lorin Sklamberg of The Klezmatics.                                                                    All photos by Ben Asen.