Charlotte Jewish News Nov 2026 | Page 35

The Turkey Stays. So Does the Kugel.

By Elizabeth Johnson
Turkey may get top billing, but anyone who has spent enough time at a Thanksgiving table knows the supporting cast is where the loyalties lie.
Every year, without fail, my brother Keith announces his profound disdain for turkey and begins lobbying for my mother’ s standing rib roast instead, cooked to perfection beneath an anchovy-and-rosemary rub with an obscene number of chopped garlic cloves. In a rare show of sibling solidarity, my sister and I enthusiastically join his campaign.
And every year, my mother, a stickler for tradition, overrules us. Thanksgiving means turkey. As such, like clockwork, a 16-pound organic bird from a farm somewhere lovely in upstate New York arrives. This is the curious thing about Thanksgiving. For a holiday with a fairly predictable gastronomic lineup, every family member seems to have at least one dish whose absence would constitute an egregious act of betrayal.
But within those fiercely guarded traditions, Jewish families have always left considerable room for interpretation. Brisket occasionally muscles its way onto the menu. Kugel, sweet or savory, noodle or potato, settles beside the sweet potatoes as if this was always its intended destination. Latkes? A tad early for the season, but yes, please. And really, why ever not?
Challah makes superb stuffing. The rich, eggy bread drinks
Theodore Breyer takes his carving duties seriously last Thanksgiving. Requests for beef were again denied. up the stock while the pieces poking out of the pan turn crisp and deeply browned. Kugel requires even less defense. It arrives hot and substantial, with that irresistible golden crust, and tastes even better when eaten standing at the kitchen counter a couple of hours after dinner.
Bonus points if two relatives disagree about whose mother made it correctly. Then there are the dishes with no obvious Jewish provenance whatsoever, but which have nevertheless achieved sacred status. The green bean casserole, held together by a can of something creamy and crowned with crispy onions, was inherited from someone down the line.
Canned cranberry sauce, ours spooned haphazardly into a Waterford serving dish with an antique silver spoon. Lipstick on a pig, Thanksgiving style. And my father insists on it every year. Once, I made cranberry sauce from scratch, which, let the record show, was delicious. His verdict: no dice. A pie recipe clipped from a magazine 30 years ago that no one is permitted to improve. Unless you are mother who once( and never again) swapped the corn syrup in her pecan pie for agave. No one touched it. Lesson learned.
Charlotte Thanksgiving tables are particularly ripe territory for this sort of culinary collision. So many of us arrived here from somewhere else, bringing family recipes along with us. New York and New Jersey, South Africa and South America, Israel, Eastern Europe, the Midwest and the American South all have a way of meeting eventually over dinner.
Give it enough time and cornbread dressing shares real estate with kugel, schmaltz will find its way into the stuffing, countless dishes are garnished with pomegranate seeds, and no one finds any of this remotely unusual. Which is precisely how family food traditions become anchored
The Charlotte Jewish News- November 2026- Page 35
and take hold for generations. Somebody puts something on the table. Everybody eats it. Years pass. And somewhere along the way, the dish becomes nonnegotiable.
Which brings us back to the turkey. Keith will object. We will support him. My mother will listen impatiently to our annual appeal for that magnificent, aggressively garlicked beef. And then she will serve the bird.

Three Years On: Grief, Resilience, and Joy

My father will ceremoniously carve it with his beloved electric knife, asking enthusiastically to deafening silence who wants the drumstick. None of us, Dad. We will eat the turkey because we appreciate our mother’ s loving hours spent in the kitchen and know when we’ ve lost. But we will return next November with the same proposal. And whoever brought the kugel, leave the pan.
Fighting antisemitism, day in and day out, hearing directly from families affected by bigotry, is not easy. Often, when I talk to people about my work, they ask me what gives me hope. But that’ s not a hard question. I always come back to the same answer.
I say that we are a people of miracles. After everything the Jewish people have endured, we still show up for one another, still ask hard questions, and still search for a way forward. We are still here, arguing and worrying-- and also thriving and creating. That should give us all hope.
And it’ s what comes to mind as we mark the third anniversary of October 7, 2023.
While antisemitism may have receded from daily headlines, for many Jewish families and communities, it has become a constant calculation in their daily lives. A parent decides each morning whether their son wears a baseball cap to cover his yarmulke on the way to school. A college student weighs whether a Star of David necklace is worth the look it might draw in a study group. A family thinks twice before
mentioning an upcoming trip to Israel at a dinner party.
These are all decisions that Jewish people make just to get through an ordinary week, decisions that three years ago most of us didn’ t think twice about. The unfortunate reality is the decisions are not based on a misplaced fear. The record makes that painfully clear.
Last year, 2025 was the deadliest year for antisemitic violence against Jews outside Israel in more than three decades, worse than any year since 1994. Fifteen people were murdered at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. Two people were killed outside of a synagogue in Manchester, England on Yom Kippur. A young couple was killed outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. An elderly woman burned to death in a park in Boulder, Colorado. These were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors, and above all, they were people who should still be with us today.
Yet none of this tragedy feels entirely unfamiliar to our people.
Jewish communities endured the unimaginable – conversions, enslavement, expulsions, inquisitions, pogroms, farhuds, and worse. And yet, despite the pain and persecution, we always have held our heads high. Through it all, we’ ve sustained ourselves with the hope that something sweeter lay around the corner.
Such hope is not a passive exercise. Our continuity is not preordained. Our survival is the result of a continuous process of choosing, again and again, to build a resilient Jewish life.
It’ s lighting candles, gathering for holidays, sending our children to day school. It’ s wrapping tefillin, buying Israel bonds, erecting a sukkah, or playing in a JCC basketball league. We make the choice, in ways large and small, to keep moving forward, from generation to generation.
Three years on from October 7, this resilience burns brightly, an unmistakable light that illuminates our world despite the palpable grief. Synagogues that once worried about shrinking attendance are packed again for holidays and simchas. Enrollment in Jewish camps continues
to grow. Young people who last October 7 were Hamas’ hostages are now getting married, launching their careers, and embracing life. Joy and hardship are living side by side.
Make no mistake: resilience is an active pursuit. It is not just withstanding the bad things the world throws at us. It’ s about fighting back.
For instance, in California, a coalition of more than 70 organizations, including ADL, helped pass legislation that gives Jewish K-12 students greater protections against antisemitism in schools. We’ re seeing momentum in Congress to pass the SA- CRED Act, a bipartisan bill that would create safe zones around every place of worship in the country to prevent agitators from targeting congregants as they enter or exit a building. Four states and New York City already have passed similar laws or enacted comparable local protections.
We also launched a network of law firms to provide free legal assistance to victims of antisemitism, no matter who or where they are in the U. S.
Three years after 10 / 7, we are
still mourning. But we also are rebuilding. We are fighting back. We are not allowing those who hate us to define us. And we are proclaiming loudly and without fear, Am Yisrael Chai.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of ADL( Anti-Defamation League) By Jonathan Greenblatt