Meat on a plate. The Christians call it something else, but they make the same dish. But they don’t call it meat on plate. They used to laugh at us (about) meat on a tray. Meat with parsley and onion and spices. Underneath (there was) potato, sliced potato…meat and we make kebbe or patties…or we would put it on the potatoes. And then above it potato and tomato on top. The…sauce…water…we would put a lot of spice. Spice and…not hot (spicy). Not hot. Spices. Spice and salt and a little lemon. And they’d try one each. That’s meat on a plate. That’s a thing that Christians and Muslims don’t call meat on a plate, but they do make it. This is…lahmajin and kebbe. Kebbe Nablusiye mostly, or kibbe on a tray. Jews…rice and lemon. Rice and lemon. Rice…and the lemon…kubba hamusta. Celery, parsley…celery and garlic, lemon…and they put inside it a head of meat. Meat, but with…semolina…we don’t do that. Semolina. Rice and lemon and kebbe every Friday. Every Friday. On Sunday (we’d eat) grilled meat. On Monday we had a washerwoman…we didn’t have a machine. The washerwoman came on Mondays. Rice and white beans. On Tuesday…we’d make…if we made meat we’d make it. If not, hummus and vegetables. Hummus and vegetables. And things with eggs. On Wednesday, also laban. If we say laban, we’d eat laban, we’d eat medyas. On Thursday, everyone made mjaddara. With laban. Why? Because they were waiting for…the slaughter on Thursday. We’d eat laban with mjaddara. And on Friday (we’d eat) rice with lemon and kibbe. On Saturday (we’d eat) hamin or a thing they’d called “kraya” - basically pasta with chicken or with pasta with meat. And in front of it, stuffed zucchini. They’d make stuffed zucchini or kebabs…kebabs, as in kibbe…kibbe basha…kibbe with…just kibbe. But not fried; baked. Baked. That’s it.

Most of the Jews in Beirut were of Damascene origin. The dialect…they exaggerate their speech. They sing a bit. From the speech, people would know…they would say to us, “what, are you from Damascus?”. It wasn’t similar to the Christian or Muslim dialect. They would know we were Jewish. When I was…studying at Lycee, the accounting Baccalaureate, the […]… The boys and girls would hear us talking. We would say “mu” (‘not’) and (they would say) “shu muu?” (what do you mean, ‘muu?’) (In Lebanon, the general word for ‘not’ is ‘mish’, while ‘muu’ is associated with Syria). “What is this?”. (We would say) “ma hek?”, but they would say “mā heyk?”. And we would say “muu”. So in Damascus, they would say it like this. So that they wouldn’t understand us, the non-Jews, we would insert some Hebrew words. When…someone would come, they would say to my mother “Gracia…shahor (‘black’ in Hebrew)”. As in, “make me coffee”. Or, there was no need for her to tell me. She would wink at me to make coffee. “Take out the atan (‘small boy’ in Hebrew)”. So that the young boy wouldn’t understand the family, they would say to us “look after the atan. The young boy. Take care of the atan.” But I want to tell you a cute story about the case of (the Hebrew word) shahor. Mshahar (Hebrew word with Arabic grammar). This word…they don’t know what it means, the Muslims. They don’t have this word. What does mshahar mean? Black. Boom. They wouldn’t say boom. They’d say atil. We would say “this is a boom”. Or in the presence of (others), “shaˁi this mshahar.” Shaˁi. Shaˁi means “look!”. “Look at this mshahar, what he’s doing!”. “Obi!”. “Obi!” means “look!”. “Obi at the non-Jew!”. That means ‘look at the non-Jew a bit!”. “Obi!”…means “look!”. I don’t know. That’s what we would say. “Shaˁi at this mshahar!”. Non-Jew…Christians…we would call ‘ˁarel’ (‘uncircumcised’ in Hebrew). I mean, when we were sitting in front of them, we didn’t want them to hear. We would be careful and say “this person is an ˁarel” or “this person is a goy”. Goy means ‘Muslim’ (in Hebrew, ‘goy’ means any non-Jew). I don’t know…(why it only means ‘Muslim’ in the Beiruti Jewish dialect). Be careful. ‘Be careful’ is…everyone knows it. They would prepare themselves before going out in the neighbourhood if they wanted to talk. “Take care, that’s a goy” (would be said) so that someone wouldn’t blurt out any words (that shouldn’t be said around non-Jews). My sister told me that in Brooklyn a boy was born in…I don’t know which family. A boy was born, and normally the father of the groom…his name is given to the child. They name the firstborn boy after the father of the child’s father. The boy was born, Jamil arrived…his (the grandfather’s) name was Jamil. (People said) “Wow, a boy was born! Let’s name him Jamil!”. Automatically, they name (the child) after the father’s father. But the married couple didn’t want to name him (Jamil). Oh! What happened? How can this be? How should they prepare the father (of the father of the newborn) that they wouldn’t give the (baby boy) his name? They spoke and so on, and worked out that they didn’t want to call their son Jamil. After the wedding, after the circumcision cermony, what did she (the mother) name him? Shahar. Shahar! (It sounds like) Mshahar! Couldn’t you find a different name!? You couldn’t find a different name? There’s no […] here. Because it’s close to the word shahor. Also the word…there was the Aleppine, sewwi sewwi. We…we weren’t Aleppine. We speak like Damascenes. But there were Aleppines. So a mixture was formed…an unbelievable sight. An Aleppine thing…the most of the mix was with French. That’s the difference between us and the Muslims. Meaning three languages from the age of three? A mixture. And now also, the Arabs here mix Hebrew and…together.

We would…on Passover we would bring only…I mean, we would drink milk only. But not…we wouldn’t do anything else. We would not eat fish. Why? Because they would catch fish using a piece of bread (as bait). We would not eat chicken because a month or week beforehand, I don’t know, they would have to stop giving it wheat. Hametz. Chickpeas…on Passover, we would roast. We would buy…seeds, and figs and seeds and pistachios and almonds and whatever you want. (We would buy it) raw and roast it at home. The salt and sugar, all that would be in the kosher method. How did they make matza? The rabbi would go to an oven…in an oven that he cooked bread in. He would go and make it kosher. Meaning he would activate it for no reason so that they would be able to bring the dough for matza. And they would make it there directly […]. They would make a big ball of dough like the saj (griddle) of the Druze. As they do on the saj it comes out soft, but in the oven the matza comes out hard so that there would be no fermentation. Over a period of 3-4 days, he would make matza only so that the whole community would be able to buy matza. Then there would roasting too. In order for them to roast the pistachio and almond and such, they would go to the seller and over a period of 2-3 days he wouldn’t do the […]. But there were many who wouldn’t buy from the…and make it. Why? When it wasn’t Passover, one day people my family knew heard that the owner of the shop (was saying) “bring me that shahmeh. Bring it to me!”. Even the pistachio and almond would be glistening (from the fat)! And what is a shahmeh? It’s a lump of grease. It was glistening, and ya habibe (sarcastic celebration) about the kashrut (the owner was disregarding the Jewish dietary laws). Ya habibe! Everything, everything we would make at home. We would make kaak, maamoul…there was no oven.