The Council of Wise Women by Izzy Abrahmson

Author:Izzy Abrahmson [Abrahmson, Izzy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781940060651
Publisher: Izzy Abrahmson

28

CABBAGED

“The Winter of the Cabbage” was how they referred to it years later. Someone would wonder when a certain event occurred and the answer would come, “Oh, that was during The Winter of the Cabbage.” For a moment they would savor this thought as if it was a fond and nostalgic memory, and then both the listener and the teller would queasily shudder.

They called it The Winter of the Cabbage because cabbage was all they had to eat.

There were no potatoes, no carrots, no turnips. There were no chickens. No parsnips, no rutabagas, no onions, no garlic, no parsnip, no sweet potatoes, and no dried beans. There was cabbage and only cabbage and plenty of cabbage. It had been a bumper cabbage harvest that year. Reb Cantor the merchant had an entire warehouse filled with cabbage that he had been planning to export to Miami, but, because all the other winter vegetables were ingredients that had been used in The Soup to heal Smyrna, the only thing left for the Chelmener to eat were the cabbages.

So they ate cabbage.

They had cabbage for breakfast, cabbage for lunch, and cabbage for dinner. They ate it baked, boiled, fried, rolled, and stuffed. What did they stuff it with? They stuffed it with cabbage.

Reb Stein, the baker, devised a way to dry cabbage out, turn it into a fine powder, and bake it into a flat bread he called “kroit krackers.” Nobody much liked it, but with enough butter or schmaltz they claimed it tasted at least as good as stale matzah on the last day of Passover. Not that they had much butter or schmaltz. But you could dream…

The children were miserable. For that matter, the adults were miserable too. Reb Cantor offered a prize of fifty cabbages for the first person who could make a decent tasting cabbage cake for dessert but there was no winner, only many many many failures.

Esther Gold devised a way to make cabbage pops that looked like lollipops. They were round, translucent, stuck on a stick, and came in many different colors. But they still tasted like, you guessed it, cabbage.

Reb Shikker devised a cabbage vodka called “vod” that was both potent and brutal. If you drank too much, your head felt like a cabbage. Fortunately, it was difficult to choke down more than a sip or two.

In her restaurant, Mrs. Chaipul served cabbage sandwiches, cabbage tea, cabbage coffee, and cabbage soup with cabbage dumplings and cabbage balls.

The villagers of Chelm ate Cabbage until it was coming out of their ears (and everywhere else).

When Rabbi Abrahms traveled to Smyrna for his fifth interview for the position of chief rabbi, the synagogue elders sniffed as he walked into the room.

“Do you smell cabbage?” sniffed Reb Zalman, the fishmonger.

Rabbi Abrahms shuddered and answered them truthfully. “I couldn’t smell a cabbage right now if you stuffed one up my nose.”

It was a strange answer, but it must have been the right one because they offered him the position of Chief Rabbi in Smyrna for a trial period of six months.

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