film screening
Fania's World of Flavors, Smells, and Colors - In-person Program
The documentary Fania’s World of Flavors, Smells, and Colors tells the story of Fania Lewando, a Polish Jewish woman born in 1886 in Kowal. Before World War II, she ran the popular Dietojarska Jadlodajnia in Vilnius, where she served vegetarian specialties rooted in Ashkenazi cuisine. She combined unusual flavors with a focus on healthy cooking, believing that a meat-free diet rich in vitamins was essential to good health. Her culinary talents became widely known and admired, attracting prominent visitors, including the young and then little-known Marc Chagall.
Lewando was also the only woman invited to serve as a chef aboard the Polish ocean liner M/S Batory, where she prepared kosher meals for the ship’s passengers. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, she published a cookbook in Yiddish and Polish editions featuring 400 vegetarian recipes.
Tragically, the outbreak of the war brought Lewando’s international career to an abrupt end. In 1941, Fania Lewando and her husband perished, and her cookbook was lost amid the chaos of the war. Decades later, a copy was unexpectedly discovered at an antiquarian book fair. Translated into English by YIVO in New York, the cookbook became a bestseller and has since been published in Lithuanian, Polish, and Czech.
Join us for the New York premiere of this documentary followed by a Q&A with director Andrzej Ciecierski, moderated by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.
Buy Fania Lewando’s The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook.
Ticket Info: $15; YIVO members, American Friends of POLIN Museum supporters, & students: $10
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film screening
film screening
Immigrant Songs: Yiddish Theater and the American Jewish Experience - In-person Program
Join us for the New York premiere of Immigrant Songs: Yiddish Theater and the American Jewish Experience, directed by Jeff Janeczko. This documentary traces the arc of Yiddish theater from its origins in Eastern Europe under pioneering figures like Avrom Goldfaden and Boris Thomashefsky, through its golden age in the 1920s and 1930s on Manhattan’s Second Avenue, to its mid-century decline and remarkable modern revival—culminating in the celebrated 2018 production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish (Fidler afn Dakh). Through archival footage, original music by Frank London, and testimony from more than 20 leading scholars and performers, the film illuminates a world that was at once deeply rooted in Eastern European Jewish culture and transformative in its encounter with American life.
Ticket Info: $15; YIVO members and students: $10
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film screening
