When Ruth Stulman was growing up in Rabat, along Morocco’s Atlantic coast, the end of Passover was celebrated with the entire neighborhood. Ruth would run from one house to the next greeting neighbors saying "terbah" (from terbah u’tissad), an Arabic felicitation to wish one luck and success. Tables were dressed with crepes called mufleta accompanied with honey and butter, cookies made with walnuts or pistachios perfumed with rosewater, dates with marzipan, and couscous infused with milk and cinnamon. “You have to take something at every house,” Ruth explains.

The celebration, called Mimouna, has Moroccan origins but is observed in other North African Jewish communities and in Israel. “Mimouna happens to be on the last day of Pesach, because that’s when the Jews crossed the sea,” Ruth adds. “It’s a moment of celebration and freedom.”

In Morocco the Jewish population was quarter million strong and everyone joined in the Mimouna celebration, but when Ruth’s family moved to the U.S. in the early 1970s they stood out in a community of mostly Ashkenazi Jews. Still, her mother Perla kept the tradition going, opening her doors, welcoming neighbors, members of their new synagogue, and friends to the party.

By the time Perla's grandson Gabriel was 12, Ruth had taken over the family’s Mimouna celebration, hosting it in their Fairfax, Virginia home. Gabriel, who owns and operates a collection of hip, neighborhood restaurants in Manhattan (including one named Fairfax) recalls: “We did our best to keep my mother’s traditions and customs alive without having the community around.”

This year they will bring them to a Mimouna party we’re co-hosting at Fairfax restaurant (if you can’t make it, you can still try Ruth’s recipes). As for Ruth’s friends in Virginia, she says: “I have to tell them, ‘Guess what? No Mimouna [this year]. I’m going to be in New York.” Thinking it through, she decides she’ll host a belated celebration in her home — making sure no one is left without mufleta.