“We used to joke that we felt like werewolves,” Atara Bernstein says about growing up in an Orthodox home in Baltimore. “It was kind of like living this double life,” split between the religious and secular worlds. At the end of the day, when her father walked in the door, he would put on his kippah.  

Shabbat was “really where our story and heritage came out,” Atara explains. On Wednesdays, her mother Dina embarked on a three-day extravaganza of cooking and freezing for the meals ahead. “I love the fact that every single weekend my family would basically prepare a Thanksgiving meal and then some,” she adds. 

If they were hosting guests, Dina would make seven or eight different dishes like chicken soup, cholent, brisket, and other classics of the Ashkenazi culinary canon including mandel bread (or mandelbrot) which they ate for Saturday breakfast. A staple of the lineup was meatballs, studded with sauteed onions, simmered in marinara sauce, and served with challah. 

No one is sure where the recipe originated, but it was a signature of Dina’s mother Frances, a first generation American whose family came from Poland around 1920. She made the meatballs every week for what she called forshpayz, meaning appetizers in Yiddish. “Shabbat will always be associated with the commingled smell of cooking meatballs and chicken soup,” Dina explains. She still remembers her mother teaching the recipe to her high school home economics class. Atara learned it — and how to cook generally — by watching her mother prepare for Shabbat every week. 

Today, Atara lives in a more secular home in the Hudson Valley, but she still hosts Shabbat dinners on some Fridays. “Now that I’m in my early 30s, I’m definitely seeking more spiritual connection, more rituals,” she says. As the co-founder of the Pineapple Collaborative, which sells artisanal products and hosts food-focused events, her Shabbat cooking style is quite different from her mom’s. Atara prefers to balance provisions and bottles of wine she sources from her favorite local purveyors with two to three homemade dishes like the family meatballs and mandel bread, which she now makes with Pineapple’s olive oil and sea salt for a sweet and savory finish. 

Reflecting on Shabbat, she adds: “Friday night for me has a special place in my heart…. There’s just something so festive about Shabbat candles flickering.”