Even at 90 years old, Anat Bernstein’s mother Rivka, who goes by Becky, is the head cook in the family for the holidays and special occasions. “She comes to my house and helps me. She is the chef and I am the sous chef,” Anat explains. “She gives the final touch — the drop of god.” 

Many of the recipes Becky makes are from Turkey, where she lived until she was a teenager. She came to Israel with her father Moshe Levy when she was 14 for a summer with her friends and ultimately convinced her parents to let her move there on her own. Two years earlier, Anat’s father Shlomo, who went by Momo, had moved from Turkey to Israel, also at 14. 

They knew one another from Istanbul and sought each other out in their new home. Three years later, they were married. Despite coming from a well-to-do family, Becky was too proud to take money from her parents. The couple lived in poverty, Anat shares, in the garage of a home in Jerusalem without a shower or an indoor bathroom, but they built a life together. And when Anat was 10, the family moved into an apartment in Kfar Saba, near the center of the country. 

Busy with her work as a nurse and a job in fashion, her mother stretched the dishes she cooked on Friday like stuffed zucchini and peppers or a bean dish called piyaz through the week, and on the following Friday, she would prepare something new — it’s a practice Anat has adopted as well. “When I was young, there was a pot on the stove and everyone ate from this pot — you couldn’t say ‘I don’t want it,’” Anat shares.

Still, Becky found time to make her own jams from roses and apples, which are part of the family’s Yom Kippur break-fast tradition along with Turkish coffee, bread that’s dipped into olive oil, and several varieties of cookies. Leading up to the holiday, Becky would seek out roses for the jam, asking people she knew to pick them for her as well. “Everyone takes one spoon of jelly and says: ‘let’s have a sweet year and a good year,’” Anat shares. It’s a way of blessing one another.  

When she was 10-years-old in 1973 and the Yom Kippur War broke out, the family spent the holiday in a shelter. Her dad returned from his job at the hospital to the family in the shelter and Anat remembers her mother giving him jam on a spoon as a wish for a sweet year, and praying that the war would end. 

When Anat’s father passed away, she took over the hosting responsibilities for the gathering, keeping her mother’s menu. Becky is still the one who makes the jam though. It’s hard to buy the rose petals she likes, so Anat grows them in her garden and the moment they are ready, she picks and freezes them for her mother, who made this year’s batch in late September. 

Two years ago, Becky’s granddaughter, writer Maya Oren, who helped us gather her family recipes, was visiting Israel in the fall. It was the first time she was able to join the family for break-fast. “It was really special,” Maya says. 

Anat says her grandchildren in particular look forward to the meal of sweets at the end of the holiday. “Everyone is waiting all year long for that meal,” she adds.