Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die! – Isaiah 22:13
In the kitchen of her Highland Park home, Jessica Weiner twists thick strands of dough laced with ribbons of butter, sugar and cinnamon into a glistening loaf. Soon she’ll top it with more of the same before sliding it into her oven.
Weiner is making cinnamon babka – a rich yeast bread with sweet, swirling layers popular in Eastern European and Jewish bakeries. She’s baked 75 loaves so far, cramming them into every inch of freezer space she and a friend can spare.
“I call the topping a widow maker,” she jokes. “It’s all butter and sugar.”
Across town in St. Elmo, another kitchen clangs with preparation. Vicki Lewis is working on something more savory but just as ambitious: a feast of chicken liver pâté. On her gas stove, onions sizzle in a skillet, releasing a cloud of fragrant steam. In a nearby pot, several pounds of chicken livers boil furiously, softening before she blends them with salt, pepper, eggs and her secret weapon – mayonnaise.
“I have to make enough pâté for a thousand people,” she huffs, dabbing at the tiny beads of sweat the rising steam has coaxed to her forehead.
Meanwhile, high on Signal Mountain, Cori Cohen – an occupational therapist and expectant mother – stirs butter and brown sugar together in a bubbling pot. She’s making chocolate toffee matzah, a layered treat of crisp unleavened bread, golden caramel and melted Nestlé chocolate.
The matzah, a Passover staple, recalls the Jewish exodus from Egypt – but Cohen’s twist transforms it into something decadent.
At the round dining table nearby, her 3-year-old son eats lunch, the noontime sunlight catching his brown curls and giving them a golden halo that matches the bubbling toffee.
“He loves helping,” Cohen smiles. “He thinks the brown sugar is sand.”
Like Weiner and Lewis, Cohen has been making enough of her dish to serve a thousand mouths. She cooks whenever she can – often during her son’s naps.
Together, these three women are among nearly 20 local Jewish cooks preparing the 19 homemade dishes that will be served at Chattanooga’s annual Nosh-a-Nooga Jewish Food Festival, returning Sunday, Sept. 7, noon-2 p.m. at the Waterhouse Pavilion and Miller Park. (Nosh means “small bite” in Yiddish.)
But Nosh-a-Nooga isn’t just about food. As guests will discover, it’s also about heritage and resilience – an invitation to learn about Jewish history and culture, to connect with others through tradition, and to celebrate identity in the face of challenge.
Or, as Cohen puts it: “It’s difficult to be Jewish in the world – let alone America – but food brings us together.”
Sweet tradition
There’s a famous “Seinfeld” episode about babka – and Weiner still laughs when she talks about it.
“They go to a bakery because they have to bring something to their friends’ house, and they decide they want to bring a chocolate babka,” she says, leaning across her kitchen island. “But the person in line ahead of them takes the last chocolate one, and they only have the cinnamon. And they call it ‘the other babka.’”
Weiner gestures toward the loaf cooling on her counter and smiles.
“This is cinnamon babka,” she says unapologetically. “There’s nothing ‘other’ about it.”
Babka traces its roots to the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. Traditionally, home bakers would take leftover challah dough, spread it with fruit preserves or chocolate, roll it up and bake it – creating a sweet, swirled bread meant to stretch ingredients and minimize waste.
When Jewish immigrants brought the recipe to America, it evolved into the richer, more decadent version known today, often layered with chocolate, cinnamon, or nut fillings and topped with streusel.
Making babka is a two-day process that Weiner approaches with precision. She starts by mixing flour, sugar, yeast and other ingredients into a soft dough and letting it rest before refrigerating it overnight.
The next day, she rolls it out into a large rectangle and “schmears” it with a buttery cinnamon filling.
After that, she rolls the dough into a log, freezes it briefly to make it easier to handle and then slices down the middle to reveal its signature stripes. Finally, she leaves it to rise again and then adds “the widow maker” before baking to perfection.
For Weiner, whose parents are Eastern European Jews, baking babka is as much about connection as it is flavor.
“Jewish cooking is not just about sustenance,” she says. “If you reflect on Jewish history, Jews have been expelled from many different countries. Food is tied to our holidays and rituals – but also our survival. It carries our story.”
Those traditions live on in Weiner’s kitchen, where she makes not just babka but also challah – the braided bread central to Shabbat dinners.
“Challah is an egg bread, eaten on Friday nights for the Sabbath,” she explains. “You can have it anytime, but it’s traditional for your Shabbat dinner. There are so many ways to braid and beautify it. It’s a whole thing unto itself.”
Weiner’s passion for baking began when her two now-grown sons were young and constantly hungry, but it deepened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she found herself experimenting endlessly in the kitchen and discovering just how much joy baking brought her.
“I baked babka, biscotti, cookies, cakes – I was very happy. I don’t crochet or garden, so this became my thing.”
Friends began asking to buy her cookies, which led to the creation of Beilah’s Bakery out of her home kitchen. At the bottom of her website, she added a line that sums up her philosophy: “All you need is love? False. You also need cookies.”
“Because, really, how can you be sad when there are cookies? You put a cookie in somebody’s hand, and they’re going to smile.”
Now, as Nosh-a-Nooga approaches, Weiner’s kitchen is filled with the smell of butter and cinnamon, her freezers filled with loaves destined for the festival. She shrugs at the effort – and the cost.
“I probably have the most expensive treat,” she says. “Every one of these uses massive amounts of flour and butter. It’s more butter than you can imagine. Dairy cows are begging me to stop.”
For Weiner, the work is worth it. Through recipes passed down and reimagined, she finds not just sweetness but also a way to preserve identity and bring people together.
Resilience and peace
In Lewis’ kitchen, the aroma of simmering onions and boiling chicken livers fills the air. She moves easily between stove and counter, tending multiple pans at once, her apron – printed with the words “Schmutz happens” – somehow still clean.
“Chopped liver isn’t everyone’s thing,” she says, “I took a container to my grandson’s bar mitzvah – and most of it came back. But I love it. My dad loves it, too.”
For Nosh-a-Nooga, Lewis is preparing 50 pounds of chopped liver, which will be served in small cups alongside party rye and crackers.
The recipe comes from her mother and grandmother.
“My mother always said to boil the livers. A lot of people fry them, but mama swore sautéed onions provide the same flavor.”
Chopped liver is an Ashkenazi tradition rooted in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, where Lewis’ family originated. Her grandparents on her mother’s side immigrated from Bialystok, Poland, while her father’s family came from Russia.
Food and memory are inseparable for Lewis. Her mother, Sara, was a “smart cookie” who faced antisemitism as early as first grade while growing up in Birmingham.
“She wanted to go to college,” Lewis says, “but my grandfather wouldn’t let her because he had a store and her brother was going into the Army, so she had to stay and work. Eventually, she went to New York, met my dad and they married. I was born a year later.”
These early family stories shape Lewis’ perspective on Nosh-a-Nooga and its role in Chattanooga today.
“Maybe people will think if you can make good food, you could be a good person,” she says. “All Jews want is peace. Every single prayer is for peace. I don’t know why we’ve been labeled the villains throughout history. It makes no sense to me.”
Lewis says misunderstandings about Judaism often begin with unfamiliarity.
“A lot of people have never met a Jew,” she says. “When I moved into this neighborhood, more than one person asked me, ‘Which church do you go to?’ not realizing I go to a synagogue. They want to be sure I know they love me, but they don’t actually have Jewish people in their lives.”
As the onions continue to sizzle in the skillet, Lewis keeps working, layering memory, family and identity into each step of the recipe.
“This recipe is just liver, eggs and onions,” she says. “But for me, it’s also my mom and my grandmother. That’s what I’m bringing to Nosh-a-Nooga.”
Keeping traditions on the plate
While Lewis preserves family traditions passed down from Bialystok and Birmingham, Cohen is finding ways to make old recipes relevant for a new generation.
The chocolate toffee matzah recipe came from her mother, who still sends her children home with a Tupperware container full of it – “like a Jewish mother,” Cohen says with a grin.
Now she’s passing the tradition on to her son.
“I won’t let him near the toffee,” she laughs, “but he helps to lay out the matzah and sprinkle the chocolate. He even asked me once, ‘Why matzah?’ Which is one of the best questions you can ask.”
For Cohen, those kinds of questions are at the heart of Judaism.
“Judaism is about asking why – why we do things, why we can’t do things, why traditions matter,” she says. “And food is one of the easiest, happiest ways to start those conversations.”
Cohen grew up in Chicago in a large Jewish community, attending a Jewish day school where she began learning Hebrew at the age of five.
“School wasn’t just about the rituals,” she explains. “It was about becoming part of Jewish culture. And food is central to that. I say Jewish culture rather than religion because, even though food is part of the religion, it’s what binds us culturally.
“You don’t have to be religious to enjoy the food, the customs or the stories behind them.”
Cohen’s earliest memories tie food to togetherness more than observance. At school, she recalls, there was an annual competition over matzah balls – whose would sink and whose would float – during big communal lunches.
That sense of belonging is part of what makes Nosh-a-Nooga meaningful, she continues. For Cohen, it also ties into deeper questions of how people see themselves within their faith and culture.
“It’s hard for people to separate culture from religion. And it’s hard for people to extricate Jews from the identity of Israel. I grew up hearing the question, ‘Are you a Jewish American or an American Jew?’ To me, it depends on the context.
“When I talk politics, I’m an American, engaged in American issues. When I talk about religious freedom – about the experience of being a minority in another country – I’m an American Jew because I grew up identifying with being Jewish. But it’s different for everyone.”
Cohen believes Nosh-a-Nooga is an opportunity to show that Jewish identity is not one-dimensional.
“Being Jewish isn’t just one thing – it isn’t purely religious, political or ethnic. It’s community and culture. And food is the perfect bridge.”
She looks toward a tray of finished chocolate toffee matzah cooling on the counter.
“Everybody in the world can relate to food. Everybody has preferences, dietary restrictions and stories tied to certain dishes. Food connects people. It starts conversations.”
In Judaism, she explains, every dish carries meaning. Matzah, for example, symbolizes liberation.
“When the Jews fled Egypt, they didn’t have time to let their bread rise, so they left with unleavened bread,” she explains.
“That’s why matzah is called the ‘bread of freedom.’ Eating it connects us to that history.”
For Cohen, adapting recipes – turning something as plain as matzah into a layered dessert – keeps those traditions alive.
“As Jews, we’ve been through so many iterations – migration, assimilation, survival,” she says. “The further we get from the past, the easier it is to lose the meaning. Adapting recipes keeps the tradition relevant. It keeps it on the plate – and it keeps the stories alive.”
Time to eat
As Nosh-a-Nooga returns, the festival offers more than a chance to savor kugel, babka, matzah and chopped liver. Each dish tells a story – of migration and memory, and of celebration and survival.
At each tasting table, guests will find notes about the history and cultural significance behind the food, and cooks will be on hand to answer questions and share their stories – but not their recipes.
Organizers recommend purchasing tickets in advance at jewishchattanooga.com, though they will also be available at the door.
And if one idea captures the spirit of Nosh-a-Nooga, it might be an old joke Cohen remembers from her childhood – the ten-second history of nearly every Jewish holiday:
“’They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat; let’s drink.’”