WHAT IT TASTES LIKE TO GROW UP IN A DIASPORIC ASHKENAZI MATRIARCHY ('DAM') 

BY Phoebe Port

In Hebrew, dam means blood.

In DAMs, blood means food. Usually pickled.

Stray jars are not left unexploited in well-incorporated DAMs. They will inevitably and imminently be metamorphosed into micro-fermentation prisms: immersing, preserving, and souring any vegetable or non-active kitchen counter ingredient in sight.

This is the holy holy Quadrality of DAM nutriment:

1.    Chopped liver

2.    Chopped herring

3.    Pickled herring

4.    Pickled pickles

The makers of the Quadrality are Jewish Matriarch-Lord-Witches (‘MLWs’). In their coven of militant associateship, the MLWs discharge their Heavenly Duties, untie their sanctimonious fatigue, and rewrite the Books of Worthy Scripture with fish knives, gold-encrusted crockery and visions of an heirloom Russian samovar.

The unwritten recipe for Bobba Sophie’s famous orange cake 

  • 6 oranges, manually squeezed through the calloused hands of stubborn, architect, pragmatic husband Poppa Harold and into Art Deco measuring cups
  • 4 cups of flowers: bird of paradise if within range and season, otherwise a suitably and similarly brilliant kind of flora
  • 2 heaps of Jewish Guilt, simmered and reduced over the Stove of Many More Generations of Good Jewish Women. Continue to stir if crystallised. 

This week it was Erev Shabbat and the DAM Lords were perched upright in front of the sacramental Kedem wine. A liquid more Jewish than Jewish blood (thanks, Foer). The MLWs blessed the candles, kissed their fingertips, blessed and kissed their kindelach. 

‘In a world of patriarchal order’ the Lords murmur in ritual unison, ‘how exquisite it is to subscribe/submit/suspend myself to a DAM’.

DAMs are mobilised by women, participated in by men.

DAMs provide and consume too much food by a factor of 18.

DAMs are the webs of inter-generational communication between histories of MLWs, teaching one another how to ferment, mature and sustain a DAM. 

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