Only 2 Sardines Were Harmed in the Making of this Blog

Guest blog by Julia Braun

On Friday the LJCC Marketing department (my colleague Mandy and I) had an outing to The Providores & Tapa Room on Marylebone High Street. This wasn’t just a social call but was all in the name of work – the fact that brunch was included was a very lovely bonus…more on that later.

The Providores is run by top New Zealand chef Peter Gordon and as well as another restaurant in London, one in Auckland, and a hectic international schedule, Peter has managed to find time to squeeze in judging our Pavlova recipe competition – part of the centenary celebrations we are having to commemorate 100 years since Anna Pavlova moved into our very own Ivy House.

So back to the food – apparently the Tapa Room, which is the all day restaurant, café and wine bar part of the restaurant (upstairs is a more formal dining room), is renowned for its brunches and regularly has people queuing round the block on a weekend. I can whole-heartedly recommend the grilled sardine & roasted tomato bruschetta, in fact my mouth is watering now just thinking about it.

Meanwhile I am very excited to say that entries for the competition are coming in thick and fast, and it is no wonder when the winning recipe, after being tried & tested by Peter Gordon, will go on the menu of The Providores for a month.

If you would like to enter, please send me your own personal “Pavlova-inspired” recipe and an optional photo of your dessert, by Sunday 15 April to julia@ljcc.org.uk. Please don’t forget to also include your name, address and phone number.

Finally, I must say many thanks to all those who offered to help me taste the recipes, however I am not one to shirk responsibilities and as challenging as it will be, I think I am ready for it!

You can find out more about the Pavlova 2012 programme of events here: http://www.ljcc.org.uk/events/genre/56-pavlova-2012.html

Vermeer’s “Jewish” Women?

Guest blog post by Vera Litvin

Over 300 years after his death, the Dutch painter Vermeer is still causing controversy, not least at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. BBC Art Critic Estelle Lovatt joined us to give us her take on Vermeer, exploring the Jewish element in his work. She argued that there was certainly a Jewish influence on Vermeer and that he would have been deliberately reaching out to a wealthy Jewish clientele with his paintings. He would have been aware of Rembrandt’s work which may have depicted patrons in the guise of ancient Israelites (a famous example is the “Jewish Bride” which seems to depict a couple of Rembrandt’s clients as Isaac and Rebecca).

The 'Jewish Bride' was painted by Rembrandt in 1667

However, Vermeer’s work does not deal with Jewishness in the same overt way. Instead, Lovatt argues, it gives us an image of the woman in the home, very much in keeping with the Jewish tradition of the “Eshet Chayil”.  As celebrated in the famous hymn of the same name, which is customarily recited on Friday evenings, the “Eshet Chayil” is a modest, God-fearing and capable woman. This description seems to fit many of Vermeer’s female portraits. Many of his subjects are modestly dressed, involved in some domestic occupation: be it a maid pouring milk, a lace-maker with her bobbins or a lady playing music. Their gaze is often modestly averted from us. The women are also frequently depicted in the home: in an enclosed, protected, feminine space.

Eshet Chayil? Was Vermeer producing work for a Jewish Audience? ('The Milkmaid' by Vermeer, circa 1658)

For Estelle Lovatt, Vermeer’s paintings of women for the most part provide “the feeling of a Friday night” even if none of the women are actually lighting Sabbath candles or are even Jewish. It is “the feeling of warmth, the feeling of peace, the feeling of making you welcome, the feeling of wanting to stay in that area with the woman.”  These images, she believes, would have appealed to Vermeer’s Jewish contemporaries.

Estelle Lovatt also touched on the work of modern Israeli artist Noa Lidor, who takes Vermeer as her starting point and goes on to create works of art that are radically different to his. Her sculptures, installations and drawings frequently use everyday, feminine objects such as thimbles, recorders and even bells to explore the role of the woman in the home.

Although some in the audience did not agree with Estelle’s analysis of Vermeer’s “Jewishness”,   I found it an eye-opening take. It also made me reconsider what we refer to as Jewish art. Is it, Estelle asks, art created by a Jew, or art depicting specifically Jewish topics, or can it perhaps simply be art which has a Jewish “feel” about it in some way? In this lecture, Estelle Lovatt certainly succeeded in challenging our preconceptions about an artist whom many of us feel we already know.