Among the Jews of Poland and Central Europe, from whom Heschel came, the meal is not divided into starter-main-dessert but into sacred moments marked by blessings: Kiddush over wine, Hamotzi over the braided bread (challah), then fish, soup, a slow-cooked stew kept warm, and a final sweet. Three meals (Friday evening, Saturday lunch, Saturday afternoon) punctuate the holy day, while the weekday cuisine, more humble, revolves around groats and fats that sustain the body.

For lack of butter, which is forbidden with meat by kashrut, Ashkenazi cuisine turned rendered goose or chicken fat, schmaltz, into its golden gold. It flavors buckwheat, greases bread pans, and yields gribenes (cracklings). It is the very taste of the Polish shtetl kitchen.