By: Rabbi Michael S. Beals, Temple Beth El
My story begins, I suppose, circa 1800 BCE, when Avraham and Sarah responded to God’s command of “Lech Lecha,” and we left Ur of the Chaldees for Canaan. Or, perhaps circa 1200 BCE, when around Mount Sinai, our ancestors, led by Moshe, said “na’ase v’nishma,” we will do and we will learn—articulating an ancient covenant which is enforced to this day.
While, I cannot prove any of it outside the Torah itself, my own family story kicks in about 1890. Czar Alexander III, was trying to stamp out Judaism, in part, by taking young Jewish boys in their early- or mid-teens, and forcibly drafting them for a 25 year length of service into his Imperial Army.
One of the enlisted, Mortra (Marks) Tammer—my namesake—went AWOL, sold the uniform, and used the proceeds to get him as far as the money would take him—Whitechapel, London’s East End. There, along with his wife, Rivka Gunlash Tammer, he built a thriving family of eight children. Many of the descendants of those original eight are still friends.
I descend from the middle girl of the family, Raie Tammer Beals. She was my dad’s mom. After World War Two, Raie, her husband William, and my dad, Alan, left war-torn London and made a new home in San Francisco back in the ‘50s—and I was born in 1963.
But it’s my Uncle Philip, Raie’s baby brother, we need to focus on if we are going to get to the bottom of this Sherry Trifle Recipe. As the youngest of this brood of eight, he was able to best bridge his Jewish-Polish origins and become a proper, Middle Class British Gentleman, educated in a fine British university, and make a career at a prestigious publishing house called Andre Deutsch, where he was much beloved. He, along with his lovely wife, Deborah, had three daughters: Ruth, Maxine, and Frances (all very accomplished). Maxine, married Maurice Godley, who had two fine sons, Jeremy and Benjamin. And it was the eldest daughter of Benjamin, Tamara, whose bat mitzvah my family just attended in Borehamwood. Although Philip, in his becoming British, left Orthodoxy for Liberal Judaism, Tamara, his great-granddaughter, became bat mitzvah in a United Synagogue shul—which is British for Modern Orthodox—really vibrant and engaging with the BEST tunes for Shabbat.
I first discovered my British roots when, as a 10-year-old, my cousins Ruth and Maxine first visited my family, laden with Cadbury Chocolate bars (before they were bought out and compromised by an American company). Two years later, Ruth and Maxine’s parents, Deborah and Philip came for their own visit to Southern California. And that’s when I first watched my Uncle Philip create his renowned British Sherry Trifle in the Palm Springs home of his big sister, my Grandma Raie.
After visiting my British family for Tamara’s bat mitzvah, I thought I would blow off the dust from my Uncle Philip’s recipe, and bring it as a contribution to my wife, Elissa’s lovely cousins in Columbia, Maryland. It had to be adjusted from dairy to parve, following a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, and further adjusted to be gluten free, to accommodate the needs of guests at the table. The guests, mostly all members of Columbia’s Reconstructionist Synagogue, were unanimous with their praise for this creation of love and tradition.
The Sherry Trifle is a tribute to a lovely family, Uncle Phil—long since passed—but whose recipe and his personal journey in bridging a Polish-Jewish past, with a British future, is embodied in this recipe. As Julia Child would say: “Bon Appetite,” or as I would say: “Betayavon!”
This recipe needed to be adapted to be both parve (dairy free) and gluten free—two challenges Uncle Phil did not face.
Ingredients:
- Bird’s Custard, which can be found in the international/UK section at Wegman’s in Glen Mills. I doubled the recipe on the can and used parve oat milk instead of milk
- Ladyfingers, I used two packages of the ladyfingers found in the gluten free section of ShopRite
- Raspberry preserves
- Cream Sherry, I picked up a parve bottle at Fairfax Liquors
- Fresh strawberries and raspberries
- Canned pears, peaches, and apricots
Instructions:
- Strain the canned fruit and add the liquid to equal amounts of cream Sherry in a bowl. You will be generously ladling this liquid over the lady fingers.
- Prepare the Bird’s Custard according to package instructions.
- Line the bottom and sides of an angled glass bowl with ladyfingers. Coat with raspberry preserves.
- Generously bathe the ladyfingers with the cream sherry and canned fruit juice mixture.
- Add all fruits in a layer then coat with a layer of custard. Repeat this step until you’ve reached the top of the bowl.
- Take the finished, multi-layer Sherry trifle masterpiece and place in the fridge to set and ferment overnight.
