Making Menena

This week, we focused our efforts on preparing Menena (or, as it's known in Arabic, Ma'amoul) pastries. Jews in Iraq, as well as in other middle eastern countries, traditionally eat menena filled with nut fillings on Purim, and with date fillings on Rosh Ha'shana and Hanuka. Since we are a nut-free zone at Isaiah, we filled our menena pastries with blended dates. It's traditional for Iraqi Jews to include menena pastries in their Mishlo'ach Manot Purim baskets. Since Purim is the next major Jewish holiday that we celebrate (on March 24th this year), we'll be giving each family in our Edot class an early Purim treat!

I prepared the dough before class began. Students at each table found a large ball of dough, bowls of blended date filling, a large bowl of water to rinse their fingers in from the sticky date filling, and lots of paper towel sheets to dry their hands on before working the dough again.

One group on Wednesday prepared a gluten-free version of the pastry (a bit harder to get the dough to roll into a ball...

...but not impossible!).

Students rolled a walnut-sized piece of dough into a ball...

...then pushing down in the middle of the ball with their thumb, created a well.

After thinning the walls around the well as much as possible, they filled the well 3/4 full with the date filling.

At this point, a dip of the fingers in the warm water was necessary to get the sticky date filling off.

Then the date filling is covered by the dough remaining at the top, and the dough is gently rolled into a ball again.

Finally, the filled ball is placed on the cookie sheet and is gently pressed down a bit with the heel of the hand. And now it's ready to bake in the oven.

After the first 10 minutes or so of getting used to working with the dough and the date filling, and figuring out how to make the well and thin the sides, the students began to produce the menena fairly quickly, and finished up all the dough and date filling with time left to spare, even after cleaning up. I used the remaining time to continue reading from "The Storyteller's Beads," the story about "Operation Moses" in 1984, which helped bring thousands of Beta Yisrael (Ethiopian Jews) to Israel.

I'm looking forward to seeing most of our Edot families this coming Sunday at our Chamsa Family Workshop.