M.O.T.: Member of the Tribe

Going gourmet on gefilte • A return to cello

Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Columnist

1. A confluence of ideas and connections brought Seattle its first Ashkenazic pop-up restaurant.

Josh Furman of Hillel’s JConnect says his organization wants Seattle “to be an amazing place for young Jews, and this means events and opportunities that take on a number of forms.”

And sisters Anna and Molly Goren knew the owners of Gefilteria, a New York restaurant putting a gourmet spin on Ashkenazic favorites. (Artisanal gefilte fish! Look it up at www.gefilteria.com.) When Anna learned that those friends, Liz Alpern and Jeff Yoskowitz, were going to be in California, she enticed them to Seattle.

On a recent foggy Monday night, local Gefilteria diners crammed into Capitol Hill’s tiny Café Barjot for two seatings. (Pop-ups use an existing restaurant on the night it’s closed, to create a temporary restaurant.) They feasted on a five-course sampler menu which included the gefilte fish and a signature cocktail with house-made caraway syrup.

Most there were young-ish, although Josh said the crowd represented “many facets” of the community. They came for food, yes, but as many there expressed, also for Jewish conviviality for its own sake, something hard to find here.

“One of the big things about being Jewish is breaking bread,” observed Joshua Cohen, recently arrived from LA, and this was “not a way we typically get to experience it.”

Anna and Molly told diners that coming from a “mixed” Sephardic-Ashkenazic home, the emphasis growing up had been on Sephardic foods, and this was giving them a chance to experience their Ashkenazic food roots.

“Molly and I have always been makers and eaters of all kinds of food,” Anna said later. “But what speaks to us more than checking out the greatest new restaurant is actually exploring the food that means something…that is a part of your history.”

Liz and Jeff spoke at a second event at Hillel the next day, and Josh says more food-centered JConnect events are planned. A forthcoming demographic study from the Jewish Federation shows a significant increase in Jews in the Seattle area, partly because of the tech boom.

“How do we get to them, how do we find the community?” Josh asks.

Food is certainly one way, so look for a cooking series at Hillel and — very exciting — a Passover food truck this spring.

 

2. If you’ve met Louie Richmond in the past 25 years, you likely think of him as a PR professional, founder of the successful Richmond Public Relations firm in Seattle. But when Louie and his wife Betty Ann came to the Northwest over 30 years ago, he came to University of Puget Sound to teach cello and then moved to Seattle to found and direct the Northwest Chamber Orchestra.

Louis Richmond
Louis Richmond and his cello.
Photo: Kevin R. Knox

When he left that job for PR, he gave up cello.

“I was doing something totally different and wanted to do it well,” he says.

So it was an “ironic moment” about seven years ago, when he discovered his eldest grandchild “didn’t know what a cello was.” That meant, says Louie, she didn’t “ultimately know who her grandfather was.”

He started to play again, using the cello he got when he was 13 years old.

“It was painful,” he says, and the cello needed work, too.

His granddaughter was taking piano so they played in a recital together. Then he played a concert with her piano teacher, “and little by little I started to play again.”

Adamant that performers must perform, Louie looked for an outlet. A suggestion that he play at the Kline Galland home started a bi-weekly tradition of performances there, which he always finds meaningful. He was their volunteer of the year last year.

That led to concerts at the Summit, and house concerts, too. He’s even played with jazz pianist Overton Berry, finding jazz and improvisation “fascinating.”

“It’s funny,” he says, “some people [now] only know me as a cellist.”

The Philly native went from college to the National Symphony Orchestra, returning to school for a master’s in cello, studying with Lorne Monroe, then first cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Three subsequent teaching jobs took him progressively further west.

Louie plays the Bach Cello Suite in C for Betty Ann daily. “To play Bach every day is such a joy. It keeps you alive, it keeps you young,” he says. “You never finish, never reach perfection.”

The Richmonds occasionally attend Seattle’s Congregation Beth Shalom, where their son Lorne and daughter-in-law Elizabeth belong (the couple now helps run the company).

“Music is my religion,” says Louie.

Along with three or more hours of daily music practice, Louie runs about 40 miles a week. A veteran of 50 marathons, he’s planning another in a few years, when he turns 75.

Look for a chapter on Louie in Seattle Times music critic Melinda Bargreen’s book “Seattle Music Masters,” coming from University of Washington Press in the spring.