By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
When Seattle entrepreneur Leah Jaffee takes on a project, she goes big.
As an international textile buyer and designer for Nordstrom in the 70s, she won awards. When she converted to Judaism through the Reform movement in 1992, it wasn’t long before she switched to Orthodoxy.
And now, after 13 years of catering some of the best kosher food in Seattle, Jaffee is debuting her new, interactive, 14-page kosher food website, www.LeahCookskosher.com, where she instructs members on the basics of preparing everything Jewish, from Ashkenazi babkas to Sephardic bourekas, and all of it using the finest kosher ingredients.
In an interview with the JTNews about her newest business venture, Jaffee unapologetically declared, “I am intent on being the worldwide authority on kosher cooking.”
She is a self-described “Filipino-Chinese-Spanish convert” who is highly regarded in the Seattle area for cooking traditional Sephardic and Ashkenazi foods.
Many in the Jewish community likely became familiar with Jaffee’s kosher food in 1999 when she opened several businesses in the Ravenna shopping area on N 65th Street in Seattle. The subsequent incarnations, Leah’s Catering, Leah’s Deli, and Leah’s Bakery and Catering, stayed in different locations on the same block through 2008.
“After I converted, there was nothing to eat that was decent,” laughed Jaffee, who took a time-out from her food prep in the kitchen at the University of Washington Hillel dining hall to reminisce about her life, Jewish tradition, and her dream of community-building. Jaffee has leased the kitchen there since 2009.
“What I’ve learned over the last 10 years is that no one knows how to make anything anymore,” she said. “We have to go back almost two generations to the only women who are left who know how to go into the kitchen and make anything.”
Leah’s food is not only kosher on the religious level. In 2011, Leah’s Catering was the first kosher food business in Washington to receive the “seal of approval” from a new social justice kosher restaurant certification system certification called Tav HaYosher.
A kosher business that displays the Tav HaYosher seal is deemed compliant with local, state, and federal labor laws which require that an employer pay a fair wage including overtime compensation, gives employees standardized and periodic breaks, allows for adequate time off, and provides safe working conditions.
Jaffe’s new online venture incorporates many of the community values she honed in her brick-and-mortar storefronts.
In addition to her blog, recipes, and photos of food preparation, members can upload their own recipes and pictures, make friends, view other people’s recipes, and add comments. Jaffee wants to make keeping kosher easier.
Membership, which is free, also gives visitors to access a growing virtual kosher pantry of products that Jaffee is building on her site. Guests can see the brand and packaging and find live links to the manufacturer’s website. Kosher foodies can learn exactly where to buy any product listed there.
There are also food tips and menu suggestions for people with food allergies and intolerances, as well vegetarian and gluten-free recipes.
“I sort of feel like I’m on a mission, to tell you the truth, because it is a dying art,” said Jaffee. “A lot of people don’t know how to cook. It’s take out, it’s deli counter, it’s fast food. I’m going to nail all the traditional stuff, Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mediterranean, and Israeli. I’m going to show you how to make it all.”
Born and raised in Seattle, Jaffee graduated from the now-defunct Custom Apparel and Design program at Seattle Central Community College. Trained as a couture seamstress, she designed bridal gowns and men’s tailored suits for several local manufacturers, including Nordstrom.
In the 70s, she put herself through the prestigious Parsons School of Fashion in New York and was later recruited by a sportswear company in Salt Lake City. It was there that Jaffee met and married her first husband there and had her first baby girl, Rebekah, who is now 28. She spent the next 20 years as a buyer, trainer, and designer at the downtown Seattle Nordstrom before leaving corporate life.
In 1992, she converted to Judaism, began studying at the Chabad House, and married her second husband, University of Washington professor of Jewish Studies, Martin Jaffe. They have a daughter, Aviva, who is 16. The couple is now divorced.
In 1998, Jaffee started catering.
“I was still designing,” she said. “In one half of my basement was my design studio, and I put in a commercial [kosher] kitchen on the other side of my basement. I started doing fundraisers for Rabbi [Sholom Ber] Levitin. We did a series of ethnic nights, a Thai night, an Italian night, and a French night. We packed Chabad House.”
Already, there have been over 10,000 hits on the Jaffe’s new mega-site from locations around the globe, including Malaysia, Israel, and Canada. Members are voting in polls, creating their own Cook’s Profile, and communicating with each other.
Jaffee says that her vision, though global, is really a simple one.
“I’m actually trying to teach and I want to form a community.”