I had to be out this morning anyway, so I’m just back from crossing off two more bakeries from the checklist on my annual search for the perfect hamantaschen on Purim. I am sorry to report, neither sample I consumed today lived up to expectations. (Of course, in my optimism, I purchased several from both shops.) In the interest of kindness, I won’t name the bakeries, as I have no animosity toward them, even though their hamantaschen suck.
Hamantaschen, in case you don’t know, are triangular, pocket-filled pastries associated with Haman, the villain of the Purim story as related in the Book of Esther – “tash” meaning “pocket” or “pouch” in Yiddish. In Hebrew, they’re sometimes referred to as “Haman’s ears.” And what an appetizing image that is, especially when biting into the fruity center!
The cookie is often filled with apricot, raspberry, poppy seed, or my personal favorite, prune – which may sound a little geriatric, but trust me, with a good cup of coffee, it infuses one with a ridiculous sense of well-being.
The best hamantaschen I ever had were from Rindelaub’s Bakery, then located right across the street from one of my many Philadelphia apartments, on South 18th Street, just a few doors north of Rittenhouse Square. That was decades ago, when I was in my 20s. A prune-centered hamantasch and a large cup of coffee consumed in the square on a sunny afternoon was a recipe for pure bliss. Alas, once a Philadelphia institution, Rindelaub’s is no more.
In the name of all that’s holy, avoid hamantaschen from the local grocery store. They’re generally pretty terrible – hard jelly in a tasteless cookie that will turn to powder as soon as you bite into it. But if you can find them at an actual bakery, give them a shot – although, I confess, I have not had a lot of luck. In the Trenton-Princeton area, so far the closest I’ve come to recapturing the unalloyed pleasure of Rindelaub’s pastries was from a vendor at Trenton Farmer’s Market, but I haven’t been back there in years and the market is only open Thursday to Sunday.
If someone knows of a great Jewish bakery in the vicinity, please let me know. I’ve already been to Cramer’s in Yardley, a couple of years back. With all respect to Cramer, it wasn’t even close. I also experienced an epic fail at a bakery in Sea Girt last summer.
A few years ago, I put together a post about music inspired by the Purim story. The best-known musical response is still probably George Frideric Handel’s “Esther,” from 1732. Handel’s first English oratorio recounts the events of the Biblical book, by way of an Old Testament drama by Jean Racine. The Hebrew Esther becomes Queen of Persia and thwarts the machinations of the king’s jealous vizier, which would have resulted in the extermination of her people.
Interestingly, although Princeton doesn’t seem to have any good Jewish bakeries, it turns out the town is the final resting place of a composer who, I only just learned this week, wrote an opera based on the same Racine play.
Thomas De Hartmann was born in Ukraine in 1885. He studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov, Anton Arensky, and Sergei Taneyev. He was friendly with the mystic-philosopher George Gurdjieff, who acted as his spiritual adviser and with whom De Hartmann and his wife, Olga, an opera singer, departed Russia following the revolution. Eventually, in 1950, they settled in the United States. De Hartmann and Gurdjieff collaborated on a number of musical works.
De Hartmann would die of a heart attack several weeks after performing his Violin Sonata in Princeton (with Alexander Schneider, violin, and the composer at the keyboard). He is buried next to his wife in Princeton Cemetery, his grave marked by a very distinctive headstone, which bears a quotation from his unfinished Fourth Symphony.
I wrote about him for an article in the Princeton weekly newspaper U.S. 1, as part of a “haunted tour” of local composers’ gravesites I compiled one year for Halloween.
https://www.communitynews.org/princetoninfo/coverstories/a-requiem-for-princeton-s-passed-composers/article_a83ca082-5487-11ed-9182-8771c220bdaf.html
Since then, I’ve purchased two volumes of his orchestral music on the Toccata Classics label, and earlier this season heard Joshua Bell play his Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic. Bell’s recording of the Violin Concerto has been coupled with Matt Haimovitz’s performance of the Cello Concerto, for Pentatone Records. I wonder if we’re poised on the brink of a full-blown Thomas De Hartmann revival?
Also imminent from Pentatone is the premiere recording of De Hartmann’s opera, “Esther,” which the label only just previewed on its YouTube channel yesterday. To learn more about it, read the description under the video at the link.
Comparisons to Poulenc, Debussy, Strauss, and Korngold? I’m there!
Thomas De Hartmann’s “Esther” will be released on April 24.
Even if the bakeries let me down, I’m fairly confident De Hartmann will not.
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IMAGE: “Esther Denouncing Haman to King Ahasuerus” (1888) by Ernest Norman, with hamantasch added by me
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