With her first book on the verge of being released last fall, Micah Siva joked about giving birth to three things in nine months – the first two being a children’s book and her son. The last of those things, her cookbook Nosh: Plant-Forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine, was released in March and she brings her book tour to the Minnesota JCC – Capp Center St. Paul next week. The trip through Minnesota is part of the third leg of her tour since the book came out.
“[The first two legs have] been really good. I feel like I’ve definitely learned something from each place that I’ve been, but it’s been really well received,” said Siva, who hosts the Jewfolk Podcast Network show Not Your Bubbe’s Nosh. “Everything’s been good and fun and the events that I do with Jewish centers, those are the best ones.”
Listen to “Micah made a cookbook! Here’s how she did it” on Spreaker.
Siva’s trip to Minnesota includes two days of events. Monday, May 13 is “Three Courses with Micah Siva – Book Signing, Discussion, & Film.” The appetizer is the book signing, the main course is a discussion with Siva and Marsha Weiner on connecting with community through food and gatherings, and dessert, a screening of Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival’s 2021 hit Breaking Bread, a film about the A-Sham Arabic Food Festival, where pairs of Arab and Jewish chefs collaborate on dishes.
On May 14, Siva will be doing a cooking demonstration featuring recipes from the book.
“The opportunity to host Micah Siva is ripe with potential as she has one foot in tradition and one foot in evolution,” said Peter Grendle, the senior director of Jewish arts and culture at the Minnesota JCC. “Things like vegan gefilite fish break boundaries while echo back to what we love. Micah is an impressive connective tissue for the ages.”
While being a trained chef and dietician, Siva said part of her motivation to write the book was as a bit of a vanity exercise – she wanted to see her name on book. But as it’s been released into a post-October 7 Jewish world, her feelings have changed.
“After the book has come out and the more I’ve spoken about it – and especially since it’s come out post-October 7 – I think that I’ve learned that there’s more to it than I thought,” she said. “It has been a really good way for me to feel connected to Judaism and to the community, and to have an excuse to surround myself with Jewish joy and talking about the fun parts of being Jewish.”
The day after she came home from the hospital with her son, Ari, Siva received the first bound copy of the book.
“I was seeing it now through the lens of a Jewish mom,” she said. “Through all of this, I feel like I’ve changed quite a bit where my priorities are, obviously so much different than than they were two years ago when I was in the process of writing. I feel like having it out there has made it more important for me to have Jewish experiences.”
With the book out and the tour in full swing – after the Twin Cities she heads to Chicago, Dallas, and Kosherpalooza in New Jersey – she’s found that separating new author Micah and new mom Micah are impossible.
“I’ve always been into Jewish stuff, but now I feel like it’s my more of a duty to do Shabbat and make recipes from it and host and have all these experiences,” she said. “[Yes] it’s also my work but also so that Ari grows up with remembering eating from the book and doing things Jewishly and, having those experiences.”
