MUET COMME UNE CARPE

From pond to plate, we are shown the journey and destiny of one carp among many. This particular carp will be eaten stuffed during a family meal. Carp stuffed ‘in the Polish fashion’, also called in yiddish ‘Gefilte Fish’ is a traditional dish eaten by Ashkenazi Jews. It is cooked, sweetened and served as a cold dish at the start of the meal. The head is reserved for the head of the family. The film, set in Brussels, on the day of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), aims to show the culinary preparation together with the accompanying prayers and ritual. It focuses particularly on the sacrifice of the fish and on the issue of mass extermination. (source: www.borislehman.be)
 
GEFILTE FISH (yiddish song)

What do Jews love to eat?
Both at home and abroad which is neither ’parve’
nor ’milchig’ nor ’fleishig’?
A dish which all Jews love
And which all women strive to make
we love it and we know why
It is a traditional Jewish dish
which we eat on each shabbat eve

Gefilte Fish
Gefilte Fish

It is a delicious dish
I tasted it a while ago at my mother’s
It is extraordinary, it is marvellous
It is a blessing for the Jewish people.
When you eat it, it melts in your mouth.
Gefilte Fish, that’s yiddish.
Back from the synagogue, we say the «Kiddush»
At home everything’s nice and clean
We sit at the laid up table
where Gefilte Fish is served.

Gefilte Fish
Gefilte Fish

Hungarians love Gulash with paprika
Poles love pork meat with bread
Russians can’t go without red borsht
Germans love rye bread
Romanians malaliga
Georgians shashlik.
But what is there in all those things
That’s something no one knows.
Tell me Jew what is good?

Gefilte Fish
Gefilte Fish

Gefilte Fish, that’s good.

This work has been digitised in the frame of DCA Project