'A gift to the community': Final days to order from New Hampshire Jewish Food Festival

LACONIA — Time is running out to support the New Hampshire Jewish Food Festival, the largest fundraiser for Temple B’nai Israel. Brisket, blintzes, knishes, noodle kugel and other delicacies are available to pre-order through Sunday, July 6.

“We'll make sure that anybody who wants to order will have a way to order,” Barbara Katz, vice president of marketing and public relations for the temple, said.

Ordering is available at tbinh.org, or contacting info@tbinh.org.

The food is made ahead of the ordering period, to give volunteers plenty of time to prepare it all. This makes for limited stock. Chopped liver, hamantaschen and strudel are already sold out, but much of the menu is still available. While the food is quintessentially Jewish, most customers are not.

"They are familiar with Jewish food, they may have grown up in New York, New Jersey, now they're here. They are familiar with a basic deli, and they love it," Katz said. "We have a lot of returning customers every year. They are tried and true."

Volunteer cooks split into groups, led by team captains responsible for making different dishes. Many recipes come from relatives of temple members, like the one for brisket from restaurateur Lou Gaynor. Due to the large quantity of orders, some recipes are adapted to meet demand. Stu Needleman, head of the temple fundraising committee who has led the food festival for about nine years, said the recipes are still authentic.

“Nobody's grandmother was making 1,200 blintzes before.”

Kitchen volunteers made more than 1,200 blintzes. There are 1,728 individual blintzes being sold, along with 60 pounds of brisket, 67 dishes of noodle kugel, 400 potato and 488 beef knishes, 1,032 potato latkes, 152 quarts of matzo ball soup, 225 bags of rugelach, 60 strudels and 402 total hamantaschen of various flavors.

“The group comes together and puts it all together, and lays it out and freezes it, bakes it, cooks it, whatever has to happen with the particular recipe,” Katz said. “People form great friendships. It's a social for the members, and it's a fundraiser for the temple, and it's a gift to the community.”

There are some extra portions available, particularly blintzes, as temple members made extra to serve at the Laconia Multicultural & Folk Festival. When the festival was canceled, they ended up with a surplus. Susan Needleman, Stu’s wife, is in charge of the kitchen teams. She explained the temple’s approach to dealing with this surplus.

“We have extra. If we get more orders, then we have enough,” she said. “The thought is that we wouldn't keep them for next year."

The NH Jewish Food Festival started as a rummage sale, but thanks to temple member Irene Gordon who died in 2023, it became the food phenomenon it is today. She first sold knockwurst sausages at the sale. Little did she know she was kicking off a new tradition.

“It just sort of started a tradition. And the next year they said, 'Well, let's add blitzes, and let's add this, and let's add that,'” Katz said.

The food festival had been an in-person, sit-down event since 1997, which drew hundreds. But in 2020, during the start of the coronavirus pandemic, volunteers pivoted to online ordering.

“We quickly pivoted to an online ordering system with a drive-thru curbside pickup, which has worked tremendously well for us,” Katz said.

There were technical difficulties with the ordering website in the first couple weeks this year, which volunteers think may have deterred or delayed orders. Temple members are offering a promotion to inspire orders in the final days. Orders of $50 or more will include a free challah with coupon code “Challah 50” at checkout. Organizers are looking at a new website for next year.

This festival raises up to $20,000 a year for the temple. Members hold fundraisers for other nonprofits, too. The We Care concert fundraisers have raised $400,000 for the community since 2013. The committee organizes two concerts each year to benefit area nonprofit organizations, scheduled in May and October. The Jersey Tenors, a '70s-era music group, will perform at the next event on Saturday, Oct. 25, at the Interlakes Community Auditorium.

Katz said of all the synagogues she has been a part of, none have been as involved in the community as Temple B’nai Israel. She said when the temple was founded over 100 years ago, many of the Jewish residents living in the city were business owners, and had invested a lot of time and effort into their community. She believes this is why it is still the temple’s mission to give back.

“The people that started this synagogue were the merchants in the area. They owned the stores on Main Street, Laconia. They owned stores in Tilton. They served the community, and they felt very, very much a part of the community,” Katz said. “When they came together to form the synagogue, they wanted to be sure that they could give back to the community.”