Our Story
The Gefilteria is a new kind of food venture launched in 2012 with a manifesto and a mission to reimagine eastern European Jewish cuisine. You can find our artisanal gefilte fish online and in stores during major holiday seasons, though our work reaches far beyond a single dish. Our cookbook, The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods, builds off of our original manifesto with over 100 recipes and stories. Most of the year we’re leading immersive culinary workshops and collaborating on dynamic events and media projects. And while we don’t have a storefront, we’re always cooking up a dinner or an event in person or, lately, in the virtual sphere.
Oh, and it’s pronounced ge·filte·ria, like a taqueria but with gefilte fish instead of tacos.
Meet the Team
Jeffrey Yoskowitz
Jeffrey Yoskowitz is a leader of the Jewish Food Renaissance as an entrepreneur, writer, pickler and cookbook author. He curates and cooks dining events in kitchens around the world, teaches about Jewish cooking and Jewish food heritage and writes about food and culture for publications like The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, and Gastronomica, among others.
Jeffrey co-authored The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods along with Liz Alpern. He was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list and The Forward 50 and has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Saveur, and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications.
Liz Alpern
Based in Brooklyn, Liz Alpern is passionate about reimagining tradition and bringing people together. Liz is co-founder of The Gefilteria and co-author of The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods. She is also the creator of Queer Soup Night, a global event series highlighting the talent of queer chefs and raising tens of thousands of dollars for locally-based social justice organizations.
Liz received her MBA from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business and has been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List, the Forward 50 and and The Cherry Bombe 100. She is committed to seeing a more just and equitable food system for all so when she’s not in the kitchen with The Gefilteria, she’s consulting for national non-profit organization, Fair Food Network.
Jackie Lilinsthein
Jackie was a founding partner in The Gefilteria, drawing inspiration from her Russian family’s ethnic food traditions.