OP: The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook

Schocken Books, 2015. Hardcover. Fine. First printing.   Operating a vegetarian restaurant—and one boasting celebrity clientele at that—in late-1930s Poland may seem an anachronism, but this was the reality for forward-thinking restaurateur Fania Lewando (1888–1941). Citing the Jewish commandment of tsar baaley khayim (not causing the suffering of living creatures), the burgeoning field of dietetics, and the economic, environmental, and political advantages of minimizing meat consumption, Lewando understood a vegetarian diet to be an obvious and meaningful choice.  Serving as both the kosher chef on a cruise line and as the owner of a restaurant located in the Jewish cultural center of Vilnius—a city volleyed between the shifting borders of Lithuania and Poland in the early 20th century—Lewando was well known and respected for her contributions to the culinary world. In 1938, she published, in Yiddish, a collection of her recipes. Very few copies of the original book survive, but when