Marina Shalmieva
Please tell us about your roots.
My mother’s name is Elizaveta Borisovna Gindina, and her mother’s name is Evdokia Lvovna Nissman. In the 1920s, my mother fled with her parents and older brother from the pogroms in Dnepropetrovsk and settled in Baku. My grandmother’s father, my great-grandfather, Lev Abramovich Nissman, became the first rabbi and shochet in Baku. He had his own kosher butcher shop, and the entire Jewish community of the city bought chickens and meat from him. My family on my father’s side belongs to the Caucasian Mountain Jewish community. You know, traditions in the mountain community are very strong. At that time, it was not customary to marry not only a non-Jewish woman, but even a Jewish woman from another community. When the conversation turned to my marriage, the parents of my future husband, knowing that my mother was an Ashkenazi Jew, had some doubts – to put it mildly. However, when they learned that my great-grandfather was the Shoikhet Lev Abramovich, known to the entire community, their doubts were dispelled. My maternal grandmother was categorically against the marriage of her daughter to a man from a Mountain Jewish family, who was also eleven years older. In my mother’s family, everyone had a higher education, and insisted that she also go to college. But my mother chose to marry my father. My father’s father, Isai Rakhamimovich Abramov, was a famous oilman who held a high position at the Oil Rocks oil fields in Azerbaijan. My grandfather was awarded the highest awards of the Soviet Union: the Golden Order of Lenin and the Order of the Hero of Socialist Labor. When he died, a funeral ceremony was held with an honor guard and gun salute. Farewell to him took place at the Lenin Palace in the Bailov area. However, despite all the honors, his family decided to bury him in the Jewish cemetery in Baku. His wife, my grandmother, Baryo-Miryam Agivaevna Nisanova (I am named after her), was a heroine mother. She had eight children, which was rare in Soviet times. In her house, all the cabinets were locked with small padlocks. She did this because she was always afraid that if one of us accidentally ate something non-kosher on the street, then we would then touch her kitchen utensils with the same hands. Her level of kashrut was incredibly high. She never trusted anyone when it came to cooking. When she went to visit her sons, she took with her not only the food that she prepared herself, but also all the necessary utensils - pots, plates, spoons and forks. We lived with my grandmother, and I spent my childhood in her house. When we all went together to visit her sons, my grandmother always carried heavy pots full of various foods. I asked her: “Why are you taking food with you if we are going to eat there?” My grandmother replied that her sons were accustomed to the dishes she prepared. She told me this because she didn’t want to offend anyone by explaining that she couldn’t eat at their house because the rules of kashrut were not followed there.
It is known that you recently opened a kosher dairy catering business. Please tell
me why you decided to start cooking as a business?
Since childhood, I have always liked to cook and bake. I graduated from the confectionery
department of a culinary school in Baku, and since then, as far as I can remember, I
have always stood behind the stove, cooking and baking. So the decision to start a food
business was a natural step for me.
What were you baking then?
I baked all the traditional Azerbaijani sweets - baklava, shor gokhal, kyata, and the
Absheron and Baki cakes that were then popular in Baku.
Two years after moving to Canada in 1991, I got a job at the Saxon Chocolates factory.
Later I started cooking for the Lubavitch children's camp and worked there for nineteen
years. I also worked in the kitchen of the Lubavitch Yeshiva, where I cooked for fifty
students.
What did you cook?
They loved my lasagna, macaroni and cheese with special sauce, and Chinese chicken.
When did you decide to start your own business?
I always dreamed about this, but for various reasons it did not work out. But six months
ago, I finally opened my own dairy kosher catering business.
Who do you cook for?
For now only for individual customers, but in the future we hope to begin working with
organizations and stores. We are already working on this. It has become a tradition in our
mountain community to offer breakfast to members of our congregation after Sunday
morning prayers, usually attended by 15 to 25 people.
What are your plans for the future?
I want my business to flourish, because I cook everything with love. May G‑d grant that
all my children succeed, especially my son who recently made Aliyah to Israel. In addition,
I wish my unmarried son to find a good Jewish girl. And, of course, peace to all of Israel,
so that not a single Jewish mother loses her children.
