A Table Set for Memory
I am, as most of you know, a recovering food addict.
Wait. Recovery suggests you’re on to the next level of healing. I have to be honest. When it comes to food addiction, you are never healed. You learn awareness. You learn how to live with it. You build a mindfulness that lets you step back before you fall. But it’s always there. One slice of anything can send me into a binge.
My relationship with food is different now. It has to be. Because if it isn’t, it will kill me.
I’m in the middle of a three week world trip. Food has been at the center of every moment. Yes, I’ve seen incredible sights. But nothing has shaken me the way stepping into my first concentration camp did. There are no words. No preparation. Nothing can ready you for the weight that settles on your chest walking through those gates.
Food was what helped me shake that weight. Desperation. Sadness. Guilt. Knowing that I lost family members in those camps. Somehow, food gave me space to breathe. To process. To understand.
For most of my life, I believed I had no identity. Growing up in Florida, I told myself I came from a place with no real food culture. No roots. I spent years wishing I’d grown up somewhere else. Wishing I belonged to another culture. Wishing I could peel away the German Russian Jewish layers and be someone easier.
I carried this quiet shame of being Jewish. I hid it behind jokes, behind food, behind silence. I convinced myself Germany would always be a place that held only one story for me — pain. Hate. What they did to my people. That scar has lived in my soul as long as I can remember.
And then I came to Munich.
I need to say this to Germany. I am sorry. I judged you before I ever gave you a chance. I let the history define you. I let fear define me. I judged the book by its cover, and that’s on me.
That night in Munich, food cracked something open in me. Ambari restaurant. Rashmi and Kiran. Your food didn’t just feed me. It lifted me. It wrapped its arms around a table of people carrying the weight of Dachau on their backs and gave us a place to breathe again. Your kindness turned strangers into family.
Munich, your food woke something up in me. Some of those bites sent me straight through my timeline. I tasted my childhood. My grandparents. Safety. Love. I had always put German food in one box and Jewish food in another, like they couldn’t touch. Like they didn’t belong together.
But then the flavors hit me. Sausages. Pork. Mustard. Dill. Pickles. Sour. Sweet. Tang. And in my head I heard myself say, “I see you Germany.”
I realized something I had ignored my whole life. The food I grew up with was not just mine. It was shared. It was layered. It was part of this place too.
Germany didn’t erase my identity. It helped me see I always had one.
I am Jewish. I am the child of survivors. I carry their stories and my own. And I should never, ever be ashamed of that.
Walking through Dachau showed me the darkness. Sitting at that table showed me the light. Both are true. Both live here. And so do I.
That word… resilience.
I used to hear it like a compliment. Now I feel it in my bones. At almost fifty five, it means something different. Yes, I have wanted to end my life. Yes, I have walked through pain I thought would crush me. But I am still here.
Food still has a hold on me, but the grip has softened. I can breathe. I can taste without drowning. I can sit at a table and be present.
Traveling opened my eyes. Not just to other cultures, but to myself. It showed me the boy who used to hide in corners. The boy who didn’t know where he belonged. The boy who waited for Sundays with his grandparents because it was the only time he felt safe.
I see him now. I hold him now.
For years I let my trauma speak louder than my voice. I let it build walls between who I was and who I wanted to be.
But this trip, this food, this moment, has stripped those walls down.
The pain isn’t gone. But I’m here. I’m breathing. I’m tasting. I’m living.
And for the first time in a long time, I know who I am.
See the video below -
