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Harlem's queen of Ethiopian Jewish cuisine knows that the histories of Jews and Africans are inseparable

JL;DR SUMMARY Beejhy Barhany, the owner of Tsion Cafe in Harlem, is intertwining the histories of African and Jewish cultures through Ethiopian Jewish cuisine. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish DiasporaEthiopian JewsCultural HeritageCulinary TraditionsCookbookHarlemBeta IsraelTsion CafeBeejhy BarhanyGursha

Places mentioned

New York City, New York, United States
"Today, that very same space is home to Tsion Cafe, the only restaurant in New York City serving Ethiopian Jewish food."
Harlem, New York, United States
"Im standing in front of a stately brownstone in Harlem that used to house Jimmys Chicken Shack, an eatery and jazz joint where Art Tatum used to play, and where Charlie Parker, Malcolm X, and Redd Foxx all worked in the 1940s."
Ethiopia
"Barhany grew up in Ethiopia in the Beta Israel community, a group of Jews that has lived there since ancient times, and numbers around 168,000 in Israel and 2,500 in the United States."
Sudan
"In 1980, when Barhany was a child, she and her family left for Sudan on foot in the middle of the night, fleeing political violence."
Israel
"Two years later, they were smuggled into Israel, where Barhany spent much of her childhood."
Dominica
"Barhany leads me to the kitchen, where she hands me a hibiscus drink with ginger, orange, apples and cinnamon, inspired by trips to Dominica, her husbands birthplace."
Yemen
"Visitors can start a meal with plantain chips; eat spiced lentils for a main course; and finish with Yemenite malawach bread with date syrup."

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Cairo Item ID 57474
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2025-07-22 05:31:11 UTC
Curated 2025-07-22 08:30:36 UTC