Sarah Thomas well remembers the 30 pans of chicken tetrazzini that came out of her mom Amy Printz’s kitchen each spring for the Beth Israel Bazaar, and the cake that was such a hit folks still mention it five years since Beth Israel Congregation last held the event, back in 2019.
The bazaar’s 2020 edition fell victim to the pandemic and Covid-19 put a pause on Beth Israel’s more than 50-year track record with the popular fundraiser that pulled the metro Jackson community together over plates of Jewish favorites and more at the synagogue. Community interest buzzed in the bazaar’s absence these past few years, so longtime bazaar volunteers studied the landscape, assessed the possibilities and got to work restarting the engines.
Its revival this spring on Wednesday, March 26, sees the bazaar back in action, with a modest scale back in line with the now smaller congregation and volunteer corps. The 2025 event will be Beth Israel’s 53rd bazaar, held 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on March 26, at the synagogue at 5315 Old Canton Road in Jackson.
Behind the scenes, co-chairmen Mindy Humphrey, Betsy Samuels and Tamar Sharp oversee logistics and a network of volunteers digging into various aspects of the event, from group cooks to stock freezers with foods for the hot line of Jewish favorites to assembling items for the Silent Auction and Timeless Treasures Sale (formerly White Elephant Sale), and selling Raffle tickets (prizes include weekend beach house stay, Fairview Inn overnight with perks and season passes to New Stage Theatre). Individuals are also busy on the home front, cooking casseroles and desserts for the Frozen Take-Home Food Sale.
This year, the bazaar’s hot meal choice is a $20 Jewish Food Tasting Plate — cabbage rolls, noodle kugel, carrot tzimmes, matzo ball soup and rugelach — for onsite dining in the social hall (and possibly outside, weather permitting). Pulling tables and chairs into the social hall, the hub of bazaar activity, will enhance the event’s community feel. Takeout plates are available, too, if people need to head back to work. Call-in orders are accepted between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on the day of the bazaar, Wednesday, March 26. Call 601-956-6215 or email bicbazaar2025@gmail.com.
Congregation elders long ago set the example for the younger set to come along and join the fold of volunteers. “I remember seeing her put a lot of work and effort into this, and of course the day of, she’d be up here and volunteering,” Thomas said of her mom, Amy Printz. “I don’t think I understood what that meant, until I was a grownup and I would come and volunteer.”
She recalled making Reuben sandwiches under the watchful eyes of Printz and aunt Michele Schipper, keepers of the lineage from parents Irv and Judy Feldman and their storied Olde Tyme Deli. “Then it was like, ‘Oh, I guess I could make food for the freezer. OK, I cannot make 30 chicken tetrazzinis, but I could make a few spinach lasagnas.
“It’s just always been really neat to figure out how to contribute and what to do, and I think it’s really cool now — Ruby will get to see it in action,” she said, smiling at daughter Ruby, 7, sitting nearby. “We’re excited this year, to be back at it.”
The family is back at it in the home kitchen, too. Thomas and Printz are joining forces to produce 10 chicken spinach lasagnas together. “I’m easing back into it,” Printz said with a chuckle. The cake, which shall not be named lest a frenzy ensues, is a golden (and hectic) memory.
And that chicken tetrazzini? Printz suggested her sister pick up that mantle, always a hit, when Schipper moved back to town years ago. Schipper pulled her googled recipe back out for the restart, noting just the thing for an event like this: a multiplier. Quadruple it a couple of times and things are good to go for the freezer sale. “Thus far, there’s 13 made,” she said, earning praise from her sister and niece. “We’ll see how many more. I’m also on matzo ball duty.” She’s among several volunteers making the dumplings that add comforting texture to chicken soup, and eyeing a target of 1,000 matzo balls for the hot line at the bazaar.
Active participants in the chummy sisterhood that stretches back decades at Beth Israel, they swap stories, laughing fondly over such quick fixes as the cherry pie filling that hid cracks in a cheesecake and spared the baker’s feelings.“That was the ritual,” Printz said. “It was just so much fun, and all these wonderful women that you grew up with. First our grandmothers and their contemporaries, then our mothers. … It’s a wonderful generational thing.”
For this crew, duties dovetail with a family love for talking about food and figuring out production. “This will be our first time cooking together for the bazaar since probably I helped when I was in middle school or high school,” Thomas said, “and by that I mean I think I probably just did some taste testing and I may have helped stir something.” Ruby and her little brother, Jack, 4, both enjoy being in the kitchen, so the lineage looks strong for the future.
Schipper said, “We learned that cooking for family and friends is our way to show love, and I think that has definitely translated through the generations.”
In a way, the bazaar shares that love with the wider community family. The metro area public has missed this bazaar in the five years of its hiatus, and so have they. “March comes and goes, or you remember, ‘Wait, wasn’t it February when we were rolling cabbage?’ — all those kinds of moments,” Schipper said.
“We’re part of the greater Jackson community, and we’d like folks to come back and to share in the joy of good food and visiting people, and welcoming people back into the building.”
