On this celebratory Rosh Hashanah episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Amanda Dell, Vice President of Programs and Communications at the Jewish Food Society. She shares her Five Rules for Creating New Traditions through meaningful gatherings rooted in food, memory, and hospitality. From hosting a modern Seder to using her grandma’s heirloom plates, we discuss hosting in a way that’s inclusive, generous, & deeply personal, without losing the thread of tradition, both old & new.

As someone raising a family and navigating what it means to carry Jewish tradition forward, I’ve been thinking about how to celebrate the holidays in a way that feels personal, relevant, and connected. I’m not trying to replicate the past exactly, but I don’t want to lose it either. Amanda speaks directly to that balance. Her perspective shares the same permission to adapt—whether that’s hosting Rosh Hashanah dinner on a night when everyone can gather or adding new dishes to the Seder table—without guilt. It reminded me that what matters most is being with the people I love and creating something that’s ours.

When people ask me about how the community rebuilding effort in Altadena is coming along, I point to what Randy, April & the entire team at Good Neighbor Bar have done with their patio. Home of the fire map, they transformed their parking lot into a family-friendly patio, featuring a rotating pop-up of local restaurants. Now that space is in trouble, & we need your support, Please sign here and help us get the word out!

The Chef Assembly makes its annual LA stop on October 20th, with an impactful lineup of chefs and other culinary luminaries. The event will be held at ChowNow HQ and provide an inclusive space for connection between LA-based chefs, journalists, and industry colleagues from across the country and abroad. Supported by Resy, an American Express company, The Chef Assembly LA will consist of six panels, multiple delicious meal breaks, and a reception!

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I am joined by Amanda Dell, the Vice President of Programs and Communications for the Jewish Food Society. She is helping me ring in the Jewish New Year by sharing her five rules for creating new traditions. She talks about how honoring the past is the best way to create something new for the future, that the most important thing you can do is to get people together to celebrate, and how to always leave your guests wanting more. So Shana Tova and let’s get into the rules.

Amanda, happy new year on this air of Rosh Hashanah. I hope you got your apples and honey supply in check this year. So excited to chat today and feeling like we go way back, full circle, perfect for Rosh Hashanah in the new year. What I love about Jewish traditions is that they’re always centered around food, which I know is something that you have dedicated a good chunk of your life to with your work at the Jewish Food Society. Yeah. Why do you think good food and Jewish traditions go hand in hand?

What makes Jewish food so exciting and interesting, why it’s such an integral part of our life, is a couple of things. First of all, Jews live all over the world. We do. Our food reflects that. We get to bring some of our traditions, what we eat, depending on the climate, the terroir, the location. Food is actually part of a lot of our holidays. A holiday like Passover, a food that we eat like matzah, it’s part of the story. There’s a lot of symbolic food. That’s a really strong connection. And then there’s also in the same vein as matzah, Shabbat foods are foods that are cooked overnight. By following the religion, you get these foods that are specifically made for Shabbat and holidays. I think that’s what anchors a lot of Jewish food.

Speaking of Passover, one of my favorite traditions was us completing the second half of the Seder during hockey intermissions. What do you love about people taking these historic holidays and making their own traditions within them?

I love everything about that. When people want to honor the past, they want to bring some elements of their childhood, but they want to make them their own. To me, the perfect balance is bringing these two worlds together. At Jewish Food Society, we just did an amazing home visit with my friend Marissa Lippert. She’s a chef and writer. She has this recipe from her grandma Bibi for kuchen, which is the generic German word for cake. It’s something she grew up with. Phoebe would make it for Rosh Hashanah with apple, something very traditional. For Marissa, who’s a chef, she puts her own spin on it. It makes it all seasons of the year based on what’s at the market. She’s feeling kind of puts her own spin on things.

I think for people in our age range, I’ll say, I think this is the pivotal time to move things into your domains. It feels natural amongst me and my friends that when you’re younger and there’s a lot of kids in the family, it’s more natural to do these holidays and for everyone to come to the grandparents. But then as the older generation passes away and people start having their own families, that’s the time it naturally morphs into the next generation.

Creating tradition for our generation can be exciting because you get to bring your own perspective onto it, but it can also be really terrifying. I remember the first time I changed something a little bit in my grandma’s recipe and I was so nervous for her to try it and she wound up loving it and we had this connection over food and me taking her recipe and making something new. What is the right mindset to have when you want to change a tradition and create something new?

Honestly, it’s as simple as the act of just being inspired by what has come before you. I love that. It’s about thinking about that family member, remembering the tastes, remembering the smells, what the house was like by just updating something or being inspired by something that’s more seasonal. It’s really just about doing it. I really love this idea of taking all that you’ve experienced in your life, all that you celebrated, and really making it your own, which is why I’m so excited for you to be here to share your five rules for creating new tradition. Now, whether you’re Jewish or you have a different cultural background, there has been so much that has happened that one can pull from to really find inspiration. And your first rule focuses on looking backwards to make the future yours.

Number one we touched on a little bit. Honor the past while looking forward. I kind of cheat this one because I actually live in my grandmother’s apartment. I totally get a pass there because it’s truly honoring the past. My grandmother was a truly amazing person, and I grew up in a family that loves food, but my grandmother went to college. She had a job. She was interested in traveling. She was interested in going out to dinner. So for her, it was never about cooking all the time and being in the kitchen. She wanted to be more modern than that. But loved food and loved eating. So I think she would be so thrilled to see her home filled with my friends, with my sister, with my nephew. I saved some of her most special plateware and pieces. And I love to use those. And that’s one way I kind of hold on to the past, but lets me then explore more what I want to cook.

That’s so beautiful. Yeah. The thing about holidays is that they come around every year, no matter where you are in your life. And so that means when you’re getting people together and you’re celebrating, that doesn’t always mean you’re going to be on the same page. But your second rule talks about having that openness to host and celebrate with people who might be in a different spot than you are at that time. What’s your rule number two?

Rule number two and rule number three go hand in hand. Second rule, meet people where they are. Third rule is the most important thing is getting people there. I just try to really put myself in someone else’s shoes of all the people that I want to invite and be like, okay, when is it most convenient for everyone? If it has to be on the second night of a holiday, if it has to be shifted a little bit, we’re not waiting till sundown if it’s not convenient for everyone. It’s really about meeting people where they are is like the best way I can describe it. I don’t put so many guardrails around exactly when we’re doing it in a certain way. And there’s always room for another person. Yes. That is my third rule. It’s about getting people there. Assemble a great group and everything will be totally fun as long as you get people there.

Even if it’s not a traditional group. Totally. For Passover last year, I co-hosted with my sister. It was at her place. We had some friends that weren’t Jewish. We had some friends that I never celebrated holidays with before. We had my nephew there who was two. So we had to do like a lot of story time and going through the Seder plate, which was so fun and doing a very two-year-old focused explanation. And then once he went to bed, we broke out more wine.

Pouring that extra wine and having extra dishes, even if they traditionally don’t go with the dinner or celebration at hand, has always allowed me as a host to relax and also allowed me to push the guests to really indulge and to enjoy themselves. And this type of hospitality aligns with your rule number four.

This is a big rule for me. Be generous with the food and the drink. Huge. I love to create something that’s really bountiful. Not to hate on anyone, but I think we’ve all been to events or gatherings where it’s very twee, very intimidating. And I hate that. I like to set up a drink area where people can pour their own drinks. I love to just have a lot of variety and make it as visually beautiful as it can and people feel comfortable to dive in.

And not get too caught up in what one might expect from food and drink. Totally. Totally. I love to do a combination of something that’s more modern, meaning that could be like in the plateware, that could be like in the ingredients, and then do something that’s on my grandmother’s china or other things that feel like a little more fancy. I like a balance between those two things.

And people are always also welcome to bring stuff. Yeah. This isn’t one of my rules. Bonus rule. It’s typically what happens with my friends. Love to have bonus items. Which I can tell you right now, the idea of anyone bringing extra dishes to my grandmother’s Seder. Right. Unless you were assigned. Unless someone had the haroset. Yeah. But even that, not at our house. It feels like a relic of the past, although I respect their generation so much because that was their pride. Yes. That was what they felt was their job. They loved to do that. And I don’t want to take anything away from them. It’s just not how things are done now.

So you’ve had people over. You’ve mixed it up. The old and the new. Yeah. Your fifth and final rule focuses on this type of feeling when people leave your house.

My fifth rule, which this was, by the way, so fun to get to write these because the last one is something that I always have to remind my friends of, which is always leave them wanting more. There’s a crescendo to every event, whether it’s something that I’m hosting, whether it’s something that I do for work. You know, when your event is at the high point you feel the energy in the room everyone is laughing and you want to hold on to that moment. I truly feel that it’s important to know when the event or the night is over. Instead of people hanging out too long it’s more about when the night is over you want people being like oh my gosh when can we do that again. Yeah.

This is getting very funny and personal. But I am an early to bed, early to rise type of person. You’ve picked a life of hosting that doesn’t always work with that type of approach. Yes. So it’s a delicate balance. Yeah. This is something for life too. I want to hold on to the feeling of a great night and I want to leave on that feeling. When it veers into a territory where you’ve been there a little too long, then you start getting tired. Someone drops a glass. You don’t know where your shoes are. And then it’s just like, you don’t leave with the best feeling. All this is leave on a high note.

Well, that’s the type of tradition that I think anyone can get behind. Amanda, thank you for sharing. If people want to learn more about the Jewish Food Society or when the next great nosh is going to be, where can they go? How can they follow along?

We are at Jewish Food Society on all platforms. You can visit our archive at jewishfoodsociety.org and sign up for our newsletter. We send beautiful recipes and stories a few times a month. And you can follow the Great Nosh at the Great Nosh Picnic.

Incredible. Enjoy your feast tonight. Thanks. Happy New Year, Shana Tova. And hopefully we can bring some new traditions together sometime soon. Okay, sounds good. Really appreciate you taking the time to chat and I hope I get to see you soon. Shana Tova.

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