Meet Shula Knafo, who immigrated from Casablanca at age 6 and raised a family in Yeruham, hosts visitors with her sumptuous ethnic dishes.
The Culinary Queens encounter includes listening to the women’s individual stories.
Knafo tells us how she immigrated with her parents and grandmother from Casablanca as a six-year-old girl. The family had 10 children and she married young to escape the male-dominated restraints her father imposed.
She talks frankly about her difficult marriage and proudly about her children: about one son who is a commander of an elite IDF unit, about another son who is a diplomat, about her victory in getting proper treatment for her child with special needs who today has a full-time job at a supermarket.
And, of course, about her grandchildren.
Shula Knafo at the entrance to her Yeruham house. Photo by Or Alexenburg
When her husband died, she was left without any savings or pension, having worked for most of her life as a housecleaner. It was then that she was recruited for the Culinary Queens, and slowly she began reestablishing herself, she said.
She got her driver’s license, enlarged her patio and took a course in entrepreneurship.
But she didn’t stop there. When she could stand on her own two feet she established an organization which every year organizes a culinary charity event and with the proceeds takes children and families in the welfare system to an attraction or site they otherwise would never get to visit.
