Teiglach came along with Tina Wasserman when she moved to Dallas in the 1980s.

Wasserman, a cooking teacher and the food columnist for Reform Judaism magazine, didn’t literally transport clumps of the sticky pastries whose dough is wrapped around nuts and simmered in honey syrup. But among her most cherished possessions, she packed her recipe for the traditional Rosh HaShanah sweet hailing from Lithuania.

“No one had seen it down here,” said Wasserman, the author of “Entree to Judaism: A Culinary Exploration of the Jewish Diaspora (URJ Press, 2010), until she served the dessert to her new friends.

The Jews are called the People of the Book. I like that title. It connotes a sense of seriousness, learnedness and a connection to a word and a history that passes from one generation to the next. The only problem with a book, especially one written in history, is it rarely describes tomorrow. When entrenched in our history such book cannot focus on hope for the future.

The Jewish people of the Book are a people that are wedded to history. And, much of our history is riddled with challenge and sorrow. We are a people that are quick to look back and hesitant to look forward. We have good reason. We were hated in almost every land we inhabited before 1776. We faced pogroms and slander and boycott and death all for our beliefs and the manner in which we expressed those beliefs. We pushed forward against the hatred and persevered. As such, we are hard wired to be a people of memory, pain and yesterdays.

Just in time for summer cooking and entertaining — and thinking ahead for the early onset of the High Holy Days (Rosh HaShanah is Sept. 9), here’s a taste of “Simply Southern — With a Dash of Kosher Soul.” Tracy Rapp and Dena Wruble are the editors of the book, a fund-raiser for the Margolin Hebrew Academy/Feinstone Yeshiva of the South (formerly the Memphis Hebrew Academy) in Memphis, Tenn. The book showcases “traditional kosher recipes turned Southern and traditional Southern recipes turned kosher.” Cooks can learn about Jewish life in the South through personal stories of some of the contributors and color photographs accompany many of the Jewish “soul food” recipes.

The book is a compilation of almost 300 Southern cuisine “classic” recipes, adhering to kashrut, chosen from 1,500 entries by the book’s editorial committee at the school, a small Orthodox day school. More than 2,500 copies have been sold since the book’s release in December.

Millions of Fourth of July fuses waiting to be lit are a good sign for Bruce Zoldan and his family business, the B.J. Alan Company, the second largest importer and wholesaler of consumer fireworks in the United States.

But it’s already been a pretty hectic year thanks to their unwanted role in the failed Times Square bombing: The consumer-grade firecrackers that were used in the car bomb were purchased from a B.J. Alan distributor in Pennsylvania.

“The M88 he used wouldn’t damage a watermelon,” Zoldan was quoted as saying in an Associated Press story. “Thank goodness he used that.”

What stands for those who have fallen?

As a small boy, I played with green plastic soldiers. Sometimes after they died in backyard battle, I would mark their passing with a little cross made of twigs.

Even then it seemed off.

This Memorial Day weekend — before you load the car, board the plane, or hit the mall — contemplate another trip, one of recognition for those American Jewish men and women who died in the service of their country. Since Jews have served in America’s armed services from the Colonial period up to Afghanistan, there are many possible destinations.

Like to stay up late and party all night?

Do I have a Jewish holiday for you.

Shavuot, literally “weeks,” is the festival marking the end of the seven-week period of the counting of the omer that began the second night of Passover. The two-day festival, which begins this year at sundown on May 18, is celebrated as the giving of the Torah.

Recently my 3-year-old granddaughter played with a music box she had received from her parents at Chanukah.

“What is Chanukah?” I asked her.

“It’s the candle holiday,” she said.

At such an early age, she was impressed by the drama of this powerful symbol. Yet she’s not old enough to realize that Jewish holidays are rife with symbols that spark the imagination and sometimes memories of favorite foods.

If Purim is the hamantaschen holiday, Passover the matzoh holiday, then Shavuot could be considered the dairy holiday.

For those who feel it’s not Shavuot without cheesecake, here are two recipes that have come our way.

The first is from Jamie Geller from quick&osher.com and author of “Quick & Kosher: Recipes From the Bride Who Knew Nothing” (Feldheim Publishers, 2007).