Celebrate National Pickle Month with fermentation expert and revivalist, Sandor Katz, and the Workers Circle CEO, Ann Toback. Sandor and Ann will take us through all things pickles, a lifelong love of theirs, including what makes sour pickles special and how sauerkraut, kimchi, and all fermented vegetables are pickles. Katz will delve into a recipe for Pao-cai, Chinese pickles, from his newest book, Fermentation Journeys, and discuss Jewishness and transformation as it relates to his work.

Sandor Ellix Katz is the author of five books: Wild Fermentation; The Art of Fermentation; The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved; Fermentation as Metaphor; and his latest, Fermentation Journeys. Katz’s books, along with the hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught around the world, have helped to catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts. A self-taught experimentalist who lives in rural Tennessee, the New York Times calls him “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene.” Katz is the recipient of a James Beard award and other honors.

Ann Toback is the CEO of the Workers Circle. The first female CEO of the organization, Toback has served in her position for more than 14 years, leading the organization through a reboot process, resulting in today’s Workers Circle, a social justice organization that finds inspiration and power in Yiddish language and Eastern European activist tradition of resistance, resilience, and cultural engagement. Under Toback’s leadership, the Workers Circle has worked fiercely to remain on the frontlines in the struggle to build a multi-racial, multi-cultural democracy that both works and is accountable to every one of us.

A lifelong progressive activist – whose grandparents met at a union hall – and trained attorney, Toback previously worked as a union leader at the Writers Guild of America, East, serving as the Assistant Executive Director during her tenure from 1999-2008. A highlight of Ann’s union career was successfully leading the 2007-2008 Writers Guild strike on the East Coast. Previously, Toback served as an attorney at Rosenberg and Shapiro. She attended Boston University School of Law (J.D., Mediation and Litigation) and SUNY Buffalo (B.A., English Language and Literature/Letters).

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