Feb 27, 2026
Hi! My name is Brooklyn (Brukhe in Yiddish). I’ve been watching Est gezunterheyt as long as I can remember. I have watched each episode at least 100 times and I’ve followed every single recipe to the very last pinch of salt. For my birthday every year my mom buys me a different piece of cooking equipment that exactly matches items in Eve Jochnowitz’s kitchen. Every time I hear Eve and Rukhl announce what we’ll be making this episode, my heart melts into the noodles.
yum.
Last summer I had a chance to meet my favorite YouTube stars at Yidish Vokh, and I was so starstruck that I nearly fainted. Now that I’ve had the life-changing experience of sharing a meal with Eve and Rukhl, I wanted to share a few tips with my fellow Est gezunterheyt fangirls.
as the saying goes...
- Don’t try out your Est gezunterheyt lingo on your cooking idols. If you’re like me, you’ve been using cooking phrases you learned on Est gezunterheyt out of context with your friends for years. For example, sometimes when my best friend isn’t sure if he’s going to walk home or take the bus, and I think it would be totally fine either way, I tell him “di groytn ken men aynveykn oyb me vil ober me darf nisht” [You can soak the barley if you want, but you don’t have to]. I tried this out at Yiddish Vokh with my YouTube idols when I overheard them trying to decide whether to go to Yiddish origami or yoga, and they looked at me like es felt mir mebl in dakhkamer. Apparently you can’t just make up your own shprikhverter and expect people to know what you mean, even if the phrases come from your favorite YouTubers.
Don’t try to make your own videos of Eve and Rukhl without their permission. Maybe you’ve been watching these YouTube videos for years every night before you go to bed, but you have to remember that Eve and Rukhl don’t know who you are, and it’s pretty impolite, and weird, and really just wrong to take videos without their permission, apparently (I didn’t realize this before I made this faux pas, which is why I’m giving you this eytse). For example, if you see one of them cutting up some food with a knife, resist the impulse to zoom in on their hands and recite your favorite Est gezunterheyt moments. (Do you remember the one where they peel an apple with one long snake of peel? Or that amazing moment when they chop their onions so small that the pieces are the same size as rice kernels? I live for this show, people!)
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3. Don’t wear your self-made Est gezunterheyt merch when you meet your cooking idols for the first time. It turns out that they think it’s a little weird when they’re on their way to a leyenkrayz and they see strangers sporting t-shirts with their faces on them.
4. Don’t give your YouTube cooking idols any cooking advice. Listen, I know you’ve probably made their knishes every day for the past three months. I have too. I get it! Still, it’s probably not a good idea to tell them the knishes are better with Nutella on top (though honestly, what isn’t better with Nutella on top?). It’s not a good look when di eyer viln zayn kliger fun di hiner.
5. Eve and Rukhl are people, just like you. Last but not least, remember that these YouTube stars, no matter how many times you’ve studied their geshmake recipes or language, are actually people just like you and me. So when you meet them, take a deep breath and try not to totally go meshuge.
