Madison Safer is the author and illustrator of The Garlic Eaters, the latest title from Ayin’s sibling imprint Somewhere. Rooted in Jewish experiences of diaspora, The Garlic Eaters is a story for young readers about home, loss, and what it means to belong. Throughout history, garlic has followed Jewish communities—tucked into pockets, hung on doors, and shared with neighbors. Safer weaves that history into a tale of Yiddish imagination and tenderness, introducing young readers to the universal experience of starting over somewhere new—and finding, against all odds, a community to call your own.
To celebrate the The Garlic Eaters’s upcoming publication, Ayin interviewed Safer over email about her love of garlic and its history across Jewish communities; her journey with learning Yiddish and why she felt it was important to include in the book; and the power of both music and smell as conduits of memory, community, and creative expression.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ayin
Garlic has such a rich history across Jewish communities. What surprised you most as you learned about its place in Jewish life?
Madison Safer
Garlic is not only an important ingredient across the Jewish diaspora, but it has also served as more than just a delicious ingredient. It’s been used to ward away ayin hara (evil eye) by placing a clove in the pocket. It’s been said to increase fertility when eaten on a Friday night. It’s even been said to add protection from evil spirits on Tisha B’Av by placing cloves of garlic on tombstones. One of my favorite Yiddish expressions is about garlic: Az men est nisht keyn knobl, shtinkt men nisht (if you don’t eat garlic, you won’t smell), meaning if you live honestly, there’s nothing to hide.
Ayin
Why was it important to you to include Yiddish in the book, thereby grounding it in a specific Jewish culture?
MS
Yiddish is a huge part of my life and is the main lens through which I engage with Jewish culture. I started learning it around three years ago after becoming involved in community art projects that center on Yiddish. It was the first time I had witnessed Yiddish in its living context that was accessible to me. Yiddish has a long history of being politicized, feminized, and under-appreciated as a legitimate language. To me, almost everything there is to know about Ashkenazi culture can be found within this history. Learning Yiddish was my way of realigning to that history.
Some people who speak Yiddish may roll their eyes at “Yinglish,” or the modifying of Yiddish words during its integration to English. For most Ashkenazi Jews, these few words will be the only Yiddish they learn in their life. Yiddish is an incredibly adaptable language, absorbing words from its neighbors while keeping its own distinct nature. In this sense, transferring these words into English is well within its history. While the context of the words (and often the exact meanings) changes, these words have the ability to memorialize a part of Yiddish within its new context.
Ayin
The chipmunks initially recoil from the Garlic Eaters because of their smell. Why did you choose smell as the marker of difference?
MS
Otherness can easily be experienced outside of appearance. Because of the diaspora, the myth of a cohesive Jewish people is dissipating. I wanted to emphasize a sense that had a deeper connection with personal identity beyond what is seen. Smell is inescapable. I once had a bagel with garlic shmear that was so potent that it felt like wearing a cloak of garlic for days. Smell is something utterly impenetrable that often reaches an animalistic part of our brain. It can evoke hunger, disgust, nostalgia, and other intense emotions. This visceral response gets to the heart of how we experience discomfort around others: difference is something we can adjust to (and learn to appreciate) as long as we can learn to sit with the newness of it.
Ayin
Smell is tightly linked to memory, more so than other senses. Did certain scents or scent memories accompany you while writing or illustrating this book?
MS
I probably ate my way through five or six jars of pickled garlic scapes while working on the book. While I was making a new batch this year, the smell reminded me of the original reason I wrote the book: the love of garlic.
Ayin
More broadly, smell asks us to encounter the world differently than sight. We can close our eyes, but we can’t stop smelling. Did scent become a way for you to think about intimacy, proximity, or community?
MS
I think tuning into smell is like any meditation practice — it’s about learning to accept what is in our surroundings and how we’re part of that. When I think of the smell of community, I think of big pots of soup, glue from paper-mache puppets, and a rained-out event that everyone still braves. I’ve been trying to tune in more during these times and let the memories settle through smell. And even trying to do the same in less frequented places, too. There’s a lot to learn about how to relax your body into the unfamiliar. Scent is a great teacher of that.
Ayin
The fiddle appears throughout the book, both as a way of finding grounding after displacement and as a vehicle of joy. Why was it important that music accompanied this family wherever they went?
MS
Fiddle is traditionally used in Klezmer, a style of music often associated with celebration, dancing, or ritual melodies. There are specific techniques in klezmer that mimic the human voice, as if it were singing, laughing, or mourning. The sound of the fiddle is dramatic and expressive, making it perfect to punctuate a moment. So many klezmer songs are about moving through grief, heartbreak, and loss. This is such an important Jewish value — there is something worth memorializing in grief. The fiddle is used in a mourning period as well as the triumphant period of the Garlic Eaters’s story — it felt fitting to me to have this reference. Music, similar to smell, is better experienced than explained. When writing these scenes, I wanted to have the family express emotions outside of talking about them, using the music to lead them through transitional spaces. Because of the fiddle’s close relationship to Yiddish music, it seemed like the perfect motif.
We are indebted to our neighbors for being our teachers. We flourish as a community when that is reciprocal. That to me is the beauty of diaspora.
Ayin
This story feels particularly meaningful today, at a time when Jewish communities around the country are rethinking what it means to be in the diaspora. In your author’s note, you write that Jewish communities “develop new traditions — often in conversation with those neighbors — while still preserving older ones.” That feels like a very different story than the one we’re often told about assimilation. What interested you in portraying diaspora as an ongoing creative process? Can you share a bit more about the context out of which this story emerged? How does this book reflect your own relationship to diasporism?
MS
A few summers ago, I was lucky enough to go to Poland for a few weeks. It was heartbreakingly familiar — buying matzah at the local convenience stores, hearing well-known klezmer melodies sung in Polish, seeing fruit names at the market that I already knew from Yiddish. At times, it felt enraging to see the similarities — foods that were left behind while so many of the Jews were no longer there. Other times, it was a comfort, like a relic that was left for us to come back to. After returning home, I received a newsletter from my friend Yael Horowitz where she talked about her own experiences in Warsaw. This is what she said: “…you actually cannot tell the story of Polish history without Jewish history, and you cannot tell Jewish history without Polish history… We have to leave our specialness, our exceptionalism, our entitlement to history, to trauma, and to place behind in order to meet reality.” Yael is a good truthteller. Our histories belong to each other, and we are responsible to them. Jewish foods, culture, and words did not form from nothing — we have always influenced, and been influenced by, our neighbors, even when our experiences are not the same. I believe that diasporism is how we resist the urge to believe our own myth of exceptionalism: our pain and joy are ours, but they are also shared.
I am lucky enough to live in a vibrant community that is dedicated to social justice and making a better world for our neighbors. I have witnessed everything from selling watermelon seeds to support families in Gaza to puppet parades that raise money for undocumented neighbors. Out of these acts of solidarity came an abundance of creativity and community. We are indebted to our neighbors for being our teachers. We flourish as a community when that is reciprocal. That to me is the beauty of diaspora.
Ayin
This book invites young readers into questions of diaspora, displacement, difference, and belonging. Why did you want to explore those ideas through a children’s book? And how did writing for children shape the way you wove those themes into the story?
MS
Most kids have some experience of difference and belonging. It doesn’t have to be dramatic to be relatable. So many picture books these days have an emphasis on kindness. But I think kindness only scratches the service. Understanding why everyone deserves to be treated well, respectably, equitably, and fairly is another. I don’t think that I solved this question in The Garlic Eaters — that’s a pretty large task. But I do think that stories where difference is not just resolved but is also celebrated and integrated is a good start.
Ayin
If you had to live inside any vegetable besides garlic, which would you choose?
MS
Probably a radish or a beet! There’s a great translated version of “Der Retekh” (“The Radish”) in Yiddish that tells the tale of how it takes a whole family to pull a giant radish out of the ground. This scene is something seen all over Eastern European children’s stories, so it’s definitely easy to imagine being curled up in one of those illustrations.
Ayin
Where do you find inspiration for your illustrations — and your artistic style more broadly? In nature? In particular Jewish artistic traditions?
MS
I look at a lot of Eastern European illustrators like Yuri Vasnetsov or Feodor Rojankovsky — their work tends to have an honesty and bizarreness that I think really lends well to picture books. Other influences range from Jewish papercuts to Soviet animation and roadside folk art. I have a lifelong practice of sketchbook, where I try my best to hash out style, forms, and experiment, that is ever changing. And of course, my biggest influence is long walks in nature with my dog, Virginia Woof.
Questions written by Odessa Goldberg and Josh Kurtz
Reboot Studios is a Presenting Partner on The Garlic Eaters, supporting its development, release, and educational impact.
Madison Safer is an illustrator who is happiest in a forest full of mushrooms. She is inspired by Jewish paper cuttings, quilt patterns, and the warmth of a fire after a very cold day. When she is not napping or drawing, Madison is most often found drinking tea, practicing her challah braid, or stealing flowers. She is the illustrator of many children’s books, including Before Music: Where Instruments Come From (written by Annette Bay Pimentel) and Bring Back the Babka! (written by Marilyn Wolpin). Her forthcoming books include Hanukkah Is Here and Good Medicine (written by Kate Hoefler). Madison lives with her mischievous pup, Virginia Woof, in the sleepy hills of Western Massachusetts.