From braai to brisket, Sharon Glass leaves a legacy

Sharon Glass didn’t just teach people how to make meals and share the recipes she created, she made it her mission to take people on a journey to foster a love for cooking.

Glass, who passed away last week after battling cancer since 2020, which she told few about, left a legacy in the homes of the community where her cookbooks will continue to be proudly and regularly used to make delicious meals.

“My mom’s philosophy around cooking was to make everything simple,” said her daughter, Teri Cohen. “Her biggest thing was making sure that cooking was a simple yet enjoyable task – whether that be making something from scratch or using store-bought things and integrating it into something amazing.”

Glass taught cooking lessons for more than 30 years from her home, and wrote nine bestselling cookbooks. She also had two cooking shows on the Home Channel, and had multiple appearances on Cook with Noeleen Maholwana Sangqu over five years.

Glass always had a love for the culinary arts and learned everything she knew from her mother and grandmother. It was only after she completed her schooling at Redhill that her family decided to move to Los Angeles, where she realised her passion for creating food.

While studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree in French at the University of Los Angeles, she got the opportunity to work part-time for the famous actor Danny Kaye. She was able to cook for him and his celebrity friends, and discovered a true passion for cooking.

There, she met her husband, Anthony, in 1983, and six weeks later, the pair were engaged and moved back to South Africa.

Back home and newly married, Sharon prepared everyday meals for people as well as for Shabbat. Their popularity resulted in her husband suggesting that she give cooking lessons.

Her first class back in 1986 had only four attendees. These grew over the years, with her largest class having 150 attendees. Sharon’s lessons would cover things as basic as spaghetti bolognaise and fried fish to intricate meze platters or apple tarts.

Said acclaimed kosher caterer Delores Fouche, “There are thousands of kitchens and dining tables the world over whose tastes and offerings are indebted to Sharon’s culinary flair, knowledge, expertise, and passion. Across her diverse lessons, she offered confidence and skill to new cooks, old cooks, trained cooks, all cooks.”

As well as training home chefs, Sharon would run team-building cooking classes for many large corporates from her home.

In 2000, Anthony and Sharon decided that the cooking classes weren’t enough and there was a need to write a recipe book so even those who didn’t come to lessons would be able to cook her dishes at home.

“We went to every publishing house,” said Anthony. “They weren’t so keen, so we published it ourselves. The first book was so popular, we decided to do more, and here we are where there are nine books in total,” he said.

Her books have been sold all over the globe, often landing in weird places like Hong Kong and Turkmenistan, and becoming bestsellers there.

She also gave “braai lessons”, which would cover everything a person needed to know about putting on the best braai. “The big thing for her was that she taught the husbands that it’s not just standing at the braai and turning the meat,” said Anthony. “They would get involved in making stuff like pizzas that we put on the braai, toasted sandwiches, stuff like that.”

Sharon took the role of being a mother seriously, and became the matriarch of the family after Anthony’s mother passed away.

“My mom was a true matriarch in every sense of the word,” said Cohen, “My grandmother defined what a matriarch was, and my mother refined it.”

Said Sharon’s other daughter, Ricci Kurman, “She would take charge, be the one arranging meals, co-ordinating everything – it’s weird without her here.”

Sharon would connect with anyone. “A simple run to Checkers that should only take 10 or 20 minutes would be like an hour because she would be talking to everyone around her,” said Kurman.

Although she never taught her children explicitly, all three have a love for being in the kitchen and now see it as a way to connect with her.

“She just had this ability to connect with people,” said Cohen, “And connect people with the world, to their Jewish roots, through cooking. But she never wanted to talk about herself. If she met somebody, it was always about them. It was never about her.”

When Sharon was diagnosed with cancer in June 2020, she kept the diagnosis private as she didn’t want anyone to see her as being sick.

“She said she wanted to live her life as if she didn’t have cancer,” said her son, Jake Glass, “So she would always make sure that she was positive, even when she wasn’t feeling well.”

“She wasn’t just the matriarch of our family, but our community,” said Cohen.

Sharon loved to share in the joy of food with others, and would help her community, whether that be through food donations to Yad Aharon or free cooking classes, and even launched a project with Community Assisting Schools.

Through this project, she ensured that 120 students at HA Jack Primary School would be fed two meals a day. Often those would be the only meals those pupils would get.

“She was quietly charitable, and never looked for any recognition,” said Anthony.

“Sharon shared the magic of Jewish cooking with women around the world, connecting them to their heritage in a deeply personal and spiritual way,” said Mira Hasofer, the principal of Moriah College in Sydney.

Said Fouche, “Each time someone, somewhere, opens a Sharon Glass cookbook and creates one of her recipes, that will forever be her legacy.”