My grandparents lived in Tbilisi (my grandfather was a Tbilisi Armenian, and my grandmother, a Jew on her mother’s side, evacuated to Georgia from Kharkiv as a teenager and stayed there).

When I was little, in the 1980s, every winter, they would send us a package from sunny Georgia to our home in the Moscow suburbs. The package was filled with wonders: basturma, churchkhela, dried persimmons, kinglet persimmons, and mandarins. Each kinglet and mandarin was wrapped in a piece of newspaper.

One day, my dad noticed a recipe for Moldovan pies—vărzăre—on one of those newspaper scraps. That recipe became a staple in our family.

Nearly 40 years have passed since then. Last year, during Rosh ha-Shanah—our very first Rosh Hashanah in Israel—my mom was visiting us. My daughter had just started at a new preschool. She didn’t speak Hebrew yet and was very shy. The preschool hosted a celebration and asked parents to bring a dish for the holiday.

I convinced my mom to make vărzăre with apples. She really didn’t feel like it, but I persisted. That evening, after the celebration, I received a WhatsApp message from the mother of one of the girls. She told me her daughter was absolutely thrilled with “Zhenya’s grandma’s pies” and wished us a happy holiday.

One thing led to another, and I invited them over “for pies,” marking the beginning of a wonderful friendship—for both the adults and the girls. The girls adapted to preschool together, went to school together, and even supported each other during their first-ever air raid siren. They’ve been inseparable ever since, always there for one another.