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You Are What They Ate: Russian Jews Reclaim Their Foodways

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Abstract

The subject of this essay is the attempt of a new generation of Russian Jews to reestablish Jewish identity through the writing and publishing of Jewish cookbooks. After looking at ways in which Russian and Russian-Jewish foodways diverge, and then at ways in which Russian-Jewish cookbooks differ from representative post-Soviet ethnic cookbooks, the essay turns to the peculiarities of the books themselves. The books are very serious, and in a way impersonal: there is not a single reference to families or place or past life; there's not a single joke. Many refer in their introductions to loss and to the difficulty of rediscovery. All have great difficulty with kashruth.

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Volume/Issue

25(1)

Page Number / Article Number

63-77

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Link to article (paywalled), You Are What They Ate: Russian Jews Reclaim Their Foodways

Bibliographic Information

Nakhimovsky, Alice S. You Are What They Ate: Russian Jews Reclaim Their Foodways. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. 2006: 63-77.  https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1353/sho.2006.0136