Abstract: The main issue explored in this thesis is how and why food is used as a channel through which everyday identities are informed and elaborated. The thesis explores when, how and in which circumstances food and the activities involved in its preparation, consumption and exchange can be used as vehicles for identities. My ethnographic focus is on the Jewish population of Thessaloniki, the largest and most economically viable city of Northern Greece. The Jewish past of this city is quite remarkable: the Thessalonikian Jews remained a significant part of the overall population and existed continuously until early twentieth century. Dramatic events during the twentieth century and in particular the coming of Asia Minor refugees in 1922-3 and the Second World War in 1939-45 caused significant upheavals and resulted in a radical reduction of the city's Jewish population. My ethnographic data confirm that this turbulent history is reflected in the construction of present-day Thessalonikian Jewish identities. Food and the associated activities like preparing, serving, eating, talking and remembering through food are explored as meaningful contexts in which the Jews of Thessaloniki make statements about their past, create their present, construct or reject collective identifications, express their fears and preoccupations, imagine their future. The identities of my informants were multiple and complex. Being Jewish interacted with being Sephardic, Thessalonikian and Greek. In the thesis I argue that food was a way of experiencing and expressing these identities. I use the term "community" cautiously since it fails to reflect the complexity of Thessalonikian Jewish experiences and the varying degrees of identification by individuals with that community. Different degrees of belonging are considered in relation to gender, age, economic and social status. Therefore, the ambivalence or often the reluctance of Jewish people living in Thessaloniki to be identified as members of "a community" is an important theme of the thesis. Another important theme discussed is the tension and the overlapping between religion and tradition meaning kosher diet and Sephardic food as it is translated and perceived by the Jewish people themselves.
Abstract: András Koerner is the author of a number of critically acclaimed, award-winning CEU Press titles on the cultural history of Hungarian Jews and Jewish cuisine. This volume continues that tradition by discussing the phenomenon of exhibits on Jewish culinary culture in museums and galleries around the world.
The first part of the book provides an overview of the cultural history of "foodism" and the proliferation of Jewish museums. In addition, it examines the role of cuisine in Jewish identity. It offers an analysis of the history and recent examples of exhibitions on Jewish culinary culture, a subject that has not received scholarly attention until now.
The second part complements this by offering a detailed case study of the book’s subject. It showcases a 2022 exhibition in Budapest on the History of Hungarian Jewish Culinary Culture. András Koerner was the co-curator of the show, thus he is able to offer an insider’s account of its implementation – concept, scope, goals, audience, and design. He also openly discusses the compromises made and mistakes committed in the exhibition’s preparatory work.
This subjective account, quite different from the dry objectivity of catalogues, offers an unusual, behind-the-scenes look at how a complex exhibition like this is prepared. At the same time, the book’s appendix includes images of the display boards and some of the exhibited objects – thus it can also stand for a valuable ex-post catalogue.
Abstract: Jewish-Roman cuisine, the traditional food of one of Europe’s longest-standing Jewish communities, is among Italy’s most distinctive hyper-local repertoires. Gastronomes increasingly acknowledge the importance of Jewish foodways for Italian cuisine, but a few famous “signature dishes” often dominate popular ideas of Jewish food in Italy. In Rome, carciofi alla giudìa – deep-fried “Jewish-style” artichokes – have long been used to symbolize the diverse and complex Jewish-Roman tradition. Blending ethnographic methods with discourse analysis, I ask how and why carciofi alla giudìa occupy this role, and what this means for contemporary Jewish-Roman identity. I then examine a selection of “origin stories” behind other dishes in the Jewish-Roman tradition, arguing that going beyond the near-ubiquitous artichoke can complicate and enrich our understanding of Jewish-Roman history, culture, and identity. Rather than attempting to prove or disprove these stories, I analyze them as tools for self-fashioning. I identify a variety of characteristics that these narratives are used to communicate: including ancient roots; resilience and resourcefulness; and an openness to new arrivals and external influences. Finally, I interrogate the relationship between the Jewish-Roman tradition and the city’s cuisine at large, arguing that this too has important repercussions for Roman and Jewish-Roman self-perception and identity.
Abstract: In the twenty-first century, Rome’s former Jewish Ghetto has experienced rapid “foodification,” in which food businesses come to dominate a previously residential or mixed-use neighborhood. Why and how has foodification taken place in Rome’s former Ghetto, and how unique is this case? What can this example teach us about foodification as a phenomenon? Foodification is influenced by broader forces, including gentrification, but is also affected by factors particular to this neighborhood. These include Jewish heritage tourism; religious dietary laws; and a growing curiosity about hyper-local food, such as cucina ebraico-romanesca (Jewish-Roman cuisine), and about dishes outside the Italian canon. Jewish-style and kosher restaurants have developed to stimulate and satisfy multiple demands, serving “traditional” Jewish-Roman dishes; Middle-Eastern and North African dishes; new interpretations of popular Italian dishes; and kosher versions of international foods popular in Italy, like hamburgers and sushi rolls. Contrary to the idea that this diversity threatens the Jewish-Roman tradition, I argue that the neighborhood’s foodscape reflects the variety of communities and tastes in contemporary Rome, where local specialties persist alongside a wide range of other options. This article argues that although foodification is often connected to gentrification and tourism, it should be distinguished from these phenomena. By asking how the former Ghetto’s new restaurants communicate heritage and identity, I demonstrate that foodification can take place in ways that are specific to a particular neighborhood, and that the food has become one of the major means by which the former Ghetto’s past and present character is articulated in Rome.
Abstract: This chapter focuses on the construction and expression of Jewish identity through food in current-day Barcelona based on historical research and anthropological fieldwork. The Jewish population of Barcelona is at once small and vastly diverse, consisting of immigrants from Morocco, Turkey, Argentina, the United States, Poland, and many other countries. This chapter examines how the food habits and customs of these diverse populations interact with each other. It focuses on the culinary and cultural fusion―or lack thereof―between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities of Barcelona, the observance of kashrut on a collective and individual level, and the conceptualization of ‘Jewish food’ as a cultural term even when it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what the term ‘Jewish food’ means. For today’s Jewish population in Barcelona, is ‘Jewish food’ a reality, a fabrication based on nostalgia, or a re-creation of a lost identity?
Abstract: The Hebrew term kosher means ‘fit’ or ‘proper’ and it traditionally signifies foods that conform to Jewish dietary law (kashrut). This article explores how kosher is understood, practised and contested in contemporary Denmark. In recent years, the rules regulating kosher consumption have been supplemented by elaborate rules concerning globalised mass production, which have had an impact on the way people handle questions of kashrut. During the same period, global markets for kosher have proliferated; this article explores the everyday kosher consumption among Jews in Denmark in the light of these transformations. Everyday kosher consumption among a minority group such as Jews in Denmark is not well understood, and I argue that globalised forms of regulation increasingly condition this type of consumption. Even though Denmark is a small and relatively secular country and Jews comprise only about 7,000 individuals, kosher production and regulation have national economic significance. Methodologically, I build on ethnographic data from contemporary Denmark, that is, participant observation and interviews.
Abstract: The relationship between food and religion is a lived activity formed by the dynamics of both tradition and adaption. Religious commitments to food are influenced by various factors, ranging from personal spirituality and experiences to social patterns of belonging, ethical, political and doctrinal convictions. Challah, gefilte fish, blintzes – these are just a few of the traditional Finnish Jewish meals that are still prepared by members of the community. The originally Eastern European dishes are one of the last living links that connect assimilated Finnish Jews with their Orthodox Jewish ancestors mainly from Russia, Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania. The current paper aims to present the conceptions and reflections relating to boundaries of identity connected with the multi-ethnic culinary traditions of Jews living in Finland as well as their ways of coping with the requirements of kashrut (meaning fit, proper, correct; a set of dietary laws prescribed for Jews). The article is based on ethnographic data from interviews (2015–16) as well as personal encounters, informal conversations and home visits.
Abstract: Kosher food is not necessarily the same as 'Jewish' food. The thesis explores ideas of Jewish identity in Britain in relation to food, examining the period from the end of austerity in the mid-1950s until the beginning of the twenty-first century. The period starts with Britain's emergence from the strictures of rationing and the development of an era of abundance and choice that has led, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to a complex and ambivalent relationship between food and society. The thesis explores food in relation to the histories of diverse British Jewish communities and individuals deploying a range of evidence including oral histories, memoirs, journalism and cookery books. It studies the practice of Jewish identity and food, looking at Jewish communities ranging from the strictly Orthodox to progressive Jews. Theories of place, displacement and circuitry in the context of a global food economy are central to the thesis as are ideas of memory, myth and ritual. The first two chapters study the religious, political and social context of kosher food practice in Britain, analysing relations between the ecclesiastical authorities, the kosher food industry and consumers in which issues of class and gender are pivotal. Non-Jewish responses to kosher food are also examined. The third chapter interrogates the culinary origins of Ashkenazi and Sephardi food in Britain in the context of the globalization of the food industry, questioning how this affects the 'Jewishness' of specific culinary practices. The final chapter investigates the meaning and development of Jewish food rituals with respect to Sabbath and festival observance. The thesis suggests that despite the particularity of Jewish practice in relation to food, and the specific circumstances of the Diaspora, the Jewish practice of identity through food should not be treated as exceptional. The concept of 'Jewish' food is as problematic and as valid as the identification of any other group with a specific cuisine.
Abstract: Ce travail s'inscrit au croisement des sciences economiques et des sciences sociales. Il part d'un constat economique, celui de l'extraordinaire croissance, dans les annees 70 a 80, d'un marche, qui vingt ans auparavant n'etait qu'embryonnaire : le marche des produits cacher. Il presente les enjeux d'une telle vigueur : enjeux religieux, symboliques et identitaires d'une part, enjeux economiques et de pouvoir d'autre part. L'etude des pratiques alimentaires juives en modernite, en tant que "fait social total", permet de saisir l'organisation materielle d'une consommation symbolique. L'alimentation, parce que symboliquement centrale en tant que pratique sociale, est un angle d'approche ideal pour une sociologie religieuse du judaisme. Les observations conduite dans le domaine de la cacheront informent sur les juifs de france en dehors de ce seul domaine, mais aussi sur la place de l'alimentation dans toute societe humaine. Cette these s'articule sur deux axes : d'une part croire-pratiques-identites et d'autre part economie-institutions-pouvoir. Les consommateurs, effectifs ou potentiels, dans leur pratiques et leurs representations, etablissent un certain rapport aux textes prescriptifs, face a cela, les acteurs economiques et institutionnels, agissent selon des normes de la tradition, mais aussi selon des logiques propres, logiques de survie financiere et de pouvoir. Ces imbrications se mettent en place pour produire une configuration particuliere nommee economie du croire. Ce concept rend compte de la facon dont deux rationalites, l'une religieuse, l'autre economique, se font face, tantot s'affrontant, tantot se renforcant l'une l'autre. Si l'ethique juive prone un equilibre ideal entre les interets economiques et la necessite d'une solidarite collective, assuree par la centralite accordee au don, qu'en est-il dans les faits ? n'y a-t-il pas une tentation du veau d'or, c'est a dire une inversion entre les fins et les moyens, entre l'ethique et la technique, entre l'objet et le sens ?
Abstract: Il s'agit dans cet article d'éclairer les pratiques alimentaires d'une population juive originaire de Tunisie, installée en milieu urbain, dans le quartier de Belleville, à Paris (XXe arrondissement), depuis une quarantaine d'années. A partir d'observations et de matériaux collectés dans les familles, l'auteur retrace la réalité des pratiques alimentaires dans leur rapport à plusieurs pôles culturels. Le pôle tunisien, avec une prédominance de plats « traditionnels » lors des repas festifs, le pôle français avec une récupération de notions clés un temps catégorisées comme propres à la cuisine française (haute cuisine, légèreté, modernité), et désormais appliquées à la cuisine tunisienne, ainsi qu'un maintien de certaines pratiques alimentaires (le petit déjeuner français) ou l'adoption d'autres (le « steak-frites » ou le « poulet rôti »). Le pôle juif qui oppose les générations quant à l'observance des règles de la cacherouth, et un pôle « exotique » qui témoigne de la capacité de cette population à adopter certaines pratiques alimentaires de ses voisins. Ces pratiques illustrent la difficulté de parler d'essentialisme identitaire, au profit d'identités culturelles aux multiples facettes.
Abstract: Abstract There is a very small, yet important minority within the community of European Union kosher consumers. There is a great deal of research regarding objective aspects of the kosher religious as well as civil laws and their implementation, but comparatively little research about the subjective attitudes, opinions, and concerns of those who actually purchase and consume kosher food. Such information can be important for a variety of interested parties including suppliers, distributors, regulatory agencies, legislators, and certifying agencies as well as religious authorities. We collected relevant data by organizing hour-long Focus Groups (FG) in five European cities and a suburb of Tel Aviv. The FG addressed consumer attitudes related to shopping practices, commitment, trust, and certification as well as their knowledge and opinions regarding nonhuman animal welfare as it relates to shechita (kosher slaughter) and knowledge of the issue of stunning animals at the time of killing. One of the significant findings was a high level of secularization among Jews that translates to a low level of commitment to eating kosher. But this was accompanied by assertions that eating kosher was an important religious obligation and complaints of low availability and high cost. There was a strong feeling, even among those less committed to eating kosher, that shechita was the preferred method of slaughtering an animal (more animal friendly) and a strong suspicion of anti-Semitism as a motivation for any attempt to impose a stunning obligation.
