Abstract: Using a ‘lived religion’ approach, this chapter analyses interviews conducted with Orthodox Jewish women to investigate how women learn about kashrut [Jewish dietary] rules, the resources they use when dealing with kashrut problems, and the kashrut practices that they develop themselves. The research shows the persistence of mimetic, family-based models in the transmission and practice of kashrut among women, thus challenging the scholar Haym Soloveitchik’s famous claim that text-based learning has superseded mimetic learning in the modern Jewish world. The chapter suggests that the two types of learning are strongly gendered, and it explores the differences between the ways men and women learn about and understand kashrut practices. The research highlights the difference, and the tense relationship, between elite text-based culture (almost exclusively male in the Orthodox Jewish world) and popular practice (largely in the hands of women in Orthodox daily kashrut observance) and raises issues of rabbinic control and authority versus family loyalty and self-confidence. The study reveals the divergence between a nominally hegemonic authority of elite, male-authored texts and their interpretation by rabbis, and an unacknowledged lived religion in which women decide everyday ritual practice. Taylor-Guthartz suggests that to gain a complete picture of any religious tradition, knowledge of its elite written aspects must be balanced with the investigation of lived, everyday religious practice, and the complex relationships between these two elements must be appreciated and understood.
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Jewish Identity, Jewish Revival, Antisemitism, Jewish Culture, Jewish Heritage, Rabbis, Kashrut, Shechita / Ritual Slaughter, Jewish Organisations, Care and Welfare
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: 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: The main aims of the DIALREL project are to explore the conditions for promoting the
dialogue between interested parties and stakeholders and facilitating the adoption of good
religious slaughter practices. The additional aim is to review and propose a mechanism for
implementation and monitoring of good practices.
A work plan consisting of 6 work packages has been prepared (WP1 to WP6). The
implementation is to be achieved by consultations, gathering, exchanging and reviewing of
information and networking throughout. Dissemination activities are involving internet
site(s) for networking and organised workshops that provides the platform for debate,
exchange of information and consensus. www.dialrel.eu
This workpackage (WP3) is mainly devoted to building up a synthesis on halal and kosher
consumption as well as kosher and halal consumer attitudes, beliefs, and concerns towards
religious slaughter in selected European Union (EU) and associate countries. Although
some legal, animal health, and welfare aspects have been investigated so far, very few
studies have taken into account the consumption dimension. Therefore, WP3 aims to fill in
the lacuna in knowledge in this area by organizing targeted comparative studies on halal
and kosher consumption in Europe. The objective of this work package is to build on
available data, set up new or modified methodologies, and stimulate the exchange of views
that will lead to improved practices.
Activities of WP3 are intended to describe the current situation using available
information, and elaborate on new methodologies in order to facilitate systematic
collection and analysis of subsequent information in the future. This report explore
consumer concerns, knowledge, and information relating to the religious slaughter process
as well as halal and kosher products by gathering information and carrying out consumer
studies in member and associate countries using Focus Groups (FG) in seven countries
including five EU countries : Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, The Netherlands, Turkey
and United Kingdom.
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.
