Jewish Culinary Diversity
Title
Jewish Culinary Diversity
Creator
Innovations in Jewish Life Collections
Date
2023
Contributor
Gregg Drinkwater, Hilary Kalisman, Samira Mehta, Maggie Rosenau
Rights
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Format
Portable Document Format
Language
English
Text
Jewish Culinary Diversity
What most Americans today perceive as Jewish food in the United States can be traced to the Ashkenazi cuisine of Eastern and Central Europe. Ashkenazi Jews are those Jewish communities tracing their ancestry to the lands marked by the modern countries of Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and surrounding states. Bagels, lox (cured salmon), braided challah, kugel (a noodle or potato casserole), pickles, pastrami, beef brisket, and matzah ball soup all might come to mind when Americans think about Jewish food. All of these are linked to the foodways of Jews from Eastern and Central Europe (as well as to non-Jews from those regions).
Less well-known in American culture are the food traditions of Sephardic Jews (those who trace their ancestry to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492), many of whom later settled throughout the Mediterranean, in South America, and in the Netherlands and England.
Other major groups are Mizrahi or Afro-Asian Jews (those whose lineages stem from the Jewish communities of North Africa, Southwest Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula, many of them thousands of years old), Italian Jews (one of multiple ancient Jewish communities in the Mediterranean world), and Jewish communities from South Asia, South America (mixtures of Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi traditions embedded in the local contexts of such countries as Argentina, Mexico, Suriname, and Cuba) and elsewhere.
What most Americans today perceive as Jewish food in the United States can be traced to the Ashkenazi cuisine of Eastern and Central Europe. Ashkenazi Jews are those Jewish communities tracing their ancestry to the lands marked by the modern countries of Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and surrounding states. Bagels, lox (cured salmon), braided challah, kugel (a noodle or potato casserole), pickles, pastrami, beef brisket, and matzah ball soup all might come to mind when Americans think about Jewish food. All of these are linked to the foodways of Jews from Eastern and Central Europe (as well as to non-Jews from those regions).
Less well-known in American culture are the food traditions of Sephardic Jews (those who trace their ancestry to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492), many of whom later settled throughout the Mediterranean, in South America, and in the Netherlands and England.
Other major groups are Mizrahi or Afro-Asian Jews (those whose lineages stem from the Jewish communities of North Africa, Southwest Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula, many of them thousands of years old), Italian Jews (one of multiple ancient Jewish communities in the Mediterranean world), and Jewish communities from South Asia, South America (mixtures of Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi traditions embedded in the local contexts of such countries as Argentina, Mexico, Suriname, and Cuba) and elsewhere.
Files
Citation
Innovations in Jewish Life Collections, “Jewish Culinary Diversity,” IJL Digital Exhibits, accessed May 2, 2024, https://embodiedjudaism.omeka.net/items/show/123.