Know Your Nosh: Food, Jewishness, and Identity

November 14, 2022
There’s an old joke about Jewish holidays - they tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat! While there’s some truth to this description of Jewish holidays, this joke also reveals a connection between Jewish food, Jewish politics, Jewish identity, Jewish culture, and even Jewish survival that has taken many forms. Food has been used to create, maintain, and reimagine boundaries in Jewish communities. The borrowing and appropriation of foods from other cultures have helped shape new Jewish identities. Different groups of Jews have navigated diverse majority cultures, using food both to solidify ethnic identities and to challenge-or reinforce-narratives of tolerance and inclusion. Jewish farmers are growing food with ecologically sensitive methods and educating their communities in response to the climate crisis.
This symposium brings together scholars working on the significance of food for Jewish religious, cultural, national, and political identities, focusing on the United States and Israel/Palestine. In our conversations, we explore how food, so often seen as simply bringing people together, can be, in the end, far more complicated.