Introduction to Ashkenazi Jewish Foodways
Tuition: $240 | YIVO members: $180**
This is a live, online course held twice a week on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, assignments, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English.
Instructor: Eve Jochnowitz
Ashkenazic foodways, along with the Yiddish language and the rhythms of Jewish practice, formed the medium in which Jewish life was and is lived in the Yiddish world. The ingredients and techniques of Eastern European Jewish foods – and the spaces and times for preparing and eating them – are determined by the Jewish ritual calendar, the dietary laws, the produce of the local soil, and the cuisines of neighboring peoples. But they also contain elements that could not have been inferred from any of the foregoing. The cool scent of chopped dill, the anomalous combination of horseradish and apples, the pungency of rendered goose fat, and the perfect balance of salt, sugar, and vinegar in a cucumber salad are parts of the puzzle we will piece together in this course drawing on literary, ethnographic, and historic materials.
Yiddish Level:
Students of all Yiddish levels and students without any Yiddish language background are welcome to register for this course.
Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all required course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.
Eve Jochnowitz, Yiddish instructor at the YIVO institute and the Workers Circle, is an institute fellow at the Frankel Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Jochnowitz has been teaching Yiddish language, culture, and literature, as well as Yiddish foodways and dance, for 25 years. She worked for several years as a cook and baker in New York and received her Ph.D. from the department of Performance Studies at New York University. She has lectured both in the United States and abroad on food in Jewish tradition, religion, and ritual, as well as on food in Yiddish performance and popular culture. The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook (Fania Lewando’s Vegetarish-dietisher kokhbukh) translated, annotated, and adapted for the modern kitchen, was published in 2015.
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