Love and Knishes: The Evolution of Jewish Food in America

The French critic Roland Barthes famously said that food is a system of communication. Through the complex religious and cultural rules of eating that have evolved over centuries, Jews have historically communicated identity through our choice of foods and the rituals surrounding them. This course will look at the Jewish experience in America through the prism of food, especially that of the great wave of Jews who arrived from Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century, and will consider the interplay between dietary laws and popular culture to understand how Jewish foods have been mainstreamed. We’ll focus on foods that are now iconic, exploring the rich histories behind such American Jewish deli classics as bagels and bialys, lox, kosher dills, knishes, pastrami, and rugelach. The course will be grounded in a wide range of texts including scholarly articles, a book on the history of the deli, and excerpts from cookbooks. We’ll also experience Jewish food firsthand through tastings from some of New York City’s finest purveyors.

Darra Goldstein is the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita at Williams College and Founding Editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, named the 2012 Publication of the Year by the James Beard Foundation. She has published widely on literature, culture, art, and cuisine and consulted for the Council of Europe on using food to promote tolerance and diversity. Goldstein has also authored five award-winning cookbooks, including The Georgian Feast (1994 IACP Julia Child Cookbook of the Year) and is series editor of California Studies in Food and Culture (University of California Press). In 2013 she was named Distinguished Fellow in Food Studies at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto, and in 2016 held the Macgeorge Fellowship at the University of Melbourne.

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