Food and Judaism or Vegan Taste of Central America

Food and Judaism

Author: Studies in Jewish Civilization 15

Food is not simply a popularly imagined and well-known manifestation of Jewish culture. For Jews, food has been a means of exclusion, persecution, and assimilation by the larger society. Equally important, it has been an instrument of community, reparation, and renewal of identity. Food and Judaism presents a wide range of research on the history and interpretation of Jewish food practices and meanings.

This volume covers a comprehensive array of topics, including American regional manifestations of food practices from little-known Jewish communities in cities such as contemporary Brighton Beach and Memphis; a social history of Jewish food in America by the renowned expert on Jewish food Joan Nathan; and an examination of how the American food industry appealed to early twentieth-century Jews.



Several discussions of the religious meaning and personal advantages of following a vegetarian lifestyle are considered from biblical and historical perspectives. A rescued cookbook text from the Theresienstadt concentration camp is juxtaposed with an examination of how garlic in Jewish cooking served as an anti-Semitic caricature in early modern Europe. Historical perspectives are also provided on the use of separate dishes for milk and meat, the sanctification of Hasidic foods in Eastern Europe, and “mystical satiation” as found in the medieval Kabbalah.

Table of Contents:

	A social history of Jewish food in America	1
	Smoked salmon sushi and sturgeon stomachs : the Russian Jewish foodscapes of New York	15
	The art of Jewish food	27
	Exploring southern Jewish foodways	67
	The vegetarian alternative : biblical adumbrations, modern reverberations	79
	In memory's kitchen : reflections on a recently discovered form of Holocaust literature	105
	Does God care what we eat? : Jewish theologies of food and reverence for life	119
	Nebraska Jewish charitable cookbooks, 1901-2002	133
	Public and private in the kitchen : eating Jewish in the Soviet State	149
	Kashrut : the possibility and limits of women's domestic power	169
	Holy kugel : the sanctification of Ashkenazic ethnic foods in Hasidism	193
	"As the Jews like to eat garlick" : garlic in Christian-Jewish polemical discourse in early modern Germany	215
	Separating the dishes : the history of a Jewish eating practice	235
	The blessing in the belly : mystical satiation in medieval Kabbalah	257
	Food of the book or food of Israel? : Israelite and Jewish food laws in the Muslim exegesis of Quran 3:93	281
	Meals as midrash : a survey of ancient meals in Jewish studies scholarship	297
	The vegetarian ideal in the Bible	319
	Food fight : the Americanization of kashrut in twentieth-century America	335

Interesting textbook: Managerial Decision Cases or Roots of Poverty in Latin America

Vegan Taste of Central America

Author: Linda Majzlik

Exploring traditional customs with dashes of innovation, this vegan cookbook touches on all the abundant ingredients of Central American cuisine. The low-lying plains of Central America, with their rich volcanic soil, offer ideal conditions for a cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, and grains. Packed with recipes calling for okra, yams, avocado, squash, cassava, and other delicacies of the vine, this guide features meal ideas for any hour of the day, and any occasion. The recipes are rich with native, Spanish, and Afro-Caribbean influences and offer appealing options to any vegan looking to boost his/her repertoire of animal-free dishes.