Eating the Bubbe: Culinary encounters between secular and haredi jews in Bnei Brak

Abstract

Over the last few years on Thursday evenings, the main streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel’s largest haredi (ultra-Orthodox) cities, becomes a culinary meeting place. The Eastern European Jewish cuisine sustained by the haredi kitchen attracts non-haredi visitors to a society that tends to keep to itself. This article presents an ethnographic investigation of a new culinary scene that brings together local haredim and secular visitors. I draw upon the concept of “eating the other” to argue how the “haredi other” represents a complex kind of “otherness,” whose encounters with secular visitors simultaneously mark boundaries and cross them. These encounters demonstrate how culinary tradition can provide a link to collective memory and help build individual and group identities.