Food

Abstract

Food studies is a burgeoning field that crosses many disciplinary lines, and that has increasingly turned academic attention toward foodways, or the processes by which meaning is made around food. Jewish food studies, while not yet a field, is a topic of increasing interest for scholars in Jewish studies. The coexistence of an Oxford Bibliographies article Dietary Laws (by David Kraemer) and this one on Jews and food attests to the first important distinction to be made about the field: kashrut and Jewish food are not coterminous. Indeed, Jews and food is the larger category, encompassing not only the food laws and the commentary and practice that surround them, but all food acts and ideas that are undertaken in reference either to the laws of kashrut, to Judaism, or to Jews. Food is an extraordinarily capacious topic, touching on every discipline, historical period, and geographical delineation in Jewish studies. Scholars have long considered Jewish food and eating practices within their particular areas of interest and have used food practices to explain developments in religious practice and ritual, to set historical and cultural context, to describe Jewish relations with non-Jews, and to trace the pathways of Jewish Diaspora experience. Food practices have served as political and economic markers of change in Jewish life, and data on holiday observance, ritual, variations in kashrut practice, and other foodways provide a fascinating window into the social realities of Jews in many times and places. Jewish food has also offered a rich avenue into the study of gender and of women’s experience in Jewish life. Recently, Food studies has become its own scholarly category, and a number of scholars in Jewish studies have begun to work seriously in this area, developing new field-specific methodologies for making use of information about food and eating practices. This article catalogues both works that incorporate food as a topic, and works that are intentionally situated within the field of food studies. At least two important journals in the field of Jewish studies are currently in the process of compiling special issues on the topic of Jews and food, and so we anticipate this article will grow considerably over the next few years. At this point, the article addresses scholarship in English only and so leans heavily on North American scholarship and topics, but we likewise anticipate adding sources in other languages in the future.