Introduction: Feeding an Identity-Gender, Food, and Survival

Author(s): Norma Baumel Joseph

Source: Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues , Fall, 5763/2002,
No. 5, Feeding an Identity: Gender, Food, and Survival (Fall, 5763/2002), pp. 7-13
Published by: Indiana University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40326550

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 INTRODUCTION:

FEEDING AN IDENTITY -

GENDER, FOOD, AND SURVIVAL

Norma Baumel Joseph

Foodways are cultural highways. They reveal social and economic systems
while communicating historical, local, and global narratives. Explorations
into patterns of food preparation and consumption, meal formats, eating
fellowships, nutritional notions, favorite recipes and delicacies, symbolic
associations, and national habits yield wonderful information about all
aspects of human civilization. It is a biological fact that people must eat.
The infinite variants of the human attempt to satisfy that requirement
expose the social construction of all aspects of our lives. Food patterns
communicate symbolic meanings and contain cultural codes. Recent
studies disclose the significance of food in maintaining ethnic and national
identities. From communal celebrations to personal preferences, our
dietary habits reveal much about who we are and how we live.
Judaism is replete with foodways in the forms of dietary restrictions and
rituals of eating. There is a short account of all Jewish holidays: They tried
to kill us, we won, let's eat! This witticism reveals a great deal about the
nature of celebration and ritual feasting. Food is not merely what you do
while you are celebrating or worshiping. It is the ritual core of most of our
ceremonies. Just think of holidays such as Passover: Food is central, not an
incidental or supportive element. This special issue of Nashim dedicates its
ethnographic focus to the Jewish kitchen and to women as the ritual
experts in that location.
Historians have often noted the shift in Jewish ritual practice that took
place with the destruction of the Temple two thousand years ago. One
shorthand reference claims that the sacrificial altar was replaced by the
shulhan arukh, the set table and the eating fellowship. If this mythic model

Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women 's Studies and Gender Issues, no. 5. © 2002 7

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 Norma Baumel Joseph

is in any way useful, then examinations of that table culture and its high
priests must be explored and developed. Many social, economic, political,
and ritual functions surrounded Temple procedure and worship. Thus, the
inherited table is not "merely" the location of physical nurture or intake. It
is, itself, located within a cultural lexicon of ethnic continuity, gender
distinctiveness, and generational patterning.
Consider the ways in which food provides a mechanism for preservation
of tradition. This is more than mere nostalgia. Food contains the language
of memory - fully embodied. It seems especially important, considering
food's sensory presence, to note that the memory stimulation is not of the
mind alone. Eating enables simultaneous participation in the past and the
present; it is a strong link between generations. As food is ingested, the
eater partakes of all its symbolism instantly, becoming one with a tradition
seemingly without effort. Engaging all the human senses, food establishes
or confirms social groups and interpersonal guardianship. It is filling and
fun, and it can be experienced as a sign of caring and affection. And in
most communities, especially those that retain traditional patterns and
values, women own it, do it, and glory in it.
So I wonder at the way in which we downgrade the gastronomic com-
ponent of our lives, especially our religious lives. Why do we talk disparag-
ingly of "kitchen Judaism"? Why do we look disapprovingly at those whose
Jewishness is displayed at mealtime? Is eating too physical? Have we
accepted an ascetic ideal, even if we don't practice it? We make jokes about
our eating and worry about our overeating, but do we recognize or appre-
ciate our indisputable praxis? Moreover, is it coincidental or consequential
that the food preparer - the neglected or invisible ritual expert and
participant - is female? Food appears to play a profound part in Jewish
communal identity and religious life, but the woman's responsibility for
this domain has not been seen as critically influential. Her productive
power is lost to the observer's gaze.
Our ethnographic descriptions of food culture have been severely lim-
ited. Some classic studies of religion (Max Weber, Emile Durkheim)
examined food only in the context of ritual sacrifice. Others, such as those
of Claude Lévi-Strauss, sought a structural link between dietary habits and
worldviews. Mary Douglas looked at food as a way to define the boundaries
of social interaction. For many, references to food were used to investigate
social, political, and religious correlations.

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 Introduction: Feeding an Identity

More recently, research in this area has expanded. Anthropologists and

folklorists have begun developing the requisite theoretical and method-
ological tools for its study, and historians, too, have noted that a great deal
of social history is embedded in classical cookbooks (Claudia Rodin,
Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett). But most of this research looks at the
food as an artifact, rather than as a resource for human interaction and
identity. The essays collected in the 1976 anthropological collection Gas-
tronomy explore a limited range of concerns connected with food culture.
In these texts we meet the food, its economic implications, the distribution
of recipes, and the production of nourishment. But people are markedly
absent, and women certainly are not centered as the experts. In 1993, John
Cooper wrote a very informative book, Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History
of Jewish Food. As we might expect, there is a great deal of discussion about
the Jewish dietary laws, their development, and the rabbis who direct the
course of these eating traditions. But there is no mention of the cooks -
the women. Moreover, no mention is made of the eating fellowship. How
do we create community around a table? How does food link generations?
By what process do we formulate our sense of self as part of a gastronomic
culture?
In feminist studies, too, researchers of the first generation displayed little
desire to expose women's domestic heritage, devoting themselves instead
to critiquing the patriarchal cultural tradition, developing theoretical
models for women's empowerment, and examining history for patterns of
women's full participation in public life. Their dread of prevailing stereo-
types was well founded. Most people at the time believed that women
belonged in the kitchen. This was their natural state: Cooking and caring
for children were what women did, all they did, and all they could do, and
in these roles they were all the same. There were no distinctions, no differ-
ences worth noting. In fact, women were all the same - "no need to
mention name or deed." So why bother writing about women, their cook-
ing, or their mothering? This tautology justified the invisibility of women.
These earlier feminist researchers understood that their goals would not
be advanced by kitchen anecdotes. But that was then. What about now? As
you will see from the range of articles in this issue, the field has been
transformed, both generally and in the Jewish context. There is a new ener-
gy in feminist research that is eager to reveal all aspects of women's lives.
Women's experiences in the past are no longer used to reaffirm today's

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Norma Baumel Joseph

consciousness. Women's voices are being unearthed; their concerns, con-

texts, texts, and visions are at the center of our deliberations. In this
revised approach, women's roles in food production are no longer
irrelevant. They can nourish our understanding of human gendered exis-
tence generally and give us specific insight into the study of Jews and
Judaism.

Anthropologically, the language of food can be understood as a convey-

ance of women's central role in sustaining, reinventing, and creating anew
the Judaism of their respective households. Using food as a category
enables us to see the ways in which women perform and maintain Jewish
life through the rituals of appropriate daily and holy day food preparation.
Tracking the passage of cooking skills between generations and through the
geographic dislocations of immigration highlights the processes of ethnic
continuity and some of their gender interconnections. Comparing the
different styles of food preparation and feast location yields interesting
insights into the immigration experience, with the attendant rupture of
traditional family patterns. It sheds light on the role of women in
maintaining family traditions and upon their control within that domain.
Often, first-generation women have a very strong sense of Jewish identity
that is not necessarily or easily transferred to their daughters. Following
the food chain in all these contexts informs an understanding of the
practice of religion, the process of modernization, and the role of gender.
Intriguingly, following the food chain also destabilizes stereotypical
notions of the past. Recent feminist historical research has shown that the
public domain was not the realm of males only, though men and women
were often separated in it and were subject to distinctive gendered behavior
expectations, Men and women lived in this realm differently but together,
often sharing business and social activities. However, the need to decon-
struct the public domain and dislodge the public/private dichotomy has
not always been balanced by investigation of the domestic sphere. Inquiry
into food patterns adds a new and necessary insight: The private realm was
not without male presence. Exploring the ways in which men were an
active element and women were still in control generates unprecedented
patterns for investigation and analysis. Men and women shared space in
both the outside and the inside worlds of their lives - in the public and
private realms - and both places were distinctively gendered. Thus, current
scholarly interest in gender studies has come back to the kitchen. Interest

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 Introduction: Feeding an Identity

in personal and communal ritual has interfaced with feminist challenges to

open new/old fields of study.
In the Jewish realm, where scholars and community policy makers once
took little interest in women "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen," three
landmark studies represent this new phase of feminist research into the
fundamental significance of food in ethnic identification and continuity.
Elizabeth Ehrlich's historical memoir, Miriam's Kitchen, revolves around
food. Susan Starr Sered's Women as Ritual Experts, an intriguing explora-
tion of women's roles in a cultural community, demonstrates that food
preparation can be considered a sacred task. Hasia Diner, in Hungering for
America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the age of Migration, uses food
as a vehicle for exploring ethnic differentiation in three immigrant
communities. These studies show how special dishes communicate histori-
cal allegiance, personal commitment, and communal integration. Ingesting
mama's cooking nourishes a connection and sets a table.
The multiplicity and diversity of edible Judaism is the subtext of this
issue of Nashim. I am very proud that alongside the work of major scholars,
a number of the articles in it are by young researchers, recent doctoral
students who are conducting original research on gender and food. Some
of these writers offer new insights into obvious connections, while others
display a complex image. As they discuss women's changing identity, their
articles interact in unusual ways. To varying degrees, they all speak of
memory and the ways in which food plays such a distinctive role. The
stories and analyses struggle with quests for meaning and God's presence.
Placing such spiritual human pursuits in the context of plain old food
might seem profane, but these articles testify to food's sacred texture.
From archeology to literary analysis, from history to fiction, the disci-
plines engaged promote a fresh approach to the study of gender. Carole M.
Counihan has written: "the power of women has often derived from the
power of food" (The Anthropology of Food and the Body, p. 46). The follow-
ing essays all contribute to an examination of female power, agency, and
authority as it revolves around or emanates from food.
Carol Meyers's ethnoarchaeological investigation of bread production
in ancient Israelite households provides her with the data necessary to
locate women's contributions to communal life. Exploring women's con-
trol, importance, power, and value in the ancient household, Meyers
makes the remarkable claim that her evidence points to a deconstruction

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Norma Baumel Joseph

of patriarchy. Nina Mandel, focusing on biblical text, points to ways in

which shifts in food preparation may have signaled the limits of women's
value or fields of action. Concluding with a creative, traditionally styled
exegesis, she forges connections between women, ritual offerings, and
spiritual sustenance.
Jews world over have the same dietary laws, yet their incredibly diverse
food customs testify to the reality of cultural accommodation, adaptation
and perseverance. Echoing Meyers's historical approach, Ruth Abusch-
Magder explores how the eating habits of nineteenth-century German Jews
enable us to glimpse their configuration of community and their approach
to Jewish and American lifestyles. Paula Hyman has argued that inquiry
into gender yields a fresh understanding of community, assimilation, and
religion. Abusch-Magder's material supports that contention. She claims
that Jewish women's attitude towards "outside food," with its attendant
notions of boundaries, trust, home, and shared community, played a
critical role in shaping the Jewish experience of the modern world.
Avoiding false dichotomies, she establishes that men, too, were part of this
pattern in which one's relationship to food denoted a particular relation-
ship to the outside world.
Paulette Kershenovich also investigates an immigrant population, that of
the Syrian Jews of Mexico, whose evolving food customs exhibit the
process of the community's assimilation, integration, and preservation.
Carefully following adjustments to diet, recipes, and eating habits, Ker-
shenovich claims that ethnic identity is intimately tied to food habits - and
this is the realm of women's control, productivity and creativity.
Using the words of three Jewish female authors, Wendy Zierler presents
the Jewish kitchen as marginal space. Not claiming it as an unequivocal
center of power or women's agency, she looks to the words of Rachel
Morpurgo, Anzia Yezierska, and Devorah Baron to expose its ambiguity.
Like the rabbis' daughters in all three narratives, the kitchen is "border-
land"; it can be the place of repression or the site of resistance. Similarly,
Farideh Dayanim Goldin's narrative, "Blood Lines," looks at the double-
edged rituals associated with food and first menses. Bringing us back to
immigrant populations and the enduring power of food experiences, her
memoir paints a picture of female angst and unsettled reminiscences.
Two articles are devoted to Seder rituals. In a totally different take on
cultural borrowing, food, and community, Mary Hale exposes the problems

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 Introduction: Feeding an Identity

that emerge when a faith community employs another's rituals. Describing

an Anglican celebration, Hale shows how a meal can forge community
while delineating boundaries and connections between two traditions.
Again we meet food as the vehicle of memory, of commonality and
difference, and of women's central contributions. Back among Jews, Sonia
Zylberberg looks at the contemporary innovation of a new ritual Seder
food, the orange. Finding an orange on the Seder plate raises questions of
ritual authenticity, symbolic shifts, and communal attitudes. By tracking
the history of the ritual Seder foods that precede the orange and inter-
viewing participants in the new ritual, Zylberberg explores the process of
innovation and assesses the role of ritual foods. Feminists first put the
orange on the Seder plate in support of gay and lesbian Jews, but according
to Zylberberg's research, most of those who use the orange today claim
that it represents the role of women in Judaism; the issue of sexual
orientation has been replaced with the more general one of gender. To
witness the inevitable process of change in communal sentiments and sym-
bols is illuminating.
Finally, Judith Margolis, in her regular feature on art, blends the poetry
of Judith Levey-Kurlander with art work, her own and that of others, to
manifest the interlocking themes of food and death. And we have come
full circle. As reflected in this collection, food connects with all aspects of
human existence. It is the most basic of human requirements, and it has
been the most sanctified. It carries the weight of tradition, the nostalgia of
the past, and the challenge of the future. It is marked by innovation and
preservation. It is a mechanism of communal existence and personal
meaning. Most importantly, eating is pleasurable. Preparing and serving
food is the domain of women, the site of their limitation, and/or the
source of their power. A worthy topic indeed.

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