kosher – From Under the Fig Tree

In the round 1

joselitJune 26, 2011November 16, 20171 Comment

As an historian, my stock in trade is change. Chronicling and analyzing how one thing gives way to another is what I do for a living, day in and day out. But taking the measure of Clio’s slings and arrows is one thing; actually experiencing them is quite another. When the forces of change affect me personally, dispassion goes out the window.

What prompts this confession is the news that a beloved New York City neighborhood institution, H & H Bagels, called it a day and closed its doors. As long as I can remember, the store hugged the corner at 80th Street and Broadway, the smell of onions and yeast wafting through the air.

Bagel cognoscenti might debate the merits of H & H’s offerings -- some palates fond them far too doughy, others just right -- but for me, the modest little storefront stood for something larger than a rounded piece of dough heaped with “everything.”

It represented the multiple ways in which a certain kind of Jewishness -- a decidedly vernacular, easy-going and undemanding form of Jewishness, at that -- found a place for itself within the urban landscape and within the deeper reaches of American culture.

Along with appetizing stores and kosher (or kosher-style) delicatessens and other Jewish food purveyors that once peppered the city street, the bagel shop brought about a sea change in what Americans ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bagels became common fare. Expanding the American diet, the bagel also helped to expand, deepen and round out America’s relationship to its Jewish citizens.

I’ll miss my occasional bagel from H & H. But what I’ll miss even more is the history nestled within its little circular frame.

Can pigs fly?

joselitOctober 3, 2010November 16, 2017Leave a comment

What's kosher -- and what's not -- has been the subject of intense discussion ever since the dietary laws were first promulgated in Leviticus, way back when.

The fault line along which the Jews have defined themselves vis-a-vis the outside world, kashruth in the modern era has also divided the Jews among themselves. With the advent of modernity, growing numbers of Jews began to jettison the dietary laws, insisting that conscience rather than cuisine, ethics rather than ritual behavior, should inspire them.

Others, however, rejected this position out of hand and resolutely kept on keeping kosher, while still others (the majority, perhaps?) sought a middle ground, choosing, as Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has so evocatively put it, to be "selectively treyf."

Under the confusing circumstances, one might think that kashruth would eventually have gone the way of so many other biblically-mandated practices: into the dustbin of history. But, in this instance, as in so many others that have to do with religion's surprisingly resilient encounter with modernity, not only has keeping kosher not withered away but, as Kosher Nation, Sue Fishkoff's new book vividly points out, it has emerged in the 21st century with renewed vigor, especially among a younger generation of Jews for whom kashruth affords an authentically Jewish response to the ethics and practices of responsible eating.

What, then, are we to make of the recent news that a cookbook roundly celebrating the delights of pork, an animal historically anathematized by the Jews, has recently been published, and in Israel of all places?

Eli Landau's The White Book is hardly the first cookbook whose Jewish author advocated the use of unkosher items. Aunt Babette's Cook Book, which was first released in the United States in 1889 by Bloch Publishing and Printing Company, has it beat by more than a century. But Landau's compendium is surely the first to thrust pork loin front and center and with no sign of apologetics to sweeten the dish.

Could this represent a watershed in the history of the Jewish people, or is it merely a tempest in a teapot?

For some, a pork cookbook sold in Israel makes as much sense as the above sign. Credit: joeventures, creative commons licensed on Flickr.

The high road

joselitAugust 26, 2010November 16, 2017Leave a comment

For centuries, taking to the road has been the stuff of grand adventure and equally grand literature. From Benjamin of Tudela's 12th century Book of Travels to Jack Kerouac's 1957 On the Road, travel has been bound up with freedom and an enhanced sense of self.

But what if travel turned out to be more a matter of constraint, of diminished expectations, than of affirmation?

Consider the experience of kosher-keeping Jews in America of the early 1900s, at a time when kosher food was hard to come by. For them, travelling throughout the United States was surely no picnic.

To ensure that those American Jews who observed the dietary laws at home could maintain them while on the road as well, the United Synagogue of America published a pocket-sized compendium listing those venues where a good kosher meal could be had. Its Directory of Kosher Hotels, Boarding Houses and Restaurants in the United States (1919) provided a detailed list of "racial restaurants" where America's Jews could find a ready welcome and an ample menu.

For African Americans, in turn, the pleasures of travel in the United States were mitigated not by the dictates of religion but by the cruelties of racial prejudice, which severely hampered their freedom of movement. By supplying a list of hotels and "tourist homes" where African American travelers might safely rest their heads, The Negro Motorist Green Book (1936) held the world at bay.

As much a form of travel literature as Kerouac's salute or Benjamin of Tudela's picaresque tales, this text is the subject of a new play, The Green Book, which will be given a staged reading in Washington, D.C., next month, under the aegis of Theatre J and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

With my students in tow, I hope to be on hand for that event. And who knows? Perhaps it'll even give rise to a brand new course.

Images: Benjamin of Tudela in the Sahara, in the 12th century. Engraving by Dumouza, 19th century. Source: Wikipedia. And a highway view from creative commons licensed Flickr content.