Jewish American Food Culture

Many Jewish foods are beloved in American culture. Everyone eats bagels, and the delicatessen is ubiquitous from Midtown Manhattan to Los Angeles. Jewish American Food Culture offers readers an in-depth look at the well-known and unfamiliar Jewish dishes and the practices and culture of a diverse group. This is the source to find out what parve on packaging means, the symbolism of particular foods that are essential to holiday celebrations, what keeping kosher entails, how meals and food rituals are approached differently depending on how religious one is and the land of one's ancestors, and much more.An historical overview puts contemporary American Jews and their cuisine into context. Next, the main foods and ingredients of Jewish cuisine are explained. An interesting chapter on cooking practices follows. Chapters on holiday celebrations, eating out, and diet and health complete the overview. A chronology, glossary, resource guide, and selected bibliography make this an essential one-stop resource for every library.

"Jewish American Food Culture is an essential one-stop resource for every library: this is the source to find our what 'parve' on packaging means, the symbolism of particular foods that are essential to holiday celebrations, what keeping kosher entails, how meals and food rituals are approached differently depending on how religious one is and the land of one's ancestors, and much more." - Suite101.com, "This book is one in a series on Food Cultures in America, which intends to show how different ethnic and regional food cultures have become part of American identity. As the authors explain in their introduction, the Jewish contribution to food culture in the US is complicated because of the Diaspora background of US Jews from Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. . . . Recommended. General and undergraduate collections." - Choice, "Jewish American Food Culture encompasses the vast diversity of Jewish Americans—those who observe the Jewish dietary laws of kashrut(keeping kosher), those born into the Jewish faith who do not actively practice the religion, Jews of various European heritages, Arabic-speaking Jewish Americans, the Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn, and intermarried families in the multiethnic suburbs of Los Angeles. Each volume in this series contains a foreword, an introduction, a chronology, line drawings and photos, recipes, a glossary, a resource guide, a selected bibliography, and an index." - MultiCultural Review, "Jewish American Food Culture is a welcome new resource for classes in American studies, anthropology, folklore, foodways, Jewish studies, and religious studies. The non-scholarly reader will also enjoy the work. . . . They do an excellent job of covering vast expanses of territory, time, and space -- from the ancient Middle East to contemporary America, and they do so gracefully and with good humor." - Gastronomica, "Jewish American Food Culture offers a good introduction to American Jewish culinary traditions. It is a good addition to high school, public, and synagogue libraries." - ARBA

Jonathan Deutsch is Assistant Professor of Tourism and Hospitality and Director of the Culinary Management Center, Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York, Secretary of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, and co-editor of Gastropolis: Food and New York City (2008).Rachel D. Saks is a graduate student in Nutrition and Dietetics at New York University. She has attended various culinary schools.