Global Jewish Foodways by Hasia R. Diner

Author:Hasia R. Diner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nebraska
Published: 2020-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

JEWS AND FOOD

Throughout history, food, and especially the Jewish dietary laws, servedas a way of making distinctions between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors.15 Food was also connected to religious rituals such as the Shabbat dinner and meals at the Jewish holidays and was viewed as a source of both physical and spiritual nourishment.16 The food of Eastern European Jews was in many cases a byproduct of poverty and scarcity. However, despite their poverty, Eastern European Jewish social life fostered culinary cosmopolitanism as they were exposed to different types of food through peddlers, relatives who came from other regions and countries, internal migration due to economic needs or marriage, urbanization, and communication.17

Although industrialization and urbanization did take root, nutritional conditions for the East European population, gentile and Jewish alike, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were still bad.18 From a study conducted in 1907 on the nutrition and food hygiene of Jews who lived in small towns in the kingdoms of Poland and Galicia, we can learn that Jews consumed a lot of flour, potatoes, legumes, buckwheat, barley, and oats. In contrast, they consumed very little dairy, vegetables, or fruits.19 In comparison to the non-Jewish population in these areas, they consumed too little protein and fat. World War I and later the civil war in Russia in 1921-23 led to horrible famine, which caused many deaths and hunger-related diseases, especially among infants and children—many of them Jewish refugees who were caught up between the lines. Although the population was helped by the Red Cross as well as other international organizations, the famine left its mark on the collective memory of both Jews and non-Jews.

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