Essays on Food

“There is no singular culinary category of ‘Jewish food.’ … different Jewish communities in different times and places developed culinary preferences and styles, but these do not coalesce into a universal culinary category. In general, Jewish communities adopted local cuisines and tweaked them to accord with kosher laws. However, there are exceptions. For example, in New York City in the twentieth century, Jewish immigrants from various European countries swapped recipes and developed the menu of the ‘Jewish deli.’” (Feasting and Fasting, p. 143)

Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food is a collection of scholarly essays about history, Biblical passages, Jewish communities from ancient times through the present, influence of food customs from one ethnic group to another, the ethical issues of modern vegetarianism, and many other subjects. I’ll just tell you about one interesting selection from this book. 

“How Ancient Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians Drank Their Wine" by Susan Marks describes the contact between Jews and the other peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world, and how it influenced Jewish wine rituals. Interactions, including the conquest of ancient Israel by Rome, lasted for several centuries. There is evidence of much influence  of Greek and Roman thought and customs on evolving Jewish practices, especially after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE.

Roman writers such as Plutarch commented on some of the parallel customs of libations, that is, rituals involving pouring out wine, mixing it with water, and then drinking together. Libations were a formal part of a Roman symposium, which was a social occasion also involving a meal and conversations or lectures. There had been a similar form of Temple worship: "Israelite libations may have predated the Temple, while certainly biblical literature reveals the formal inclusion of wine as part of official Temple practice." (p. 178) After the end of Temple worship, Jewish practice of formal meals with ritual wine consumption also developed, and has continued throughout Jewish history to the present. The Passover Seder is one example of such a development.

Rites involving the first wine of the year may have been part of the Temple celebrations, and was definitely part of the fall harvest holiday of Sukkot:

"A contemporaneous witness substantiates the importance of wine for the festival of Sukkot, if not the mixing of wine and water. Plutarch (first to second century CE), an outside observer, connected this festival with both Dionysus and Bacchus, the Greek and Roman gods of wine.”

The conclusion of the author: 

"The ritual actions performed belong to a typical symposiastic meal: the host appointing the one who will lead the blessing, the one chosen then washing in preparation, and finally this leader inviting all to bless. A look at instances of these similarities reveals rabbis engaging the particulars of these Greek and Roman practices and considering the implications of hierarchal order, including the need to push back." (p. 182)

The observation that the Passover Seder has roots in the Roman Symposium is frequently noted, but this article is the most detailed  and interesting historic treatment that I have seen.

Drinking wine at a Passover Seder from the Sarajevo Haggadah, around 1350.

Feasting and Fasting offers a wide variety of approaches to the topics of Jewish food customs and religious laws, from Biblical times onward, beginning in the Garden of Eden with the one fatal prohibition — Don’t eat the apple! While some of the essays are a bit obscure, most of the authors write in a readable, and not terribly academic, style. The book is full of food that’s “good to think.”

Review by mae sander for maefood dot blogspot.com, 2022.