My Realization

8/28/07
Food plays a key role in culture and society. It is through food that people make connections with one another. In some cases, the time taken to sit and eat a meal is the only social time a person has in their day, and therefore they want to make the most of it. In my family we always tried to eat dinner together. As we got older and busier we ate our weekday dinners less and less, but we always ate Friday night dinners together without fail. This is because it was Shabbat. Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, lasts from sundown on Friday night to an hour after sundown on Saturday night. In most Jewish households, it is customary to have a large Shabbat feast carefully laid out on a white table cloth adorned with a wine goblet and two braided loafs of bread called Challah. At my house we normally had guests join us for our meals. The purpose of Shabbat is to make a differentiation from daily life. In doing so, everything slows allowing a person time to connect to their physical surroundings and their family (both blood and non-blood related), in essence, their community. I guess I never stopped to contemplate what this meant, regarding my relationship with the Jewish community as a whole. It felt so mechanical and permanent. I guess I forget that other religions don’t have this concept, this unifying force. It made me think of class today when we talked about how anthropologists have a tendency to want to explore the exotic culture of a far away land when they could just as easily spend their time researching their own culture.
Taking a closer look at Jewish cooking, I am becoming increasingly aware of how food defines this religion. Jews are more or less classified into Ashkenazim or Sephardim- those whose ancestors hail from Eastern Europe or Spain/Morocco. Since the foods that grew in those regions are very different, traditional Jewish food depends on where one’s ancestors are from. This makes me question, how important is food to the Jewish people? Is there a Jewish cuisine?