Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Non-treyf foods Jews just didn't eat


Pan

Recommended Posts

On another thread, I posted about a feeling of incongruity in reading a suggestion of combining horseradish (a traditional Jewish food) with mayonnaise. Now, there's nothing treyf (unkosher) about mayonnaise, but traditionally, Jews just didn't eat it, just like they didn't eat white bread. In fact, "white bread and mayonnaise" would be a typical stereotype of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant from the Midwest.

Alright, now it's your turn to post about this. :laugh:

Edited by Pan (log)

Michael aka "Pan"

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.egullet.com/?pg=ARTICLE-ribeye011604

Rabbi Ribeye's discourse on this is an interesting start.

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

Foodies who Review South Florida (Facebook) | offthebroiler.com - Food Blog (archived) | View my food photos on Instagram

Twittter: @jperlow | Mastodon @jperlow@journa.host

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, please, explain a lot of things we well meaning but ignorant folks do not understand about Jewish mores. But first, can someone enlighten me about Sephardic and Ashkenaze differences. I think enough folks would be grateful.

An excellent beginning to this topic can be found in The Book of Jewish Food : An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York by Claudia Roden....

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To simplify: Ashkenazi Jews are of Eastern European heritage, Russian, Norther Europe, etc. Sephardi Jews are of Spanish origin, then spread to parts of Europe, Africa, South America......there are also italkim, italian jews (several types, roman jews are the oldest romans in italy!). and indian jews come in a variety of different flavours; there are yeminite jews, and iranian jews, and iraqi jews, and its sometimes hard to find out where each community originated and what its heritage trail is.

but as a round up of simpligication: lets see........ ashkenzaim come from a yiddish speaking, chicken shmaltz-cabbage-potato eating cold weather culture, and sephardim come from sunbaked lands like the mediterranean where olive oil bathes vegetables of bright and vibrant colours, and splashes in lots of fragrant spices.

until recently, the larger part of the american jewish community was of ashkenazic heritage, bagels, lox, cheesecake are but a few delicacies that originated there. now there are many varied groups and sephardic communities. in brooklyn is the only real cochinese community........and in los angeles, you'll find more jews than in tehran (?)......or so it seems.........

jewish food is so uniquely global and varied...........

Marlena the spieler

www.marlenaspieler.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just to amplify on what Marlena said, the Ashkenazi community originally hails from Germany ("Ashkenaz" is Yiddish). After they were expelled from Germany, the King of Poland invited them to relocate there.

Edited by Pan (log)

Michael aka "Pan"

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jews just didn't eat it, just like they didn't eat white bread. In fact, "white bread and mayonnaise" would be a typical stereotype of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant from the Midwest.

That just reminded me of the funny scene in Woody Allen's movie Hannah and her sisters, when Woody is considering converting to catholicism and brings home a bag of groceries with a loaf of Wonder Bread and mayonnaise. Clearly, the stereotypes (Jews eat rye and mustard, gentiles eat white with mayo) exist or the joke wouldn't work.

"I think it's a matter of principle that one should always try to avoid eating one's friends."--Doctor Dolittle

blog: The Institute for Impure Science

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That just reminded me of the funny scene in Woody Allen's movie Hannah and her sisters, when Woody is considering converting to catholicism and brings home a bag of groceries with a loaf of Wonder Bread and mayonnaise. Clearly, the stereotypes (Jews eat rye and mustard, gentiles eat white with mayo) exist or the joke wouldn't work.

:laugh::laugh::laugh:

Thanks for reminding me of this scene! It was that which I thought of at the beginning of this thread but couldn't recall the film's title ...

Edited by Gifted Gourmet (log)

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A thousand thanks.Claudia Roden and Paula Wolfert are the two people who opened up my eyes to the multiplicities and complexities of your cuisines. What is 'cochinese', though, and on a tribal level, do each of your groups have a name for yourselves that would translate to the people, as nearly every Native Tribal name does?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sure: "Am," as in "Am Yisrael." "Am" means "nation" or "people." So we call ourselves "People of Israel." Also, "Bet Yisrael," which means "House of Israel."

Cochin is on the west coast of southern India, and has a very ancient Jewish community, but most of them have moved to Bombay, Israel, and Britain.

Edited by Pan (log)

Michael aka "Pan"

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In the Diaspora, the migration out from the Middle East, Askenazi Jews went north, through Easter Europe, Germany, Lithuania, Poland etc and acquired or adapted foods such as gefillte fish, lox, bagels etc, and the Germanic Yiddish language, while Sephardi Jews went south, through Egypt, North Africa, and particularly Spain and Portugal, acquiring and adapting foods and language from those areas.

Observance varies between individuals and families: in the Jewish tradition it is up to the individual conscience and personal interpretation of the law, unlike the more authoritarian Christian tradition of appointed priests. A Rabbi (Rabbi means"Teacher") is appointed by the local community. Their authority is only a personal one of their scholarship and personality.

I think taboo foods are very local customs. Also what is regarded as Kosher varies dramatically from one community to another. For example I can remember when (according to the mainstream UK Ashkenazi) Turbot has been sometimes Kosher and sometimes not, depending on the interpretation of whether it has vestigial scales or not (fish must have scales and fins). Of course the strict would avoid it in case there was doubt.

My family kept kosher (although I do not). We always ate white bread, and mayonnaise, for example together in a salmon or egg sandwich. In fact I can't think of anything we could have eaten, that tasted good, that we did not. It was more that, coming from an Ashkenazi tradition, and growing up in the 1950s, we ate northern European food, based on dill, schmaltz, fried onion range of flavours, rather than garlic, olive oil, tomato, herb-rich Mediterranean tradition. In this we were no different to our northern European Christian neighbors.

Edit: I see Marlena has already said it better than I have.

Edited by jackal10 (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.egullet.com/?pg=ARTICLE-ribeye011604

Rabbi Ribeye's discourse on this is an interesting start.

that *is* an interesting start. thanks.

so would i be right in saying that the interpretation of what is "not treyf yet not eaten" is a little arbitrary?

thanks for other historical info in this post too.

and i am profoundly sorry they didn't eat Rabbi Ribeye's rib roast rare... :biggrin:

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the ocean."

--Isak Dinesen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, no, no. Please do go on, because it is fascinating. Just write what you can think that would help us understand more.

Poor Rabbi Ribeye. A whole childhood surrounded by spoiled foods. I bet he had a strange idea of what the rest of us ate like.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks, Jack. That was interesting.

By the way, though Ashkenazi Jews are named after Germany, I believe that they were in the Frankish Kingdom and the Carolingian Holy Roman Empire first, and picked up some French-derived words that way. (My ancestors on my father's side were expelled from the Holy Roman Empire city of Worms and arrived in Poland in the 14th century, before the Black Plague hit their adopted home of Bodsanov.) The word "daven" means "to pray" in Yiddish, and is derived from the French "divinisser."

Whether our ancestors' sojourn in France did much to Ashkenazic cuisine is another question.

Edited by Pan (log)

Michael aka "Pan"

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that there are remnants of French courtly and monastic cooking - for example Gefillte fish might be derived from quenelle de brochette (pike), which was a way of making the bony fish edible; pike were raised in monastic fish ponds as a cheap protein source.

In the UK in the 50s Olive oil was something you got from the chemist in small quantities for medicinal use, not as a Major food or cooking medium; my Mother never enjoyed garlic, so did not cook with it. These were not uniquely Jewish or even Ashkenazic. I'm sure garlic and olive oil did not feature in many American homes of the time - maybe on Pizza and Italian American households, but not otherwise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No kidding? Maybe the Native Americans really are the "Lost Tribes." :laugh::laugh::laugh:

(Any of you seen Blazing Saddles? One of the funniest things in a very funny movie is when the Native Americans speak Yiddish among themselves. I won't give away what they say, unless prodded.)

Michael aka "Pan"

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No kidding? Maybe the Native Americans really are the "Lost Tribes." :laugh::laugh::laugh:

(Any of you seen Blazing Saddles? One of the funniest things in a very funny movie is when the Native Americans speak Yiddish among themselves. I won't give away what they say, unless prodded.)

Prod, prod, prod.

I don't understand why rappers have to hunch over while they stomp around the stage hollering.  It hurts my back to watch them. On the other hand, I've been thinking that perhaps I should start a rap group here at the Old Folks' Home.  Most of us already walk like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No kidding? Maybe the Native Americans really are the "Lost Tribes."  :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:

(Any of you seen Blazing Saddles? One of the funniest things in a very funny movie is when the Native Americans speak Yiddish among themselves. I won't give away what they say, unless prodded.)

Prod, prod, prod.

I think you have to hear it to believe it!!

and it was a typically droll Mel Brooksian comment ... :laugh:

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the funniest things in a very funny movie is when the Native Americans speak Yiddish among themselves.

Among themselves, the Native Americans say to each other (and my Yiddish is even worse than Pan's, which he knows quite well!):

"Loz em gayin" ... let them go .....

and then, on Chief Mel Brook's feather headress, the words in Hebrew: Kosher l'Pesach ...

Truly, to get the total Brook's experience, one has to see the picture in its entirety .. it was so anti-politically correct, it boggles the mind today ... :hmmm:

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...