Jews and Chinese Food

[Gary Soup]

And when you can't send a salami to your boy in the army, you can alway send him here....

[Rachel Perlow]

Jason and I composed a little ditty for you all! Sing along to the tune of “Good King Wenceslas” (midi: Midi Music (Click), original lyrics: good_king_wenceslas

Chinese Food for Christmas

Many Jews eat Chinese food

During Christmas evenin’

All the restaurants are closed

Except those which are Asian.

Kung Pao Chicken, Egg Foo Yung

Lo Mein would be pleasin’

Beef and Broccoli, Peking Duck.

No-oh MSG-ee please!

As I eat my Pork Fried Rice,

Wonton Soup and Egg Rolls;

I thank G-d for Chinese food,

Especially the Shrimp Toast!

Grandparents’ solo or duet, Brooklyn/Yiddish accent:

“Don’t the Christmas lights look nice?

Beautifully they twinkle

Oy, I’m glad I’m not a goy,

Think of the e-lec-tric bill!”

Gentiles all are in their homes,

Drinking lots of egg nog.

Can we have more oolong tea,

Duck sauce and some mustard?

If there were no Chinese food

We would all go hungry.

Now to end our fine repast

With a fortune coo-oo-kie!

[jschyun]

I cannot believe nobody responded to this.

Jesus Christ, that was good.

Speaking of the electric bill, the damn neighbors have lighted up their house like electricity is going out of style. There is not one inch of the outside of their house that is not covered in lights and I am saddened to say there is a big lighted Santa and reindeer in their yard as well. Also, a lighted big ass candy cane if I'm not mistaken. I pray for their souls.

[Mabelline]

Do you know if your neighbor's last name is Taylor?

Agreed; I've a neighbor who's fanatical about lights and weird s*** as decoration themes. If I look out our living room window without the blinds closed, there are three whitelight reindeer nodding their heads. It has made me wonder if there's a season on them.

This thread is fascinating to me. It never occured to me what youall ate on Christmas Day before. I guess I reckoned youall just cooked at home. As an aside, though, everytime DH and I eat out at our favorite Chinese, we come across either brothers of his from the station, Latino or Native friends of ours. It is a highly popular choice, it seems.

[jo-mel]

You must have had fun putting that together!! I like it!

Talking about houses that are lit up?? There is one house on a road parallel to the Garden State Parkway (NJ) that probably can be seen from the moon. The lights made the traffic slow down so that it became a problem. The Parkway authority contacted the family to ask them to tone it down. They wouldn't! They said that they wanted to bring joy to people! It is so overdone that all we do is laugh at it!

[herbacidal]

There is a interesting book written by a Rabbi friend of mine called "The Fugu Experiment" it goes into details about the rationale of the Japanese Occupiers deciding to treat the Jewish in Shanghai with much better consideration then the Germans would have preferred during this period.

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For those who are interested in Jews in China, there was a Jewish enclave in Kaifeng in (IIRC) one of the provinces just north of Jiangsu and Anhui, possibly the same one as Zhengzhou, Luoyang, and the Shaolin temple.

I don't recall their current status.

From what I remember, the most rational argument for their existence is that they resulted from Matteo Ricci stopping off there on his way back from Beijing/predecessor to Europe.

[jokhm]

I managed to spend all the high holidays through sept/oct in Beijing.. Quite an interesting mix of Jews spread throughout the city. Though from what I've seen in Shanghai, it did not have much history attached.. There you can find several synagogues and some numbers to fill them. I'm far from the religious side, but I find myself often wondering what the hell is wrong with me and all the Jews around me with this deep-seated fascination with Chinese cuisine. I am always having to answer to non-jews that ask me to explain to them 'what's up..' from the Jewish perspective. But beyond Chinese food... as others mentioned here, Sushi, thai, vietnamese, etc. I can't figure this out.

I think when I take these cuisines at their base and then stick them next to typical ashkenazi fare everything becomes far too obvious. Zimmes, latkas... Come on...%^@#&

Israeli/Sephardi cooking is another story...

joel

[Pan]

For those who are interested in Jews in China, there was a Jewish enclave in Kaifeng in (IIRC) one of the provinces just north of Jiangsu and Anhui, possibly the same one as Zhengzhou, Luoyang, and the Shaolin temple.

I don't recall their current status.

From what I remember, the most rational argument for their existence is that they resulted from Matteo Ricci stopping off there on his way back from Beijing/predecessor to Europe.

←

I don't understand your claim, Herb. Rather, it seems that Persian Jews arrived in the 10th century in Kaifeng. (See this page for some brief information.) Jesuits much later, apparently in the 17th century, discovered the existence of the Jewish community in Kaifeng. (See this 1907 National Geographic article, which is interesting at least as much for what it shows about Western attitudes of the time as anything else.) But I'm not sure we'd want to have a long discussion about things that seem beyond the scope of questions relating to food, at least at first glance. If we could only find a food angle, such as some hypothesis that Persian Jews introduced baozi (Persian pan) to China . . .

[Swisskaese]

Fat Guy, I would be a good study for your research. My grandparents had a Chinese cook and she made fantastic matzah ball soup and matzah shalet. Naturally, she also made great chinese food.

[herbacidal]

Pan,

There's no food-oriented claim.

Unless someone wants to claim that the region's strong bread tradition was what lead to matzoh balls.

(See, Chinese gave Italians spaghetti and Jews matzo balls.)

That was more of an FYI.

I'm not looking for real discussion of it here.

Actually, I'm not looking for discussion about it anywhere,

since I know little about the subject.

I haven't researched the topic at all.

It was something I was told and read about briefly years ago.

[stephenc]

Lots of Jews also like taking their shoes off upon entering the house as well as playing mahjongg.

[Pam R]

I would be surprised if that were true.  I think someone put the nail on the head before-- NEW YORK Jews, the key word, NY. 

Nah - it's definately not JUST NY Jews. The love of chinese (and other asian) foods by the Jewish people goes on throughout the world. I am far from NY and 9 times out of 10 when I go into a chinese restaurant I run into people I know (never mind christmas).

Throughout the 80's and 90's kosher chinese meals were some of our top sellers for bar/bat mitzvah parties here. And as stated by somebody else upthread - there are chinese restaurants in Israel and kosher chinese restaurants in cities all over the world.

I have a different theory though - during WWII, there was a group of Jews who fled eastern europe. As we know, these people ended up all over the world... my own father was on a boat that was turned away from the US and was one of the last couple allowed into Canada in 1939. Well... one group actually ended up in China. I don't know how many there were... and I don't think there are many left. But, do you think that some of these people who stayed over in China for several years and then found their way to Israel, US and Canada brought with them a love of the foods they experienced? Remember that many of the German Jews were completely assimilated and probably would have had no kashrut restrictions. They could have started it all

[zpzjessica]

just a side note (and this doesn't have a whole lot to do with the thread, just the most recent posting)...

chazerai doesn't mean 'pig', it means crap/junk/a mess. my mom and grandmother are fluent in yiddish and have taught me many words and phrases.

i am jewish and always grew up going out for chinese food on sunday evenings. it's sort of the jewish equivalent of a christian sunday dinner after church. chinese food is a total comfort food for me, and whenever i go home to visit my family, we still make a point of going for chinese food one night while i'm there

[saluki]

just a side note (and this doesn't have a whole lot to do with the thread, just the most recent posting)...

chazerai doesn't mean 'pig', it means crap/junk/a mess. my mom and grandmother are fluent in yiddish and have taught me many words and phrases.

i am jewish and always grew up going out for chinese food on sunday evenings. it's sort of the jewish equivalent of a christian sunday dinner after church. chinese food is a total comfort food for me, and whenever i go home to visit my family, we still make a point of going for chinese food one night while i'm there 

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I stand corrected. The Yiddish term for pig is Chazer khazer 'pig. From the hebrew word "Chazeer", pig.

Chazarai, is filth, crap, junk derived from the word Chazer

[zpzjessica]

ah - well now we both learned something!

[insomniac]

Did you know that the Chinese government now recognizes Jews as an official Chinese ethnic group. I found this out in Beijing last year. Interesting.

Edited to add that I haven't read the whole thread and this fact may have been already mentioned.

Edited March 25, 2007 by insomniac (log)

[jokhm]

Oh i have horrible memories of THE kosher Chinese resto of Montreal. I'll keep the names out of this, but it's fairly obvious to all Jews in montreal. I think we have to keep in mind that given how bad most westernized Chinese places are, imagine them restricting ingredients and cooking for customers that have had restricted access to such cuisines in the first place.. doesn't add up! Of course the food will be horrible. That's not to say it can't be done, since I think there are great ways to cook fantastic kosher Chinese food. Maybe in NY or Paris this is possible, but not Montreal at least. And possible still doesn't make it presently so.

Beyond all this talk about bad kosher chinese, the fact remains that Jews are nearly universally mystified and possibly obsessed with Chinese food. It's anecdotal evidence mostly, but I can say that I came to China to eat in the first place and there are LOTS of Jews here just like me. Maybe they didn't come here so clearly for the food, but it makes a very important and obviously valued part of their experience here. Nuts no?

[Norm357]

I know it is not scientific, but perhaps Jews like Chinese food so much for the same reason I do.

It tastes good.

[savethedeli]

I wrote the following article for a Toronto magazine last year. I've never received more praise or hate mail for anything I've written, including political pieces from Israel. One woman said I was perpetuating the cause of anti-semitism in the world. As though Amenijad and Nasrallah give a damn whether I eat matzo balls or mu shu.

http://www.torontolife.com/features/chinatown-syndrome/

[Dave Weinstein]

I didn't find the article anything other than fascinating.

Memory is often triggered by scent. I haven't lived in (or even spent much time in) Manhattan in a very long time, but to this day the distinctive combination of the odor of good chinese food and diesel exhaust will bring me back to Chinatown in the 1970s and 1980s.

[Ben Hong]

Value for the dollar? But of course!! I think that IT'S ABOUT THE TASTE, STUPID!!!! Then, our Jewish brethren may be just as addicted to msg as we are.

Seriously, I believe that in the early days of Jewish and Chinese immigration to the continent, circa late 1800s, the Jewish people found in the Chinese a group with experiences not unlike theirs, suffering the same discrimination, persecution, and marginalization from white society. The two groups share the same pragmatism born of millennia of civilization and maybe, just maybe, they found a bit of resonance in each other.

I'm not being the least bit anti-Semitic here, but as for Chinese eating matzoh? I'll take wontons any day. Sorry.

Edited May 31, 2007 by Ben Hong (log)

[savethedeli]

One of the most interesting experiences I had last year was eating pastrami fried rice at Amazing 66, a Chinese restaurant on Mott St. in New York. The owner was inspired by her visit to the 2nd Ave Deli, and also created a dish of corned beef atop chinese greens.

Best of both worlds!