From Farfel to Falafel: Food, Wine and Jewish Culture

Sunday evening, May 14 - Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Jewish culture is often associated in the popular imagination with food.  But how does food actually function within this culture over its long history?  What is the relationship between food and the Jewish religion?  What are the connections between ideas about food in the literary culture of the rabbis and the culture of the folk?  And, finally, to what extent does food set the Jews apart and to what extent does it serve as a bridge to the non-Jewish cultures in which the Jews have lived over the centuries?  These are some of the questions that this conference seeks to answer.
UC Davis is one of the premier institutions in the world for the scientific study of food and wine.  This conference brings together for the first time scholars in Jewish Studies with UC Davis researchers in the cultural study of food and wine to examine how one culture understands the many meanings of food and wine.

Conference Program

3:00-5:00: Session I  (University Club)

• Chair: Carolyn de la Penya (University of California, Davis)
• Andrea Lieber, (Dickinson College):  “Bread and Wine, Body and Blood: Consumption and Community in Early Jewish and Christian Texts.”
• David Kraemer (Jewish Theological Seminary):  “Wine as Boundary-Marker:  Negotiating Jewish Identity over a Cup of Wine”
• Discussant: David Biale (University of California, Davis)

Putah Creek Lodge:

• 5:00: Wine Tasting Reception: Hagafen Winery and Rosenblum Cellars
• 6:00: Kugel Dinner and Other Delicacies: catered by Jennifer Schilling. Francesco Spagnolo (University of California, Santa Cruz): “Italian Jewish Food and Music”
• 8:00: Keynote  -- Mollie Katzen: “Tsimmes Reveries, A Personal History”

9:00-12:00: Session II (University Club)

• Chair: Diane Wolf (University of California, Davis)
• Joelle Bahloul (Indiana University):  "Sephardic Cuisine and the French Republic: How a Traditional Rosh-Ha-Shana Stew Became "blanquette de veau".”
• Donny Inbar (University of California, Berkeley):  “Just a Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Gefilte Fish Go Wild: Secret Ingredients that Stir the  Politics of Jewish Identity”
• Yael Raviv (New York University):  “Fruit to Falafel:  Culinary Icons of the Jewish State”
• Discussant: Jay Mechling (University of California, Davis)

12:00-1:00: Lunch
1:00-3:00: Session III (University Club)

• Chair: David Michalski (University of California, Davis)
• Fred Astren (San Francisco State University): “God’s Cookbook, Israel’s Kitchen and the non-Jewish Marketplace: Contexts for Jewish Food and Wine”
• David Biale (University of California, Davis): “Blood, Food and Breast Milk: The Digestive Physiology of Medieval Jewish-Christian Polemics”
• Discussant: Charlotte Biltekoff (University of California, Davis)

3:30-5:00: Film: “Divine Food” by Bill Chayes and L. John Harris  (University Club)                                         

• Ted Merwin (Dickinson College): “The Rise and Fall of the New York Jewish Deli”                  Panel discussion with film makers
• Chair: Stacey Jameson (University of California, Davis)

Putah Creek Lodge:

• 6:00: Biblical Dinner catered by Mica Gott
  Commentary by Donny Inbar
• 8:00: Keynote -- Joyce Goldstein: “How a Nice Jewish Girl from Brooklyn learned to cook Sephardic Food”

9:00-12:00: Session IV (University Club)

• Chair: Cynthia Brantley (University of California, Davis)
• Alice Nakhimovsky (Colgate University):  Eating Under (and After) the Tsars:  100 years of Russian-Jewish foodways
• Eve Jochnowitz (New York University):  "Me darf nor a peteyle": Language and food hybridization in the culinary landscapes of Russian-Jewish New York
• Naomi Janowitz (University of California, Davis): “Nothing/Everything by Mouth: Psychoanalytic Insights into Envy of Female Nurturing in Judaism.”
• Discussant: Louis Grivetti (University of California, Davis)

12:00-1:30 Lunch and Concluding Roundtable (Chair: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett)

Click here for Cover Flyer.

Click here for more program information.

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