Cookbooks are Our Texts: Reading An Immigrant Community Through their Cookbooks

doi:10.1558/rsth.32556

Religious Studies and Theology, Vol 35, No 2 (2016)

Cookbooks are Our Texts: Reading An Immigrant Community Through their Cookbooks

Norma Baumel Joseph

Issued Date: 26 Dec 2016

Abstract

Cookbooks are more than mere devices for presenting recipes. They inform the practice of cooking and much more. They contain information about ethnic identity, treasured folklore, gender patterns, and religious performances. They are chronicles of public and personal record. Importantly, food cultures not only strengthen a community’s group patterns, they also sustain those configurations longer than most other customs. But food is ephemeral; it is filled with meaning and then disappears. Cookbooks endure displaying social patterns and cultural meaning. In this essay, the examination of a succession of Iraqi Jewish cookbooks exposes patterns of adjustment and conservation as the community flees its homeland and settles in Montreal, Canada.

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DOI: 10.1558/rsth.32556

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Appendix: Cookbooks

1976: Iny, Daisy. The Best of Baghdad Cooking, With Treats from Teheran. Toronto, Canada: Clarke, Irwin & Company.

1989: Liebman, Malvina W. Jewish Cookery from Boston to Baghdad. Cold Spring, NY: Nightingale.

1992: Marks, Copeland. Sephardic Cooking: 600 Recipes Created in Exotic Sephardic Kitchens from Morocco to India. New York: Primus Donald I. Fine.

1996: Levy, Estelle and Judith Sacerdoti, ed. A Sephardi Feast: The Cookery and Culture of the Sephardic Jews in England. London: Sephardi Centre.

1996: Roden, Claudia. The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York with More than 800 Ashkenazi and Sephardi Recipes. New York: Knopf.

1998: Grau Twena, Pamela. The Sephardic Table: The Vibrant Cooking of the Mediterranean Jews—A Personal Collection of Recipes from the Middle East, North Africa and India. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin.

2000: Goldstein, Joyce. Sephardic Flavours: Jewish Cooking of the Mediterranean. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle.

2006: Goldman, Rivka. Mama Nazima’s Jewish-Iraqi Cuisine: Cuisine, History, Cultural References, and Survival Stories of the Jewish-Iraqi. New York: Hippocrene.

2007: Dweck, Poopa. Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews. New York: HarperCollins.

2007: Khalifé, Maria. The Middle Eastern Cookbook. Northampton, MA: Interlink.

2008: Sofaer, Pearl. Baghdad to Bombay: In the Kitchens of My Cousins. Eastsound, WA: Paper Jam.

2011: Dangoor, Linda. Flavours of Babylon: A Family Cookbook. London: Waterpoint.

2012: Cohen, Stella. Stella’s Sephardic Table: Jewish Family Recipes from the Mediterranean island of Rhodes. Cape Town, London and New York: Gerald & Marc Hoberman Collection.

2014: Gur, Janna. Jewish Soul Food from Minsk to Marrakesh: More Than 100 Unforgettable Dishes Updated for Today’s Kitchen. New York: Schocken.

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