good morning and welcome to "mow say yak" honored to be your host this morning. faith communities have a lot of conversations about the ways in which identity is formed and maintained. we wanted to invite you into a wonderful conversation about food and identity and all of the different ways in which a faith community uses food to form its identity and to sustain its identity through life itself. so we'd like to introduce you to the professor rachel gross who is in the department of jewish studies at san francisco state university and alex wall who is the founder of a group

and also a contributor to our local jewishness which is called j., the weekly jewish newspaper of northern california. welcome, rachel and alex. >> thank you. >> so, rachel, let's just ask what is this thing about food and identity? >> yeah. when i teach classes on jewish food and identity, i begin by telling my students that food might be the most important subject in the world. it is the thing that we're probably all thinking about all of the time, and, of course, once i mention it, everybody is thinking about it, but it shapes our world. it shapes us physically and it shapes who we are as individuals and communities of families and as nations. >> it is so interesting. and, alex, you think about food and you talk about food and you write about food. and you have created this new organization.

so what is this and what is this thing abfood and identity? >> for me it has been really interesting since i started this group over three years ago. this is the not so secret city of bay area jewish food professionals, and i created it after writing about jews who work in the food world for six years now and realizing that there are so many of us and how do we identify jewishly was a really interesting question for me because as you know as a rabbi, living in the bay area, there are so many jews here who are not affiliated at all, who never step foot into jewish institutions. and when i created this group, they started coming out of the woodwork and i realized there are so many people here who do identify as jewish, but there is always this qualifier oh, i'm a secular jew, oh, i haven't set foot in a synagogue in 20 years or since my bar mitzvah, and they are always telling me that as if that

should bar entry into the group. i'm not a rabbi. and so i feel like i created a group that serves as a jewish connection for people who otherwise often have none and that has been an interesting thing for me because that is not exactly what i had in mind when i set out to create it. >> so you've learned there is a different kind of identity around food as you brought people together? >> i see it as a real connection point. it is so not controversial. it is something we can all agree on. like rachel said, everybody needs to eat. even if we're not eating jewish food together, which we're often not, just coming together over food, it is a natural connection point for people. >> it seems when you think a little bit more deeply and broadly that food is at the core of so many ways in which we understand the world. it is the core of arc 'ol ghee, if you want to understand how people lived, anthropology, if you want to understand how

people migrated across the world and how they were able to grow strong, it is at the core of evolution, it is at the core of sociology and all of these different fields. it is at the core of medicine, theology and how we use all of these things in our lifetime. so every faith tradition really has its way of doing every ethnic group. you just turn on a local cooking station and half of them are about a particular kind of food and a particular way of cooking and a particular way of eating at a table. so i'm just wondering in that condition text, what can we kind of know that might seem obvious about the way food actually makes somebody feel jewish or more jewish or is used to serve people through a life experience. >> i am -- i'm i'm working on a book man you i want that i'm calling feeling jewish, and i'm looking at one of the chapters i'm looking at and writing on american jews and food and

precisely how food that has its culinary traditions in central and eastern europe, and then was developed in the united states, how american jews will sit down to that food, whether it is a pastrami sandwich or a pickle, but food for them that feels like home and feels like their community. and it will bring up -- it will bring up feelings of nostalgia, which is the subject i'm mostinterested in. >> nostalgia in what way? >> nostalgia not just for personal experiences, which is how we normally think of nostalgia, but nostalgia for community origins, for jewish community origins of the heritage in central and eastern europe and then the way that american jewish -- those american-jewish traditions developed in the united states, in immigrant ethnic neighborhoods, like the lower east side in new york and throughout the country.

>> alex, rachel, i'm going to take a quick break and come back to talk about this conversation here in a moment here on "mosaic."

good morning and welcome back to "mow say yak." we're in the middle of a wonderful conversation about food and identity with professor rachel gross who is with the department of jewish studies and the founder of a wonderful organization and is a contributing editor at our local jewish newspaper, which is called j., the jewish news of northern california. welcome back, alex and rachel. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> we were talking before about the notion of nostalgia and food, and i am wondering, alex,

how you see that topic. >> well, i -- whether you call it nostalgia or not, for me i think recipes can be so powerful in what we make for the holidays and jewish food in general because it reminds us of ancestors that maybe are no longer living. i know that when i cook a certain brisket recipe or an apple cake recipe, it reminds me of my mother, who is no longer living, and that is very powerful for me to have these recipes that she made. oh, that is -- i make so many better things than that now, but just the taste of it can evoke memories of her and that is so powerful so i still make it sometimes. >> and so why do you think -- why do you think a newspaper has a food column anyway, and why do you think we like reading about food and food columns and reading recipe ? >> well, i think there has been this assent of food in the

popular culture where so many more people are interested in it than used to be. i think also chefs have become rock stars. that didn't used to be the case. especially jewish parents didn't want their children, oh, my god. you're becoming a chef? no. you have to become a doctor or a lawyer. it was seen as a blue collar profession and that has changed. i think overall food has grown in status. also someone who has been in journalism for a very long time, there there are so many depressing things in the world going on, and i think food is just -- i call it -- you know, i sometimes could be down on myself, i write fluff for the newspaper ', but i think it is equally important to have stories that aren't about what is going on in israel, palestine and there are just so many terrible things happening in the world that i think it is nice to turn to the back of the paper and read the art section and read about food because it is a good distraction to have, to think about what you're

going to make for the next shall bat dinner. >> and i also wonder if in some historic way there is a kind of a nostalgia that if your faith community, and you want to make it in a society, to get a food column in a newspaper is almost like a sign of status like you've made it. other people are reading about your food. even if it is just yourself, but it is out there in the world and there is something about it maybe that has to do with a mark of achievement in some way. i don't know if that is part of what you mean, rachel,s by nostalgia. >> interesting, yeah. i think of nostalgia in a way that is a little bit different. alex kind of distanced herself from nostalgia which i think a lot of people do. i want to think about the ways in which nostalgia is productive. it is a story that simplistic, but it provide as lot of meaning for us and helps us understand where we are in time and in the world. >> how so? >> so we can think of our

communities, if we think about the american-u jewish story that we have been talking about, we tell a story of economic success generally, and we tell a story of the yous coming from central and eastern europe, generally we imagine them poor, whether or not they were, we imagine them coming to the lower east side and other urban neighborhoods and struggling economically and then american jews, generally this is true, so it is a simple side story, that they generally get more money overall, and their communities are a little more stable, we might say. so to look back at the food that we imagine our ancestors eating tells a story of who we are and who we think that our ancestors and our communal ancestors were. >> and is that also i guess the same way in which food at a holiday celebration works, a

passover, seder, a dinner table, even a wedding or a baby naming, that sort of a thing? >> absolutely, yeah. the way that we find meaning in our lives, in our religious lives, in our community lives is always built around food. i am most interested in the food outside of those big religious celebrations. so like i don't know where alex would point us, but i'm interested in the kind of every day food of our lives, and how that makes up our lives and tells us who we are in the world. >> fascinating. believe it or not, we're going to take another break to come back and continue this conversation in just a moment here on "mosaic."

. good morning and welcome back to "mow say yak." we're in the mi of this wonderful conversation about food and identity in the jewish community with professor rachel gross and alex wahl. welcome back, alex and rachel. let's continue our conversation. what were you thinking, alex, about this notion of every day food and what we eat? >> well, you know, live manager the bay area, i'm so used to -- i have so many friends with dietary restrictions, and i would say so many of my friends are gluten free or dairy free and the list goes on, and i had my cousins visiting this past weekend who grew up on the east coast, at least my cousin did and his wife and his son, and my natural inclination, oh, i want to have a bagel brunch, and that is something that i just never think of doing on a normal weekend is when it is just my husband and i. we just don't get bagels, even though we have a great bagel shop right down the street. and i thought i want lox, cream

cheese the whole thing. when i was growing up and we would be on the east coast, their family always had bagel brunch when we came over and so many east coast families have bagel brunch on the weekends, and i find that may california jewish friends it is not their jewish tradition, and that has been a source of like -- i have found that some jewish foods that i consider so traditional, some people here don't even know what they are. i remember a dish at up with point i quizzed my jewish friends who grew up in california, do you even know what that is and a lot of people didn't. >> what are they? >> that is shocking to me! they're a buck wheat grain, it is a buck wheat grain that has this very intense nutty flavor, and you cook it with these bow tie noodles, and it is a very -- it is like jewish comfort food. there is nothing particularly

spectacular about it and it is just hearty and filling and delicious. and i don't make it that often, but it is just one of those kind of traditional foods that a lot of people on the west coast have no familiarity with. >> do you think, then, if you don't have a traditional jewish food for your own family that does that mean there is some way in which a jewish person might not feel they're actually observing the holiday or actually having the celebration or there is some way if you don't have mazza ball soup at a passover, if you don't have a crewing l for a noodle pudding, if you don't have -- i know a lot of canadian jews really have a certain particular way of doing lentil soup, and the sort of grass soup that a lot of people have or cabbage soup. so is there some way in which the every day food has that kind of impact on how you feel like you're doing something? >> yeah. i think atthcan act

like other objects or other rituals where it makes things real for us, right? we know it is a holiday because we have those foods or we bring out those dishes. we know that it's really real because we have those things that are meaningful to us. >> and so you're talking earlier about nostalgia. so how do you think about this notion of food and meaning and nostalgia in the way in which someone will feel like they're jewish or authentically jewish or legitimately jewish, whatever way we might think about our way. >> we think about the choices we make, how do we think about our family and our family's history and broaderrenning through our community's story, often maybe a religious story or an ethnic story, so when the

jews ded op ceral d ean rope, think abouemselvesey that paiculof who they are in the world, so eating a pastrami sandwich or a bagel might connect them to a broader story of who they are in the world. >> so, then, just to flip it a little bit. what is it -- what is happening when a jewish entrepreneur opens up a jewish deli on the corner and then it is open to the public and sort of our daily food is on this menu so you can get chopped liver and rye bread and a bagel and hala and mazza ball soup and all sorts of other jewish foods any day of the week, anytime you want, and you're essentially opening your shop up of your ethnic identity every day food to the world. so what is at work there that we are sharing in that way? >> i think it is insting th you named particularly foods, and jewish food has become recoginzable by certain

iconic jewish foods, right? we know what the food is. we know what belongs in a jewish deli because particular foods have been recoginzable as jewish. and at f.s. state where i teach a class on american jewish food history, we kind of explode that notion and go through american-jewish history beginning with colonial merchants who were selling chocolate to each other and ask is that jewish food, right? we look at bacon, the quintessential non-kosher food forbidden by jewish law and if jews have a particular reaction to it? is that jewish food? we ask if crisco, a food that has been marketed to jews. it was marketed specifically to jews throughout the 20th century, is that a jewish food? there is this idea that we as individuals might have and the idea that we can explode this notion of what is jewish. >> wonderful. we're going to come back in just a moment here on "mosaic."

thank you so much for being with us.

good morning and welcome back to "mosaic." and i'm honored to be your host. we're in the middle of a wonderful conversation about food and jewish identity with alex wall and professor rachel gross. welcome back rachel and alex. we were talking a little bit about how jewish food has come into the main stream and i'm wondering with the way you think about food and jewish food, alex, how that -- how that -- from your perspective. >> well, i feel a real sense of which, you know, ct that

admittedly, the jewish food is in the always the most flavorful. some people can see it as kind of bland and sitcom fort food for us and nostalgic and that's why we love it so much, but i think it is not always the best food, but last week for those people who watched "top chef," we're almost at the final and a woman chef from kentucky, who is jewish, they had to cook something from their own heritage and mix it with chinese flavors because they're in macaw, and she went shopping in a store where she knew she couldn't read the pack aimings, all the chefs had to do that, and she bought crackers and made a soup with chinese broth and she won and to hear the judges discuss the merits of this soup, i felt a sense of pride watching this, this is a gourmet challenge and she might win the title with a bowl of matsa ball soup. >> and it goes to rachel's

point about what is really jewish cuisine and what are the elements that define it. >> exactly. and so much of how it is being defined in the united states has been shaped by companies like a company which promoted the soup as an every day food. it is a food for passover and the soup used to only be dumpling soup for the holiday of passover. but the company had this amazing idea that they would sell their meal in which you could make the mazza balls year round and therefore, we get the soup year round as a recognizably jewish food. >> so something that becomes every day, what, then, do you think is kind of a big question, so what is the future of jewish food? >> i think that there's this trend towards elevating it by some chefs as alex was speaking to, and it is still -- there is

still a home tradition in the ways in which it is evolving in all of our -- through all of our food, broader food trends. would you agree? >> yeah, i also think it has been interesting to watch what has happened with isreali food in the past couple of years. first of all, as someone who has been -- spent my lifetime visiting israel, the food there didn't used to be that good and now it is amazing. it is really considered one of the best and we also have the celebrity chefs like you're talking about otto and the first of the isreali british chef and those who have elevated isreali food to such a level that people are waiting for their next cookbook and the two of them i think are responsible largely. the celebrity is chef culture which -- the combination of that and then the fact that isreali food over the years has increasingly gotten better and better. >> wonderful. alex and rachel, believe it or not, we're at the end of our

show and i want to thank you so much for being here. i encourage awe all of you to get a recipe, go to a jewish deli and get some jewish food. thank you for being here on "mosaic."

right now on kp -- kpix 5 and streaming on cbsn bay area, several overnight house flyers and what one east bay resident says may have set her house ablaze. >> a family trip leads to fight for freedom the family speaking out on how they escaped afghanistan. a train derailed with three people dead and many other injured and the investigation into an amtrak accident in montana good morning into sunday, september 26. we could see some rain later this week that is certainly a rarity.