learn how abbvie could help you save. (upbeat music ends) eric weissman. i have a lot of conversations about the ways in which identity is formed and maintained. we want to invite you into a wonderful conversation about food and identity and all the different ways in which a faith community uses food to form its identity and to sustain its identity through life itself. we'd like it introduce you to professor rachel gross, in

the department of jewish studies at san francisco university and alex, the founder and contributor to our local jewish newspaper, called j, the weekly newspaper of northern california. welcome. >> thank you. >> so rachel, let's jump in with you and 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 are probably all thinking about all of the time. and of course once i mention it, everybody is thinking about it. but it shapes our worlds, right? it shapes us physically and it shapes who we are as individuals and communities, as 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 it and what is this thing about food and identity? >> well for me it has been interesting since i started this group almost 3 years ago. it is the not so secret society of bay area jewish food professionals. i created it after writing about jews who work in the food world, realizing there are so many of us. and how do we identify jewishly, was an interesting question for me. as you know, as a rabbi in the bay area, so many jews here 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 so many people here identify as jewish, but there is always this disqualifier like i haven't set foot in a synagogue in 20

years. they feel this need to tell me that, as if that should bar entry to the group. i say, i'm not a rabbi. if you identify as jewish in some way you are welcome in this group. so i feel like i ended up creating a group that serves as some kind of jewish connection for people who often have none. >> so you have learned that there is a different kind of an identity need around food as you brought people together? >> i see it as a real connection point. it is so not controversial. it is something we all can agree on. everybody needs to eat, right? and even if we are not eating jewish food together, which often we are not, it is a natural connection point for people. >> it seems when you think about it deeply and broadly, that food is at the core of so many ways in which we understand the world at the core of archaeology. if you want to understand how people live, it is at the core of

anthropology if you want to understand how people migrated across the world and how they were able to do so. at the core of evolution and sociology and certainly at the core of medicine, at the core of theology about how we use all these things in our lifetime. you turn on a local cooking station and half of them are about a particular kind of food or kind of way of eating at a table. i'm wondering what can we know that might seem obvious about the way food actually makes people feel more jewish? >> i'm working on a bookman script i'm calling feeling

jewish. i'm looking at one of the chapters, is on american jews and food. and precisely how food that has culinary traditionsineasteurope a was developed in the united states, how american jews will sit down to that food. whether it is a pastrami sandwich or a pickle, it feels like home. and feels like their community. it will bring you feelings of nostalgia. >> in what way? >> nostalgia, i'm looking at it not just for personal experiences, which is how we normally think of nostalgia, but nostalgia for community origins. jewish community origins of heritage in central and eastern europe and the way

those developed in the united states. like the lower east side of new york and throughout the country. >> i'm going to take a quick break and come back to talk about this conversation. just in a moment here on mosaic.

. good morning and welcome back to mosaic. i'm rabbi eric weiss. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation about food and identity with professor of rachel gross at san francisco state university and alex wall, a 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. we were talking about the

notion of nostalgia and food. i'm wondering, alex, how you see that topic? >> 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 are maybe no longer living. when i cook a certain brisket recipe or apple cake recipe, it remind me of my mother, who is no longer living. that is very powerful for me to have these recipes she made. even if now i feel like cooking trends have evolved so much that apple cake is so passe, i make better things than that now. but just the taste of it can evoke memories of her and that is powerful, so i still make it sometimes. why do you think a newspaper has a food column anyway? and why do you think we like reading about food in food

columns and recipes? >> i think there is an ascent in food in the popular food culture. so many people are interested and chefs have become rock stars. that didn't used to become the case. people didn't want their children to be a chef, it was seen as a blue collar profession but that has changed. food in overall has grown in status. also someone who has been in journalism for a really long time, there are so many depressing things in the world going on. i think food is just you know, i call it fluff. i sometimes could be down on myself or oh, 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 or wherever. there is so many terrible things happening in the world i think it is nice to turn to the back of the paper and read the art section and read about food. it is a distraction go

distraction to vewondinsome his way, maybe this is kind of nostalgia. but if you are a faith community and you want it make it in a society, to get a food column in a newspaper is almost like a sign of status. like you have made it. you know, 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 think if that is part of what you mean 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 really productive. it is a story that is simplistic, but it provides a 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 jewish story, the story we have been talking about, we tell a story of success and jews coming from central and eastern europe. generally we imagine them as poor, whether or not they were. we imagine them coming to the lower east side or other urban neighborhoods and struggling economically. and then american jews, generally this is true, though it is a simplified 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. >> is that also the way in which food at a holiday situation, sha bat dinner table, even a wedding or baby naming, that sort of a thing. >> absolutely. absolutely. sam way in our community lives it is always built around too. i'm most interesting in the food outside of those big religious situations. i don't know where alex would point us. but i'm interested in the every day food and how that makes us up in the world. >> fascinating. we are going to take another break and come back ntinue this conversation in just a moment here on mosaic.

wonderful conversation about food in the jewish community. what were you thinking, alex, about this notion of every day food and what we eat? >> living in the pay area, i'm so used to, i have so many friends with dietary restrictions and i would say you know, so many of my friends are gluten-free or dairy free or you know, 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 son, and my natural inclination was i want to have a bagel brunch. and that is something i never think of doing on a normal weekend. we don't get bagels, even though we have a

great bagel shop right down the street. i thought i want lennox and cream cheese. it felt like family. because when i was growing up and we'd be on the east coast, their family always had bagel brunch for us when we would come over. it is an east coast thing. and i find that my california jewish friends, it is not really part of their tradition. and that has been a source of like you know, i have found that some jewish foods that i consider so traditional some people here don't even know what they are. i remember at one point i quizzed my jewish friends who grew up in california do you even know what they are and a lot of people didn't. >> what are they? >> they are a buck wheat grain that has this very intense, nutty flavor and you cook it with these bow tie noodles. and it is like jewish comfort food.

eccular about it iarticularly arty d filling and delicious. i don't make it that often. it is one of those traditional foods. >> do you think then that like if you don't have a traditional jewish food of what you consider, that that means that there is some way in which a jewish person actually might not feel they are actually observing the holiday or having a celebration. or if you don't have matzo ball soup or if you don't have, i know a lot of canadian jews are a freddie mac way of doing lentil soup or a grass soup that a lot of people have or cabbage soup. is there some way in which the every day food has that kind of impact? >> yeah. i think that the food

can 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. with you know that it is really real because we have those things that are meaningful to us. >> so how do you think about food and nostalgia in the way someone will think they are legitimately jewish? >> a lot of times we think about who we are in the world, beginning with ourselves, what are the choices we make? how do we think about our family and our family's history. and then broadening to our community's story, often it may be a

religious or ethnic story. so when jews descended from people in central and eastern europe they tell that particular story of who they are in the world. eating a pastrami sandwich or bagel might connect them. >> so what is happening when a jewish entrepreneur opens up a jewish deli on the corner and is open to the public and sort of our daily food is on this menu. you can get chopped liver rye brd and any y and you are essentially opening up a shop of your ethnic identity every day food to the world. so what is that work there that we are sharing it in that way? >> i think it is interesting that you named particular foods and jewish food has become

recognizable by certain iconic jewish foods, right? we know what jewish food is. we know what belongs in a jewish deli. i teach a class on american jewish food history and we kind of explode that notion throug history, beginning with colonial merchants who are selling chocolate to each other. we look at bacon, the quintessential nonkosher food forbidden by jewish law and ask if jews have a particular reaction to it, is that jewish food? we ask is lard a jewish food? so there is the idea that we, as individuals might have and the idea we can explode the notion of what is jewish. >> wonderful. we are going to.

do back in just a moment here on mosaic. thank you so much for being with us.

. good morning, i'm rabbi eric weiss, honored to be your host. we were talking about coming to the mainstream and

i'm wondering how that is from your perspective. >> admittedly some jewish food is bland. it is comfort food for us and nostalgic and that is why we love it so much but i think it is not always the best in. but last week, for those people who watch top chef, we are almost at the final. and a woman chef who is jewish, they had to cook something from their own heritage and mix it with chinese flavors because they are in macaw. and she couldn't read the packages and she bought crack enters made a matzo ball soup with some kind of broth. and hearing the judges discuss the merits of this soup, i felt such a sense of pride. being this is a gourmet challenge and she might win the title with a matzo ball soup and that is a defining

moment for yeahish cuisine. >> it goes to rachel's point of what are the elements that define it? >> exactly. so much of how it has been defined in the united states has been shaped by the companies that promoted matzo ball soup as an every day food. we get matzo ball soup year round. >> what then do you think is kind of a big question? like so what is the future of jewish food? >> i think that there is this trend toward elevating it by some chefs, as alex was

speaking to. and there is still a home tradition and the ways in which it isee traveling near all of our broader food trends. would you agree? >> yeah. i also think it has been interesting to watch what has happened with israeli food in the last couple of years. well first of all, as someone who has spent my life time visiting israel, the food there didn't used to be that good. and now it is amazing. it is considered one of the world's best cuisines. and we have these famous chefs who have elevated israeli cuisine to such a high level. that people are waiting for their next cookbook. the two of them, i think are responsible for the celebrity chef culture, which the combination of that over t years that his increasingly gotten better and better. thank you so much for being

here and encourage all of you to get a recipe, go for a jewish deli and enjoy jewish food. thank you so much for being here with us on mosaic.

from cbs news, bay area, this is the morning edition. >> a fresh round of rain is rolling across much of the bay area this morning. we have the complete forecast. flooding in an east bay community prompts police to go into action and help people get out of their homes. 49ers fans are celebrating after san francisco defeated the seahawks. we have highlights and reaction from players fans