ah, too late. safety's cheating the right. i'd be such a dog at tight end and receiver. (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (bright rock music) good morning, and welcome to mosaic. i'm rabbi eric weiss, honored to be your host this morning. across the country, a lot of communities

have questions about the way identity is formed and maintained. we want to invite you into a conversation about food and identity. we would like to introduce you to rachel gross from san francisco state university and alex wall, the found over illuminatie and our jewish newspaper called j the weekly jewish newspaper of northern california. welcome, rachel and alex. >> thank you. >> rachel, let's jump in with you and ask what is this thing about food and identity? >> 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's the thing that we are probably all thinking about all

of the time. of course once i mention it, everyone is thinking about it. it shapes our words. it shapes us physically and 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 write about food, and you have created this new organization, so what is illuminatie and what is this thing about food and identity? >> for me it's been interesting since i started the group three years ago. it's the not so secret society of the bay area jewish food professionals. i created it after writing about the jewish food professionals in the bay area for six years, and how do we identify? it's an interesting question for me. as a rabbi living in the bay area,

there's so many jews here who are not affiliated at all or step into jewish affiliations. i started to create the group and they came out of the woodwork. i realized there's so many people who identify as jewish, but there's always a disqualifier, i'm a secular jew or have not been in a synagogue. i say i'm not a rabbi accident i don't care how jewish you are. if you identify in some way, you're welcome in this group. i feel like i created a group that ended up serving as a jewish connection for people who often otherwise have none. that's an interesting thing for me. that's not exactly what i had in mind when i set out to create it. >> you learned there's a different kind of identity made around food as you brought people together? >> i see it as a real connection point. it's not controversial. it's something we can all agree on, like rachel said. everybody needs to eat, right? and even if we have

not eating jewish food together, often we are not, just coming together over food, it's a natural connection point for people. >> it seems when you think of if a little more deeply and broadly, food is at the core of so many ways we understand the world. the core of archaeology. if you want to understand how people lived. the core of anthropology if you want to understand how people migrated across the world and how they were able to do so. the core of evolution. the core of sociology and certainly the core of medicine and theology of how we use all of these things in our lifetime. every faith tradition kind of has a way of doing every ethnic group. you just turn on the local cooking station, and half of them are about a particular kind of food or particular way of cooking or eating at a table. i'm just wondering in the context, what can we kind of know that might seem obvious

about the way food actually makes somebody feel jewish or more jewish or use or is used to serve people through a life experience? >> uh-uh. >> um, i am working on a book manuscript i'm calling "feeling jewish." i'm looking at one of the chapters on american jews and food and particularly how the 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 the foot. a pastrami sandwich or a pickle, but it feels like home and feels like their community. it will bring up feelings particularly of nostalgia. that's the subject i'm most particularly interested in. >> nostalgia in what way? >> i'm looking at nostalgia,

not just for personal experiences, which is how we normally think of nostalgia, but for community origins, jewish community origins of heritage in central and eastern europe, and then the way that american jewish -- those american jewish traditions developed in the united states like the lower east side in new york and throughout the country. >> alex, rachel, we are going to take a quick break and come back to talk about the conversation in just a moment on mosaic.

good morning, and welcome back to mosaic. i'm rabbi eric weiss. we are in a conversation with food and identity with rachel gross at san francisco state university, and alex wall, a contributing editor at our local jewish newspaper. welcome back. >> thank you. we were talking about nostalgia and food and how you see that topic, alex.

>> whether you call it nostalgia or not, for me, recipes can be so powerful in what we make for the holidays and jewish food in general because it reminds us of ancestors who are no longer living. when i cook a brisket recipe or an apple recipe, it reminds me of my mother. it's powerful to have the recipes she made. even though cooking trends have evolved, and i make so many better things than that now, but just the taste of it can envoke the memories of her, and that's so powerful. >> why do you think that a newspaper has a food column anyway? why do you think we like reading about food and recipes? >> i think there's been the assent of food in the popular culture. so many more people

are interested in it than used to be. chefs are rock stars. a lot of jewish parents didn't want their children, oh my god, you're a chef? you have to be a doctor or a lawyer. it was a blue collar profession, but that's changed. food in the culture has grown in status, and also someone who has been in journalism for a long time, there's so many depressing things in the world going on, and i think that food is just, you know, i call it fluff, and i sometimes could be down on myself, and i write fluff for the newspaper, but it's equally important to have stories about what is going on in israel, palestine, or wherever, you know, i think there's just so many terrible things happening in the world, it's nice to turn to the back of the paper and read the art section and read about food. it's a distraction, and it's a good distraction to have and think about what you're going to make for the next dinner for

the shabbot dinner. >> maybe it's a nostalgia, rachel, but if you're a faith community and you want to make it in the society, to get a food column in a newspaper is almost like a sign of status, you have made it. other people are reading about your food, even if it's just yourself, but it's out there in the world, and there's something about it, maybe, that has to do with a mark of achievement in some way? i don't know if that's part of what you mean, rachel, by nostalgia. >> interesting. 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's 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 community that we have been talking about, we tell the story of economic success generally, and we tell the story of generally imagined as poor, and we imagine them coming to the lower east side or other urban neighborhoods and struggling economically, and then american jews, generally it's true, though it's a simplified story, they generally get more money overall, and their communities are a little more stable we might say. to look back at the food that we imagine our ancestors eating tells the story of who we are and who we think that our ancestors and our communal ancestors were. >> is that also, i guess, the same way in which food at a holiday celebration passover, shabbot dinner table, or a

wedding or baby naming, that sort of thing? >> absolutely. the way that we find meaning in our lives, in our religious lives, in our community lives, it's always built around food. i am most interested in the food outside of those big religious celebrations. i don't know where alex would point us, but i am interested in the kind of everyday 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 are going to take another break and come back to continue the conversation in just a moment here on mosaic.

good morning and welcome

back to mosaic. i'm rabbi eric weiss. we are in the middle of the conversation about food in the jewish community with alex and rachel. welcome back. let's continue our conversation. what were you thinking, alex accident about the notion of everyday food and what we eat? >> living in the bay area, i have so many friends with dietary restrictions, and so many of my friends are gluten free or dairy free, and the list goes on. 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, i want to have a bagel brunch, and that is something i never think of doing on a normal weekend with just my husband and i. we don't get bagels even though we have a great bagel shop right down the street. i want lox, cream cheese, the whole thing, and it felt like family, that's what you do. bagel

brunch. on the east coast, their family always had it for us. it was a thing. so many east coast families have bagel brunch on the weekends. my california jewish friends, it's not part of their jewish tradition. it's been a source -- i have found some foods i consider so traditional, some people here don't know what they are. i remember kashavarish. i quizzed my friends who grew up in california, and they didn't know. >> what are they? >> that was shocking to me. it's a buckwheat grain, kasha is a buckwheat grain with this very intense nutty flavor, and you cook it with the bow tie noodles, and it's like jewish comfort food. nothing particularly spectacular about it, but it's hearty and filling and delicious. i don't

make it that often, but it's one of the 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 -- what you consider for your family, a traditional jewish food, there's a way that a jewish person may feel they are not observing the holiday or having a celebration or don't have matza ball soup or i know a lot of canadian jews are really having a certain particular way of doing lentil soup or a grass soup that a lot of people have or cabbage soup. is there a way in which the everyday food has that impact on how you actually feel like you're doing something? >> yeah. i think that food can act like other objects or rituals, and it makes things

real for us. we know it's a holiday because we have those foods, or we bring out the dishes, and we know that it is really, real because we have those things that are meaningful to us. >> and so, you're talking earlier about nostalgia. how do you think about the notion of food, meaning, and nostalgia in the way that someone will feel like they are jewish or authentically jewish or legitimately jewish, whatever way we may think of those things for ourselves? >> a lot of times we think about who we are in the world, beginning with ourselves, and what are the choices we make, and how do we think about our family and our family's history, and then broadening to our community's story, often maybe a religious story or an ethnic story. so when ashkanazi

jews descended, think of it, they tell the story of who they are in the world. it may connect them to the broader story. >> just to flip it a bit, what is happening when the jewish entrepreneur opens up a jewish deli on the corner, open to the public and sort of our daily food is on the menu. you can get chopped liver, rye bread, and jewish foods any day of the week, any time you want, and you're opening up the shop of your ethnic identity everyday food to the world? what's at work there that we are sharing it in that way? >> i think that 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 the jewish deli because particular foods have been recognizable as jewish. where i teach a class on american jewish food history we explode the notion and begin with colonial merchants selling chocolate to each other and ask is that jewish food? we look at bacon, the quintessential nonkosher food forbidden by law and ask if jews have a particular reaction s that a jewish food? is crisco, a food marketed specifically to jewish people, is that a jewish food? there's the idea that we can explode the notion of what is jewish. >> wonderful. we are going to come back in a moment on mosaic. thank you so much for being with us.

good morning and welcome back to mosaic. i'm rabbi eric weiss. we are in the middle of

a wonderful conversation with rachel and alex. welcome back. we were talking a little bit about how jewish food has come into the mainstream. i'm wondering with the way that you think about food and jewish food, alex, how that is from your perspective? >> i feel a real sense of pride and the fact that our food, which, you know, admittedly ashkenazi jewish food is not always flavorrable. some see it as bland, but it's comfort food for us. i think it's not always the best food, but last week for those people who watched top chef, we are 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 are in macao. she went shopping in a store when she couldn't read the packages,

all chefs had to do that. she bought crackers and made a matza ball soup, and she won. i felt the sense of pride watching this and being like, this is a gourmet challenge, and she might win the title with a bowl of soup. that's an incredible moment of jewish cuisine. >> that's fascinating. going to rachel's point about what is jewish cuisine, and what elements define it. >> exactly, and how much of how it has been define in the united states has been shaped by companies, like the manashevitz that promoted matza has an everyday food. it used to only be dumplings for passover. the company had the amazing idea they would sell the mill, and we get it year round as a recognizably jewish

food. >> so from something that is particular and becomes everyday, what is a big question, what is the future of jewish food? >> i think there's a trend towards elevating it by some chefs as alex was speaking to, and it is still -- there's a home tradition in the ways in which it ising in all of our -- through all of our food broader food trends. would you agree? >> yeah, i also think it's been really interesting to watch what has happened with israeli food in the last couple of years. i think it's -- first of all as someone who has spent my lifetime visiting israel, the food didn't used to be that good, but now it's considered one of the best cuisines, and now we have the world famous chefs, the first

israeli british chef and the second an israeli american chef that have elevated the cuisine to such a high level, people are waiting ifer their next cook book. i think the two of them are largely responsible for the celebrity chef culture that the combination of that and the fact that israeli food over the years has increasingly gotten better and better. >> wonderful. alex and rachel, believe it or not, we are at the end of the show. thank you so much for being here, and encouraging all of you to get a recipe, go to a jewish deli, and enjoy jewish food. thank you so much for being with us here on mosaic.

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