Book Review // Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food

Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food Laura Silver Brandeis University Press 2014, pp. 275, $24.95 by Gloria Levitas Reader alert: I am not now nor have I ever been a knish enthusiast. I find most knishes too doughy, too heavy and much too filling. So I approached this attractive volume warily. Why eat knishes when you can feast on similar delights like bourekas or blintzes or samosas? But like them or not, I was curious about knishes, remembering a long-ago encounter while driving through the English countryside. My husband and I stopped for a snack at a small roadside shop in Cornwall that offered a variety of local pastries neatly displayed in a glass case. I pointed to a dough-covered item. “You want a Cornish, Miss?” asked the clerk, pronouncing “Cornish” as “k’nish.” I glanced around in amazement: Was this a...

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Book Review | Black Jews in Africa and the Americas

How to Be Black and Jewish Tudor Parfitt Harvard University Press 2013,  $29.95, pp. 232 Tudor Parfitt’s last book, Search for the Lost Ark, was a scholarly romp through history and linguistics—an adventure story that ended where his latest book begins: the remarkable discovery that male members of a black African tribe, the Lemba, carried the genes of the priestly caste of ancient Jews, the Cohanim. Currently living in Zimbabwe, far from their Middle Eastern origin, the Lemba practice a number of customs that resemble those of ancient Hebrews. But it was their claim to have an “ark” that caught Parfitt’s attention and led him to wonder if they might actually be descendants of an early Jewish community—a belief later confirmed by DNA studies. Whether Lemba customs (including wearing yarmulkes) were simply local developments—what anthropologists call “independent...

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