01 Nov
2012 November-December, Food, Talk of the Table

Lox: An American Love Story

by Eileen Lavine When I was growing up on the Upper West Side in the 1930s, Broadway was lined with “appetizing” stores, that—unlike delicatessens, which sold smoked, cured and pickled meats—specialized in fish and dairy. These were shops where we bought pickles, fresh sauerkraut, dried fruits and candies as well as pickled, smoked and salted fish, and especially what we called lox. At the time, this now-iconic Jewish food was skyrocketing in popularity, and appetizing stores opened to meet the demand. Most Americans, even Jews, don’t know that lox was invented in America, not Eastern Europe, explains Gil Marks, author of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food. “Salmon was not an Eastern European fish,” although it was familiar to Scandinavians and Germans, including German Jews, he says. While “bagels were Polish and cream cheese was Native American,” Jews...

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28 Jul
2012 July-August, Arts & Culture, Issues, Talk of the Table

The New Gene Cuisine

In Genesis, Jacob asks his father-in-law, Laban, to compensate him for 14 years of unpaid labor. His request is strange: all the speckled and spotted goats and all the dark sheep from Laban’s flock—the least desirable animals. Jacob then peels back the bark of tree branches, making stripes, and places these rods in the animals’ water troughs. According to the story, the sight of the rods make the animals mate, and soon, Jacob’s flock is more robust than Laban’s. Jacob may not have known it, but genes were behind this success: By selectively mating the animals, he brought out genes that would produce desirable traits. This tale is the first time Jews weighed in on the issue of genetic manipulation, but millennia later, the issue is still a topic of debate. Today, the discussion focuses not...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, Arts, Food, Issues, Series, Talk of the Table

The Food of Great Fiction

Here a Roth, there a Stein, everywhere a Kafka—Jews are the people of the book, a group that has long prized its own erudition and literary prowess. And with good reason: It’s nearly impossible to list the most important writers of our time, or any other, without dropping some Jewish names. But one could also say that Jews are the people of the food: here a brisket, there a kreplach, everywhere a bagel. A fervor for food is often a trope of Jews in literature, a sort of shorthand for membership in the Jewish people. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby, the Jewish no-goodnik Meyer Wolfsheim is introduced at a tony restaurant with the following description: “A succulent hash arrived and Mr. Wolfsheim…began to eat with ferocious delicacy.” The tone is set from the beginning:...

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