Event

Award-winning author Darra Goldstein will speak about how Ashkenazi Jews adapted to life in America through their food.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-the-ashkenazi-kitchen-in-america-jos...

About this Event

When masses of Eastern European Jews migrated to America in the late 19th century, they faced not only unfamiliar foods but also challenges to their ritual culinary practices. This lecture explores how Ashkenazi Jews adapted to life in the new country by adopting local ingredients, taking cooking classes, writing instructive cookbooks, and engaging in debates about the importance of domestic traditions that kept women tied to the kitchen. We’ll conclude with a look at the American Jewish foodscape today.

Darra Goldstein, the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita, at Williams College, and Founding Editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, served as lead scholar for the YIVO online learning course “A Seat at the Table: A Journey into Jewish Food.” The author of six award-winning cookbooks, she has consulted for the Council of Europe and is currently Series Editor of California Studies in Food and Culture (University of California Press). She has been Distinguished Fellow in Food Studies at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto, and held the Macgeorge Fellowship at the University of Melbourne. Goldstein sits on the advisory board of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts and is a member of the advisory “Kitchen Cabinet” for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

The lecture is free, and all are welcome, but registration is required. It will take place online, and you will receive a link and a password via email before the talk.

Questions? Feel free to contact jsp-info@sas.upenn.edu

This is the 35th annual Joseph Alexander Colloquium in the Jewish Studies Program, sponsored by the Joseph Alexander Foundation and the Mackler Family.