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    On Holocaust Cookbooks: Fourth Generation Jews and the Re-creation of Jewish Food Culture

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    Issue Date
    2018-01-01
    Author
    Slaw, Talya Peri
    Publisher
    University of Kansas
    Format
    97 pages
    Type
    Thesis
    Degree Level
    M.A.
    Discipline
    Communication Studies
    Rights
    Copyright held by the author.
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    Abstract
    Food is essential: to memory, to culture, and to identity. In the introduction to In Memory’s Kitchen, Cara De Silva (1996) argues, “Our personal gastronomic traditions – what we eat, the foods and foodways we associate with the rituals of childhood, marriage, and parenthood, moments around the table, celebrations – are critical components of our identities” (p. xxiv). Food, as it is often associated with specific periods of time, events, and feelings, is undoubtedly intertwined with memory. This is especially true for Jews. In Judaism, not only is nearly every holiday associated in some way with special foods (such as the Passover Seder or eating fried potato latkes on Hanukkah), but the Jewish deli also played, at times, a more important role in American Jewish social life than the synagogue. Despite this rich tradition of associating food with remembrance and everyday life, food talk is often missing from discussions of the Holocaust. And yet, it was food talk that gave many in the labor, concentration, and death camps the will to survive and hope that they would one-day return to the life they had lived before the camps. Three extant, published cookbooks describe the way food was used for survival during (In Memory’s Kitchen, written in a concentration camp) and after (Recipes Remembered and the Holocaust Survivors Cookbook, two collections of recipes from survivors) the Holocaust. This thesis will explore just that, as I examine the relationship between food or “food talk” and memory. This is not just an important question for Holocaust memory, but also for public memory scholars and rhetoricians writ large. Rhetoricians have recently begun to take an interest in understanding food from a variety of perspectives. However, the relationship between food, collective memory, and identity has been left under-theorized. In this thesis, I bridge that gap, arguing that these cookbooks can make the past present and thus help to reestablish a lost Jewish identity for fourth generation Jews.
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    http://hdl.handle.net/1808/27937
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    • Theses [3710]

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    785-864-8983
    KU Libraries
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    785-864-8983

    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
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    Contact KU ScholarWorks
    785-864-8983
    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    785-864-8983

    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    Image Credits
     

     

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