Family genealogy
Jewish World Cuisine
Jewish cuisines have become integrated into their various living spaces and have created wonderful recipes with a taste of travel in multiple flavors.
These testimonies are taken from the European Institute of Jewish Music.
Jewish cuisine refers to the culinary traditions of the Jewish people worldwide.
Over the course of its evolution over several centuries, it has been influenced by Jewish dietary laws ( Kashrut [1] ), festivals, Jewish holidays, traditions as well as by the economy, agriculture and culinary traditions of the many countries where the communities have settled.
The history of Jewish cuisine begins with the gradual dispersal of the Jewish diaspora, during which different styles emerged.
They vary according to the communities of the Ashkenazi , Sephardic and Mizrahi diasporas and in the autonomous Jewish communities of the Greek, Ottoman, Iranian and Yemeni diasporas.
Jewish cuisine can play a role in preserving memory and transmitting history and culture, particularly through cookbooks: for authors, especially women, it's about keeping a popular culture alive and perpetuating it, reviving a lost world. For example, an Ashkenazi author quoted here describes Jewish holidays in Poland as later generations cannot know them.
Ashkenazi cuisine comes from the East
Jewish cuisine is a language unto itself. A foundation of the Jewish mother, it nourishes children with her traumas and anchors them in their Jewish identity. All those dishes we loved or hated, we speak of them with fervor, even after the age of 40. Our mother's borekas, her sublime chopped liver, her royal couscous—all take us back to a blessed childhood where life was simple: either we ate what was on our plate, or we were responsible for our mother's imminent death! But Jewish cuisine isn't just about guilt; it's also a delight for the taste buds. So much so that many artists sing about it with humor and nostalgia, as you'll see in the videos below.
Judeo-Spanish cuisine
This is a unique editorial object, just like its author!
On one side a medievalist, on the other a chef, Hélène Jawhara Piñer combines her two passions in an original cookbook that transcends borders and revives history.
Its title? Sephardic. A culinary history of the Jews of Spain and the diaspora in 55 recipes.
"Sephardic". From the outset, a historical and lexicographical clarification is necessary.
The Hebrew word is first found in the Book of Obadiah, verse 20. It refers to places located in Mesopotamia.
But in the context of medieval Europe, the subject of the author's historical research, this same term comes to describe Spain – a way of signifying that Jews were present in the West long before the birth of Christianity.
Sephardim, by extension, became the name given to the Jews of Spain and Portugal forced to leave in 1492, which became the kingdom of Spain under the rule of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon.
And what about food in all of this? It lies at the heart of this story of persecution: as traces of the liturgical practices of the Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism.
This is precisely what makes Jawhar's work so original: unearthing little-known sources of medieval history, comparing and contrasting them, and making them speak, through gesture and style, to a contemporary audience. Coming from a line of pastry chefs and bakers – which is surely no coincidence – the author intertwines her love of history, her obsession with the quest for origins, and her culinary intuition.
Judeo-Oriental cuisine
Oriental cuisine, like music, is multifaceted.
It has its roots in all the countries of the Maghreb, Algeria and especially Berber, Morocco and Tunisia, but also extends to Egypt, Lebanon and now Israel.
“Israeli cuisine is a convergence of peoples, flavors, and cultures. It’s a cuisine of transmission, sharing, and tradition, where everyone reinterprets ancestral recipes in their own way.” Mixing and reinventing traditional dishes is the cornerstone of Yariv Berreby’s cuisine, chef of the Salatim and Maafim restaurants and founder of the Sentier bakery in Paris.
