Food & Language

What makes the sizzling of potatoes or the burbling of a Shabbat stew feel so Jewish? It is no coincidence that so many Jewish religious and cultural celebrations around the world all involve food. From the Seder plate to Shabbat dinners, food plays an important symbolic, religious, communal function in keeping people fed in more ways than one. The five-sense experience of cooking and eating "Jewish" foods is an important part of feeling Jewish for many, but so too is the engagement with food through language.

Language is the form through which food is named and described; purchased and sold; and recipes are preserved from generation to generation. Jews historically have lived in societies which required them to know multiple languages, thus bringing weight to the decision of what language to use in what social, political, and economic context.

Much like how language itself both adapts to contemporary contexts and maintains traces of the past, the way in which food is prepared also has the capacity to reflect not only the present realities of the people cooking it, but the way in which their ancestors cooked and seasoned. Jewish food doubles as an ever-developing lived practice as much as it can be a nostalgic vessel for traveling to the past.

Additionally, both language and food are similarly positioned to negotiate a diasporic identity unique to a particular group of people in a particular place, as well as a global Jewish identity bound by shared traditions, many of which include food.

The mission to preserve, share, and engage with stories of Jewish languages not only mirrors the significance of Jewish food, but is deeply interconnected to it. Food and language shape each other and language enables the experience of food to go beyond the five-senses through articulating, preserving, and bridging community, bringing the tradition of the past to the current.

Shabbat Foods

Food-Naming

Written Documentation

Shabbat Foods

Ritual Foods

All over the world, Jewish communities celebrate many of the same holidays with foods that either fulfill the same religious restrictions or are symbolically important to the celebration. As much as there are similar foods that appear in communities around the globe, there are also dishes that highlight the different cultures of particular Jewish communities. For religiously observant communities, the Jewish dietary laws of kashrut create a common understanding of acceptable foods and preparation methods. Shabbat, in particular, offers an interesting snapshot of the Jewish communities' simultaneous connectivity and distinctiveness of .

Shabbat (Sabbath) is a holy day of rest marked by special foods, as well as heightened restrictions on cooking and other food-prep tasks. Shabbat occurs each week beginning Friday at sunset and extending through Saturday night, for a total of 25 hours of observance.

Shabbat Stew

Challah

Sources: “Announcement about Not Accepting ‘Cholent’ for Overnight Baking because of the Low Supply of Coal, 1940 Dec. 13.” 2026. Cjh.org. 2026. https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE12396228. Astaire, Libi. 2024. “The Evolution of Challah - Kosher.com.” Kosher.com. March 18, 2024. https://www.kosher.com/article/the-evolution-of-challah-200/. Bladholm, Linda. 2006. “Cochin Kosher: The Fragrant Foods of India’s Jews .” NewsBank: America’s News Magazines. The Miami Herald. June 8, 2006. https://infoweb-newsbank-com.amherst.idm.oclc.org/apps/news/document-view?p=AMNP&docref=news/1122A402220F7BF8. Cole, Michael. 2005. “South African Challah?” The Forward. November 18, 2005. https://forward.com/culture/2303/south-african-challah/. Gitlitz, David, and Linda Davidson. 2025. “Tablet Magazine’s 100 Most Jewish Foods List: Adafina (‘Converso Stew’).” Tablet Magazine’s 100 Most Jewish Foods List. 2025. https://100jewishfoods.tabletmag.com/adafina/. Gómez-Bravo, Ana. 2014. “Adafina: The Story behind the Recipe.” UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies. October 7, 2014. https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/converso-cookbook/adafina-story-behind-recipe/. Gomperts, Sharon. 2023. “A Heavenly Sephardic Bread.” Jewish Journal. May 24, 2023. https://jewishjournal.com/culture/food/359017/a-heavenly-sephardic-bread/. Guershon, Moshe. 2023. “Adafina? 'Ada-Fina!” Blogspot.com. 2023. https://adafina.blogspot.com/.Johnson, Melissa. 2020. “Kubaneh (Yemenite Jewish Bread).” Breadtopia. August 15, 2020. https://breadtopia.com/kubaneh-jewish-yemeni-bread/. Koenig, Leah. 2026. “Tablet Magazine’s 100 Most Jewish Foods List: Challah and Other Sabbath Breads.” Tablet Magazine’s 100 Most Jewish Foods List. 2026. https://100jewishfoods.tabletmag.com/challah-and-other-sabbath-breads/. Kraut, Alan M. 1983. “The Butcher, the Baker, the Pushcart Peddler: Jewish Foodways and Entrepreneurial Opportunity in the East European Immigrant Community 1880-1940.” Journal of American Culture 6 (4): 71–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734x.1983.0604_71.x. Piñer, Helene Jawhara. 2024. “The Iconic Sephardic Adafina in Spanish Inquisition Trials - Foodish.” Foodish. January 7, 2024. https://foodish.anumuseum.org.il/en/adafina-spanish-inquisition/. Prinz, Deborah. 2021. “Forthcoming! On the Bread Trail.” On the Chocolate Trail (blog). October 11, 2021. https://onthechocolatetrail.org/2021/10/new-book-on-the-trail-of-jewish-celebratory-breads/. ———. n.d. “Shabbat: Untangling Challah.” In On the Bread Trail.“Shabbat | Jewish Languages.” 2025. Jewish Languages. 2025. https://www.jewishlanguages.org/shabbat. Stein, Lori, and Ronald H. Isaacs. 2018. Let’s Eat : Jewish Food and Faith. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Written Documentation

Cookbooks

Foodways, like language, are transmitted from generation to generation. Both endure similar challenges in the process transmission, such as assimilation and the imposed erasure of cultural identity. Because of this, written documentation of Jewish food becomes a key to its long-term survival.

A variety of social elements shape who is likely to write, publish, and read cookbooks. Historically with the gendering of cooking, class distinctions in terms of who could publish cookbooks, the discourse around assimilation, and beliefs about the "right" way to be Jewish, writing about food has always been political. Whether a cookbook written in the 17th century or digital recipe collection developed in 2020, public-facing recipe compilations reveal deeper nuances of Jewish food.

In addition to the step-by-step, writing about food whether sharing family memories or publishing op-eds about the state of Jewish food is just as important to preserving the liveliness of traditional food.

Cookbooks and Recipe Collections

The Press

Sources: Berg, Temmy. 1929. “Jewish Cooking on the Wane.” Forṿerṭs⁩, April 14, 1929. https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/?a=d&d=frw19290414-01.2.96. Brodsky, Adriana. 2018. “8 the Battle against Guefilte Fish: Asserting Sephardi Culinary Repertoires among Argentine Jews in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century.” In Global Jewish Foodways: A History, edited by Hasia Diner and Simone Cinotto, 181–206. University of Nebraska Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt22rbkgd.14. Koerner, András. 2022. Early Jewish Cookbooks: Essays on the History of Hungarian Jewish Gastronomy. Central European University Press. Kohn, Bessie. 1929. “Herring -- a Jewish Delicacy.” Forṿerṭs⁩, February 10, 1929. https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/?a=d&d=frw19290210-01.2.124. Levy, Esther. 1871. The First Jewish-American Cookbook (1871). Courier Corporation. Montefiore, Judith Cohen. 1846. The Jewish Manual; Or, Practical Information in Jewish and Modern Cookery, with a Collection of Recipes Relating to the Toilette. Ed. By a Lady. T. & W. Boone. https://www.loc.gov/item/88180014/. Nathan, Joan. 2021. “Food in the United States.” Jewish Women’s Archive. 2021. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/food-in-united-states. Zalowitz, Nathaniel. 1926. “Jewish Cooking Hasn’t Lost Any of Its Popularity in This Country.” Forṿerṭs⁩, March 28, 1926. https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/?a=d&d=frw19260328-01.2.31.

Sold!

Food as Commodity

The buying and selling of food is a critical component of how communities engage with food and one another. The intentional use of language in advertising and sale-making mark the food-based economics of language. All over the world Jews became food-sellers (by foot, cart, or shop) as a low-barrier means of upward economic mobility. Following a trajectory of increasing permanence, over time Jews were able to open small shops (and some went further turning into major companies) (Diner and Cinotto). This worldwide practice shaped generations of worldwide Jewry all while centering food and the politics of language.

Global Peddlers

Shopkeepers

Sources: “About | Jewish Merchant Project.” 2017. Jhssc.org. 2017. https://merchants.jhssc.org/the-project/about/. Diner, Hasia. 2015. Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way. Yale University Press. ———. 2018. “2 Global Jewish Peddling and the Matter of Food.” In Global Jewish Foodways: A History, edited by Hasia Diner and Simone Cinotto, 50–69. University of Nebraska Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt22rbkgd.8.“ Door to Door: How Jewish Peddlers Changed the World, One Household at a Time.” 2015. Www.nyu.edu. January 23, 2015. https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2015/january/hasia-diner-on-jewish-peddlers.html. Glanz, Rudolf. 1945. “Notes on Early Jewish Peddling in America.” Jewish Social Studies 7 (2): 119–36. https://doi.org/10.2307/4464657. Horowitz, Paul. 1981. “Jews in Latin America: Past and Present.” Jewish Currents. September 1, 1981. https://jewishcurrents.org/jews-latin-america-past-present. Kraut, Alan M. 1983. “The Butcher, the Baker, the Pushcart Peddler: Jewish Foodways and Entrepreneurial Opportunity in the East European Immigrant Community 1880-1940.” Journal of American Culture 6 (4): 71–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734x.1983.0604_71.x.WENGER, BETH. 1997. “Memory as Identity: The Invention of the Lower East Side.” American Jewish History 85 (1): 3–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/23885594.Whitfield, Stephen. n.d. “Merchants: The Marrow of the Southern Jewish Experience | Jewish Merchant Project.” The Jewish Merchant Project. https://merchants.jhssc.org/narrative/merchants-the-marrow-of-the-southern-jewish-experience/.

Food Naming

Called Jewish

How we refer to food is one the everyday intersections of food and language. All across the world, common signifiers of Jewishness emerge – whether foods are named after biblical characters, include a refrence to "Hebrew," or even have “Jewish” in the name.

Jewish-Marked Food Names

Sources: Goldstein, Joyce. 2016. The New Mediterranean Jewish Table. Univ of California Press. Haber, Joel. 2022. “Jewish Food Names We Rarely Think About.” Taste of Jewish Culture. July 22, 2022. https://www.tasteofjew.com/unknown-jewish-food-names/.

Food Journeys

Food Pathways

ADAPTED

As people migrate around the world, people bring recipes and culinary traditions with them. During periods of mass dispersion (such as the Spanish Inquisition), new combinations of flavors and cooking techniques emerged. Following the pathways of food across time and space, it becomes clear that food simultaneously carries an identity of the past as well as an adaptability for the future. This process became therefore not only significant to Jewish communities, but transformed cuisines and practices globally.