Jewish Food through Song and Film

Level: Undergraduate

Division: The New School for Public Engagement

School: School of Undergraduate Studies

Department: Food Studies

Course Number: NFDS 2952

Course Format: Lecture

Location: Online

Permission Required: No

Topics:

• Food Studies
• Jewish Cultural Studies
• Religious Studies

Description:
This course offers students a taste of Eastern European and American Jewish culture through songs, films and personal narratives of food. We will explore the Jewish experience and cultural and religious identities through foods that came to the United States by way of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Poland, Romania and the Pale of Settlement. Traditional foods and their modern-day incarnations will guide our exploration of Ashkenazi Jewish identity, culture and peoplehood. We will use Yiddish and Hebrew expressions to help decode words and phrases we encounters in our explorations from Old World to new, from the Pale of Settlement to the sidewalks of the Lower East Side and the suburbs of middle America. (1 credit)