A Melbourne reader invited us once to celebrate Shabbat with her family in their modest home in Melbourne’s Caulfield North. It was a touching night.
The food? Challah, roast chicken, matzoh ball soup — meh. Kosher wine (I brought that) … unremarkable. But the experience? Surreal. Intimate, actually.
I didn’t know Jews existed until the age of 13, when I went to boarding school from the cosseted, fairly monocultural bush, and then in only the most pernicious manner via ignorant, pathetic, childish, ingrained racism.
A gentile in a gentile world, I went home unexpectedly on what was apparently a Jewish holiday and returned to the boarding house to taunts of “Jew boy” from some of my housemates.
Ah, the joys of an elite education.
But, like they say, food connects us all. So what is Jewish food? As author Leah Koenig writes in The Jewish Cookbook (Phaidon) — certainly not the first and probably not the last title to tackle the subject: “Enjoying Jewish food is simple — describing it is more complex.”
Now, in even attempting this project, Koenig is on a hiding to nothing, some might say. Claudia Roden published The Book of Jewish Food (Penguin) in 1996 and it assumed benchmark status soon after.
It’s difficult to imagine what questions Roden has not already answered.
Read the article by John Lethlean, food writer in The Australian.