For cookbook author Michael Twitty, African and Jewish diaspora cuisines share a crucial bond:
“Civilizations without borders re-create themselves after tragedies and traumas, and they migrate and mutate in response.”
Yiddish foodways are extremely beautiful because there are so many similar issues with their cultural interpretation of African American foodways. They even have the same kind of language transmission—the recipes were passed to the next generation in a terse vernacular that bridged ancient homelands and new realities. In my opinion, people ascribe way too much to ingenuity and poverty; “that’s all they had” gets said, and then a shrug, a look, a dismissal. No, that’s not enough.
In both cases, the foods of Ashkenazi Jews and Black Americans have been maligned and marginalized right along with the people. If the food was corrupt, so was the beleaguered, antiquated way of life we no longer have a taste for because it embarrasses us. However, these were survivors; they were hyperaware of the seasons, frugal and attentive, and most of all, they used their food to show transgenerational love.
As I write this bricolage narrative, it becomes clear that a linear account of Jews and Blacks eating and cooking together or for each other is thorny because we are so often oppressed and marginalized and pushed to the edges. So much is missing, but worse yet, the generations descended from the survivors sometimes do not know how to feel about or comprehend their Ancestors.
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