Session #3: Beyond Just the Bagel and the Bible: Jewish Food in America with Dr. Nora Rubel

Thursdays, May 8, 15, 22 and 29,11am–12:30pm; Yiddish Room
This course explores the distinctive nature of Jewish food and eating in the United
States. Going beyond biblical prohibitions and rabbinic laws, this mini course will
examine the religious, cultural, and economic practices relating to the production
and consumption of Jewish food, focusing on practices in the U.S. in order to
explore how food informs, challenges, and constructs Judaism (and, to some
extent, Jews).
Week 1: New World, New Foods, Old Traditions
Week 2: “Eating Out”: The Deli & The Chinese Restaurant
Week 3: Are You What You Eat? The Business, Ethics, & Politics of Jewish Food
Week 4: Jewish Food in the 21st Century: Gastronomic Aspirations & Innovations

Nora Rubel is the Jane and Alan Batkin Professor in Jewish Studies and
Chair of the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of
Rochester. Rubel teaches and writes on a wide variety of topics related
to gender, race and ethnicity in American religion, particularly in
relation to food and Judaism. She is the author of Doubting the Devout:
The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination (Columbia
University Press 2009), co-editor of Religion, Food and Eating in North
America (CUP 2014) and Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and
the Queer Jewish Family (Rutgers University Press 2024). She is currently
completing a monograph entitled Recipes for the Melting Pot: The
Lives of The Settlement Cook Book. She is, however, most proud of her
investigative piece entitled “The Case of the Missing Matzo” that asked
the hard questions, diving into the Manischewitz Tam Tam shortage
prior to Pesach in 2008. Rubel resides in Brighton with her two children,
Zoe and Ashe, her two dogs, Don Cheagle and Cosmo Castorini, and
her husband Rob Nipe, the Vegan Butcher of Rochester. If pressed, the
Rubel/Nipes are all solidly #TeamLatke.