Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism

Abstract

In a recent book titled Eating Animals , author Jonathan Safran Foer reflects on the ethics of meat-eating. 1 At one point, he comments: “There are thousands of foods on the planet, and explaining why we eat the relatively small selection we do requires some words. We need to explain that the parsley on the plate is for decoration, that pasta is not a ‘breakfast food,’ why we eat wings but not eyes, cows but not dogs. Stories establish narratives, and stories establish rules.” 2 As a scholar of rabbinic Judaism, I often confront ancient texts that provide complex narratives and rules. Looking behind such narratives and rules, I encounter the kind of stories that concern Safran Foer. In this essay, I discuss how these stories about food practices in early rabbinic, or tannaitic, literature work together to establish narratives and rules that help to construct a distinct identity. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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