Why is this night different from all other nights?
Abstract
Memories are called up by many different methods. Jewish family life is so tightly wound up with mothers and chicken soup that these memories are best accessed via the kitchen. This fragment of culinary memoir attempts to convey the way in which certain foods conjure competing images of brown-eyed Jewish mothers and desolation in the desert. Enjoy already!
Keywords
collective memory, foodways, ritual, cultural superfood, Seder
Author Biography
Felicity Newman
Felicity Newman is a South African-born Australian Jew of Eastern European origin. Having spent her between-degrees years in the inappropriately named ‘hospitality’ industry, it is not surprising that her concern is with a better understanding of the role of foodways in ethnic identification. She is a postgraduate research student and tutor at Murdoch University in the school of Media, Communication and Culture and occasionally lectures on the subject of Food and Culture. Her doctoral thesis, Dining in the Diaspora: A nice Jewish meal, attempts to show how foodways are learned, reproduced and serve to enable Jewish identification amongst Ashkenazi Jewry by closely examining secular celebration of Passover.