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.
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Notes
Safran Foer, Eating Animals (New York: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Co., 2010), 12.
My discussion of identity is heavily informed by Theodore R. Schatzki, The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), who himself is influenced by many theorists (including Pierre Bourdieu, Charles Taylor, and Michel Foucault), and is based off of my argument in
Jordan D. Rosenblum, Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 5–8. Much of this article summarizes points made in this book. Since writing the book, however, I have decided that some points need more nuance and have begun to explore further applications of these theories, which are reflected in the current essay.
For Tosefta, see M. S. Zuckermandel, ed., Tosefta: ‘al pi kitve yad ‘Erfurt u-Ṿinah: ‘im mar’eh meḳomot ṿe-ḥilufe girsa’ot u-mafteḥot (Yerushalayim: Sifre Vahrman, 1963), 466–467, unless otherwise indicated. In general, see Rosenblum, Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism, 83–89.
For another example of an economic leniency by the Tannaim, see Jordan Rosenblum, “Kosher Olive Oil in Antiquity Reconsidered,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 40, no. 3 (2009): 356–365.
Saul Horowitz, ed., Sifrē ‘al sefer Bě-midbar wě-Sifrē Zụtā. Corpus Tannaiticum. Veterum Doctorum Ad Pentateuchum Interpretationes Halachicas Continens (Lipsiae: Gustav Fock, 1917), 171
This is not the only instance in which the rabbis make this association. For example, see Warren Zev Harvey, “The Pupil, the Harlot and the Fringe Benefits,” Prooftexts, 6 no.3 (1986): 259–264
This term can mean alcohol in general, but the context here clearly implies that the subject is alcohol other than wine. Sokoloff (Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2003), 1145–1146) states that this refers to “an alcoholic beverage not made from grapes”;
Jastrow (Marcus., A Dictionary of the Targumin, The Talmuc Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. New York: W. Drugulin, Oriental Printer, 1903; 1576) notes that this term especially refers to beer made from dates or barley.
The omitted passage discusses concerns related to leaving a beverage uncovered and, as a result, drinking snake venom (due to a thirsty snake drinking the beverage and, in the process, secreting snake venom). On this passage and general subject, see David M. Freidenreich, Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 72–74;
David C. Kraemer, Jewish Eating and Identity through the Ages (New York: Routledge, 2007), 69–72.
On this rabbinic topos, see Sacha Stern, “Compulsive Libationers: Non-Jews and Wine in Early Rabbinic Sources.” Journal of Jewish Studies, 64, no.1 (2013) 19–44.
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© 2014 Susan Marks and Hal Taussig
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Rosenblum, J.D. (2014). Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism. In: Marks, S., Taussig, H. (eds) Meals in Early Judaism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137363794_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137363794_4
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