"Thou Shalt Not Cook a Bird in its Mother's Milk?: Theorizing the Evolution of a Rabbinic Regulation"
Jordan Rosenblum Belzer, Assistant Professor of Classical Rabbinic Literature at University of Wisconsin, Madison
Free and open to the public. Reservations are encouraged. Parking available at Corry Garage
Refreshments will be served after the lecture. Dietary laws observed.
About the Speaker
Jordan Rosenblum earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Brown University in 2008. He was a Starr Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University in the Spring of 2009. His research focuses on the literature, culture, and history of the early rabbinic (tannaitic) movement. His book, Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge University Press, 2010), explores the intersection between early rabbinic food regulations and identity construction. Rosenblum has published and taught about such topics as the history of Jews and Chinese food; pork in discourse by and about Jews from antiquity to modernity; kosher olive oil in antiquity; and the connection between cookbooks and identity formation. His work makes him uniquely able to discuss issues of Jewish food laws and practices in Antiquity.
2014-2015 Lichter Lecture Series
“Without food, there is no Torah; without Torah, there is no food” (Pirkei Avot, 3.17). Eating practices are deeply embedded in Jewish civilization including questions of what Jews eat, what Jews do not eat, when to eat, when not to eat, with whom to eat and how to prepare foods.
Recent scholarship exploring these questions expands the analysis of Jewish food into deeper understandings about such issues as Jewish identity formation, historical developments, textual practices, social divisions, assimilation, resistance, ethics, and gender.
This year’s Lichter Series shares some of these new insights so that we can go beyond a conventional acknowledgement that food plays an essential role in Jewish life to a more sophisticated realization of eating as a practice that reflects and promotes values and ideologies. The series approaches the topic from three angles: Jewish food in antiquity, food and contemporary Jewishness, and modern Jewish food practices.