From Kosher Market to Supermarket
Consider the preparing and sharing of food. In urban neighborhoods, kosher markets and butchers lined streets, though out of frugality and practicality, strict kosher laws were among the first rituals to be abandoned by immigrant Jews (Diamond). Meals were shared with generations of family all living together in rowhouses, duplexes, or apartments. Food was plentiful as compared to its availability in Europe. The suburbs, though, offered even more plenty. Houses meant bigger kitchens and more storage. Refrigerators and freezers were conducive to leftovers, reinforcing the Jewish mother stereotype and emphasizing Jewish cooking patterns characterized by overabundance. Space for formal dining sets for holidays and both meat and dairy options for daily use allowed for the revival of kosher observance yet compartmentalization of ritual practice. Living outside of ethnic enclaves meant exposure to other cuisines and being able to share Jewish food more broadly. And single-family living meant the loss of extended family meals and less opportunity to have multiple food preparers in the home, assigning foodwork to wives and mothers as they negotiated their Jewishness and newfound suburban lives.
That foodwork was significantly defined by processed and packaged foods. (Neuhaus) Post-war kitchen cooking relied on new staples like kosher canned soup and frozen kosher meat. These were readily available in suburban supermarkets; (Deutsch and Saks) as Gross explains, “ethnic foods, including Jewish foods, were incorporated into the American palate…[and were] subject to the enthusiastic reliance on manufactured goods sweeping the nation at mid-century.” Notably, this new way of eating represented women’s changing role: they were busy outside the home with fundraising efforts and temple sisterhoods, but still responsible for feeding their families. Convenience foods allowed them flexibility and saved their labor, and because the foods were branded as kosher and marketed with nostalgia, they could still transmit Jewishness through mealtime.
This is what Weiss calls the commodification of tradition. Between the mid-twentieth century’s emergence of national kosher standards (see Horowitz) and suburbanization leading to limited access to kosher markets, packaged, industrial food quickly became the standard for Jewish families. Brands like Palmer’s cinched kosher status from notable rabbis and ran major marketing campaigns to shift Jewish consumption in their favor. As Steinberg puts it, “Manischewitz and Maxwell House pushed forward unique American-Jewish brands with their fusion of tradition, modernity, and the sacred with the quotidian.” Crisco, for example, was portrayed as a viable, parve alternative to schmaltz – turning away from the Ashkenazi cooking tradition in favor of mass-produced American shortening while still reinforcing Jewishness. This was the paradox of processed kosher foods – of eating Jewish to preserve tradition while so inherently rejecting it and practicing middle class consumption. This was the semiotics of canned soup: kosher mass-produced and processed goods diffused Jewishness into white Americanness.