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1. 1 2023-04-06T18:05:55-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4 Pomegranates are traditional fruits in Rosh Hashana celebrations, with the many seeds symbolic of the 613 mitzvot. Its inclusion hints at the religiosity in this NH community. Ilana Weisman 3 plain 2023-04-06T18:06:51-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4
2. 1 2023-04-07T13:36:57-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4 Even something as seemingly insignificant as a citrus juicer carries meaning: we need to think of it as a byproduct of the luxury of space. Shared rowhouse kitchens wouldn't have had room for a single-use appliance but a suburban single-family house, like Ilana Weisman 1 plain 2023-04-07T13:36:57-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4
3. 1 2023-04-06T18:04:19-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4 Framing cooking as joy and not labor - shifting narrative to make homemaking seem worthwhile and engaging, especially when jobs out of home available Ilana Weisman 1 plain 2023-04-06T18:04:20-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4
4. 1 2023-04-06T18:04:40-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4 Tradition as taught by the mother and through food Ilana Weisman 1 plain 2023-04-06T18:04:40-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4
5. 1 2023-04-06T18:05:13-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4 Temple = Reform congregation, so likely more progressive viewpoints including gender equality... Ilana Weisman 1 plain 2023-04-06T18:05:14-07:00 Ilana Weisman 717fe68fa7aefa0919f4193faeb67002faa8e0a4

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• 1 2023-03-23T03:53:17-07:00 Cookbooks and the Ideal Imaginary 21 Recipes and cookbooks as archival record plain 1133279 2023-04-07T19:11:14-07:00 Cookbooks aren’t traditionally sources of scholarly inquiry, probably because they live in our kitchens, stained and scribbled on and assumed to be only for the home cook, read: wife and mother. But there’s incredible value in reading everyday domestic sphere items, like cookbooks, as texts with historical value. Studying them recognizes women’s foodwork as labor and acknowledges that cooking can act as both a manifestation of patriarchal norms and a vehicle for self-expression and love. By placing emphasis on “the central place of the kitchen and social adulation of the housewife,” cookbooks act as windows into a woman’s world – and like soup on a burner, they boil over with layers and interpretations.
  
  Not only did they contain guidance for a woman’s cooking, but cookbooks “conveyed ideological messages about how she was expected to live her life.” Lists of ingredients tell stories of sourcing, accessibility, and affordability. Instructions for a recipe communicate expectations and technology changes. Accompanying prose makes us question authorship and authority. Cookbooks’ culinary content evokes memory, community, and communality, both actual and aspirational.
  
  Midcentury cookbooks translate ethnic culinary knowledge into American tastes. In this case, postwar community and kosher cookbooks can be read as prescriptive texts that aim to assimilate Jewish women within white middle-class America while also reinforcing Jewishness within their families, cultivating a Jewish cultural lifestyle. These cookbooks harness the tension between Old World and New World, blending traditional and religious references with mass-produced ingredients and occasionally non-kosher recipes. Written by women and for women, largely of the emerging upper-middle class, they use food to communicate an American ideal during a time of great social anxiety, conflicting values, and challenges of a transforming ethnoreligious identity.
  
  The cookbooks I analyze in this chapter are examples of Jewish community cookbooks. Created by women’s groups at synagogues or secular centers in heavily Jewish areas, these cookbooks reflect how Jewish tradition was mediated communally (and maternally) and not just by religious authority (and patriarchally). These cookbooks were filled with family recipes, their creation outsourced to the community. They were sold as fundraisers; we can see how publication costs were kept low by using plain paper and spiral-bound binding. As archives outreach librarian Kathryn Matheny explains, community cookbooks “defy the usual techniques for evaluating book sources: they are published but unresearched and unmediated by an editor, familiar and informal like manuscript items but mass produced.” They present recipes as artifacts, reflecting the preservation, innovation, and reproduction of cultural values. I read these community cookbooks as aspirational texts, presenting the ideal Jewish woman - that is, wife and mother – who is emblematic of whiteness and middle class, the post-war Jewish American imaginary.
• 1 2023-04-05T19:42:27-07:00 A Selection of Community Cookbooks 16 gallery 2023-04-08T09:04:18-07:00
  
  
  
  
  
  These cookbook covers and profiles come from a variety of sources: the New York Public Library, the Women's Magazine Archive through Duke University Libraries, the University of Florida, and the University of Michigan all house these and other quick digital looks at cookbooks, but rarely the full text. Still, these snapshots offer valuable insight and allow us to judge the books by their covers.