A Taste of Judaism: Learning About the Jewish Diaspora Through Food
Yael Klucznik is the Springboard Fellow at the Hillel at The George Washington University (GW Hillel). Yael recently launched a new program at GW Hillel to introduce her students to cuisines from across the global Jewish community. Yael takes us behind the scenes to share what it looks like to design a program like this and how it impacted her students.
When someone asks you what your favorite Jewish food is, I bet you say some combination of bagels with lox, brisket, or matzah ball soup. Don’t get me wrong – I love all of those. But they don’t encapsulate my experience with Jewish food.
I was born in Argentina and raised in South Florida as part of a mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardic household. Growing up, my Shabbat dinners consisted of knishes, a wide variety of salads, Turkish rice, and a lot of meat dishes. These meals raised the question for me — what actually is Jewish food? The Jewish people sit at the paradox of being a tightly knit community and widespread diasporic nation. Every Jew is different due to our wide variety of cultures, but Jews around the world also hold a collective identity through various paths. Is food one of the ways we form that shared identity? At GW Hillel, we seek to answer exactly that.
A Taste of Judaism (ATOJ) is a unique program with the mission of exploring the Jewish diaspora through food. Everyone knows there’s no better way to bond over our collective experiences as Jews than by chatting over a delicious meal!
With that in mind, I wanted to create an environment where students could eat a meal that introduces them to a new type of Jewish food as they sit down with peers to learn, discuss, and reflect together. In designing this program to foster cultural connection, I wanted students to think about the following:
- What does it mean to be part of a diasporic community? How does food help maintain tradition and a collective identity for that community?
- What are the origins of each of the Jewish communities we’re exploring? How did they adapt to new environments and climates?
- What can our taste buds tell us about the migration patterns of these Jewish communities?
- How are Jewish traditions different and similar across communities? Why do you think communities in the Jewish diaspora have developed different melodies, customs, and dishes?
I chose three Jewish communities to cover this semester: Latin-American, Persian, and Moroccan. All three of these communities have incredible cuisines (which is always important when working with college students).
The first of four sessions highlighted the unique spices and flavors of two Jewish heritage backgrounds: Ashkenazi and Sephardic. We learned how tradition and food can be tied to land – each of the regions we studied produces unique fruits or grains that the other does not. We made connections between modern diasporic communities and stories highlighted in the Torah. We also read about multiple world events that led to the migration of Jews, where they ended up, and how they’ve continued to thrive in today’s world. Finally, we learned about the concept of aliyah, and why yearning to return to Israel is an underlying link that binds Jews around the world.
At each session, I watched students discover these three distinct Jewish communities through their taste buds. Students walked in, grabbed a plate, sat down with other students, and began their discussions. For some, learning about each community was a first, and for most, eating dishes from these regions was new as well. Second-year student Jordan Grossman reflected, “While there is so much to discover as a young person trying to define my own identity, learning about the experiences of people around the world has helped me understand how much my identity is built off of others.”
I challenged students to think about and uncover relationships between these different communities from session to session and helped them connect those relationships to their own experiences as Jews. Fourth-year student Jacob Wise said, “A Taste of Judaism was truly one of my favorite programs [from] my time at GW. It was fun, educational, delicious, and most of all, super interesting to learn about so many Jewish cuisines and dishes that I knew nothing about!”
In reflecting on the planning process for this program and its success, I’m so grateful for the framework and training that I have as an Innovation Springboard Fellow. The human-centered design approach that I learned through the Springboard Fellowship was essential in planning this meaningful opportunity.
And now the biggest question that remains is: which Jewish community should our program cover next?