Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about “Jewish food.” The phrase seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. The phrase troubles me because when people talk about “Jewish food,” I've noticed they seem to only be talking about Ashkenazi (Eastern European) food.
So you can imagine my distress when I stumbled upon ”A Jewish Food Cheat Sheet” and realized that there was only one Sephardic Jewish dish on the whole list. Shawarma didn’t even make the list. One friend called the list "a very narrow conceptualization of a much more varied people/nation."
When I asked a Ashkenazi Jewish friend about this phenomena of equating "Jewish food" with only "Eastern European food," he said, "I think that it is a symptom of a much more widespread phenomenon...where Eastern European everything is considered 'the Jewish way'...even in halacha (Jewish law), minhagim (customs), prayers...."
He added, "Although, I would not speak about its as though it's the worst thing in the world, it does hurt and it makes people doubt their own narratives and backgrounds, which is not good...causing ever greater homogenization in Jewish life."
And how do we get plantains added to the Sephardic Jewish palate?
