The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema

Chapter 7. Food

Introduction There is a deliciously long list of films in which foods – marked as Jewish and kosher, Jewish but not kosher, or goyish and treyf – are not simply glimpsed as part of a film’s setting, but are also employed as important plot devices that explore cultural, ethnic and religious issues. Woody Allen, for example, makes much use of the nature and function of food and dining in his films. His movies abound with memorable moments and food allusions: the Chinese food scene in Manhattan (1979), the crazy Seder in Sleeper (1973), the split-screen families and their foods in Annie Hall (1977), the serious discussion at the Seder in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), the jokes about kosher food and fasting during Yom Kippur in Radio Days (1987), Carnegie Deli and the plates of kosher meat in Broadway Danny Rose (1994), and so on. Certainly, Allen’s use of food in his films intrinsically connects that food to Jewish culture. Surprisingly, however, given the Jewish religious and cultural interest in food, there is very little scholarship about the topic of Jewish cultural representation through food in films. Building on my own work (Abrams 2004) I will continue filling this gap here, by exploring the ways in which ‘Jewish’, kosher and treyf foods are represented in film. My discussion will include observations on the ways in which Jews have been represented and stereotyped in film through food. Specifically, in this chapter I will CHAPTER 7 Food 160 161 explore the connections between food and Jewish cultural traditions, history, identity, sex and nostalgia. Finally, I will also examine cinematic representations of the Jewish family meal as the primary site of philosophical debate about the Jewish condition and Jewish identity. Reubens, bagels, brisket and balls Foodstuffs are intimately related to Jewish identity and culture in film. Although many of these products have long been assimilated into mainstream US and other cultures, on film a corned beef or pastrami sandwich on rye bread, bagels and lox, gefilte fish, chicken soup or matzo typically code the Jewish world semiotically. Referring back to the notions of ‘reading Jewish’ and ‘double coding’ I outlined in my introduction, there is, I suggest, a Jewish audience that may glean Jewish specificity from such products that a general audience may decode as universal (Bial 2005: 152). Bagels, being a Jewish tradition imported into the United States and other Western countries, stand as an obvious signifier of Jewishness. In Amy’s O we understand the protagonist’s Jewishness because, over a breakfast of bagels, her parents express their concern over her lack of dating. At the beginning of The Hebrew Hammer the eponymous hero is teased by his Gentile counterparts, ‘Hey Mordechai, want a bagel?’ while a non-Jewish boy feigns choking. Here, the bagel not only identifies Mordechai but also marks him as a subject of difference. Another breadstuff, challah, is particularly important in Jewish practice as it is eaten on the Sabbath and holy days and so it is seen in the haredi milieu of A Price Above Rubies – once at a circumcision and another at the Shabbat meal – as well as in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and Seres Queridos/Only Human. In Saving Private Ryan (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1998), a Jewish GI, private Stanley Mellish, is handed a Hitler Youth knife from the remains of a dead German soldier. He flips it and, in an act of reversal, responds in a sardonic tone, ‘And now it’s a Shabbat challah cutter, right?’ And in the Russian film, Lyubov/Love, for example, the family’s Jewishness and hence religious observance is marked by their serving matzo with tea, instead of biscuits, rather than as a part of Passover celebrations (Gershenson 2008: 183). Chicken soup with dumplings or balls made from matzo-meal might now be considered a universal panacea, popularised even further by the FOOD THE NEW JEW IN FILM 162 bestselling series Chicken Soup for the Soul, but it has also been identified as quintessentially Jewish. David in Prime (dir. Ben Younger, 2005) and Jessica in Kissing Jessica Stein both make chicken soup for their sick partners, and the latter calls it ‘Jewish penicillin’. At the bar mitzvah party in Keeping Up with the Steins, ‘Mom’s Matzo Ball Soup’ is one of the delicious homemade dishes on display. Similarly, the Jewishness of a family in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan...