"Feeding an Identity – Gender, Food, and Survival" Summary

In Norma Baumel Joseph’s article Feeding an Identity – Gender, Food, and Survival, she explores how food was viewed over history in relation to Gender and Religion. Food patterns, as she states, reveal a lot about human civilizations. Food is essential to many religions, and the religion that was used an example in this article was Judaism. For example, many Jewish holidays and rituals are centered around food or a feast, such as Passover. Joseph also noted that food patterns change over time. She also stated that food and memory are correlated with each other, because most of the traditions that are remembered had food involved.

Women and food was another topic that was thoroughly explored in this article. One view that was given was that although women are the ones who historically made and served the food, they were not seen as crucial because they were always the ones who were seen as the chefs and their presence was a given. Food gives women power, but it also holds them back, depending on how a situation is looked at. Food, also, complicates some historical texts and views because it was often seen as an artifact, and not as a means of human interaction. Food is not just an item, as there is a social component to it. Another idea that was brought up was that even though in a given religion the “laws” for eating are set in stone, different people of that religion eat different types of meals because of where they settled after immigrating and the community that they currently live in. Additionally, women in Jewish families are often seen as the ones whose job it is to maintain the religion of the family, because they are the ones who cook all the meals for religious observances.