I attended to a talk by Professor David Freidenreich about religion and left with a lot to chew on. As a Christian, I often forget about other religions. I’m from the West Coast, Seattle to be specific and I’ve only ever encountered people who are Christian. Since coming to the East coast, I’ve become more aware of Jewish people and their faith. My upbringing didn’t discuss Judaism. The only Jewish person, I knew of was Jesus. As a result, my understanding of the Jewish faith was left to media and we all know that is never the best way to learn about a group. Subsequently, I have carried invalid ideas and beliefs about the Jewish. However, on this day, that all came to an end.

While I know that many factors are used to divide Jewish, Christians and Muslims, Freidenreich’s perspective of food was an interesting lens.

Freidenreich said that if a rabbi, minister and a priest all walked in a restaurant, they would have be discord of eating. The dietary restrictions of each religion would “prove tragic.” However, this image is reminiscent of middle school lunch table politics or the racial segregation in dinners. Food has always been a uniting force but history will show that we use this setting as a way divide and belittle.

Which brings me to the point of the entire discussion.  These dietary restrictions created an “us vs. we” mentality for religious groups. Dietary restrictions were how each group held their claim to holiness. And in a sense, their dietary laws were a reflection of their religious doctrine as well. For Jewish, their strict laws helped to keep them distinct and sanctioned as God’s chosen people, while Christians loose food laws represented the inclusiveness of the their religion.

After walking away from a space that was primarily Jewish, I felt a bit of bitterness from the speaker’s depiction of Christians. For so long, I have been operating under the context that Jewish people are just a powerful as Christians. But, I was deceived. That day I learned that Jewish people are in fact a religious minority. For me, this means that I have to due away with my own deeply ingrained stereotypes, inaccurate accounts and privilege as a Christian, in order to provide a space to hear and learn about Jewish culture. While I’m thankful for the opportunity to have been allowed to sit at a different table for the day and understand a small part of their culture, I welcome the chance for more inter-faith experiences and conversations.

Last week I attended a talk titled “Food and Religious Identity” by Professor David Freidenreich, which was a distillation of his book “Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law”. Professor Freidenreich spoke about how religious communities have used food to create a sense of ‘us and them’ between their adherents and those outside the community. Why use food to do this? Food is an integral mode of fostering community and unity, as people sit around a table, they share life together, speak together, and get to know eachother. Therefore, keeping people from eating together fosters a sense of otherness.

In the Mosaic Law, God made it clear that the Jews were his chosen people, set apart from the nations, so it made sense to have food laws which emphasized this point. Deuteronomy 14:12 reads “you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.” Some foods were clean, and others unclean, just as the Jews were chosen by God and other groups weren’t. That wasn’t the end of the story, though. God promised Abraham, the founding father of the Jews, that “through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” [Genesis 22:18]. Christians believe that this refers to Jesus of Nazareth, who was God’s son incarnate as a man, and died to take away the sins of the world which separate people from God, thereby restoring people’s broken relationship with God. Christianity is unique in its universality: Jesus’ sacrifice covers the sins of all who believe, and all have equal access to God. To illustrate this, the Apostle Peter received a vision where God commanded Him to eat all types of animals that were unclean by the Jewish Law, thus signifying that salvation was for all people, not just the Jews. Therefore, the early church taught a doctrine of openness and acceptance towards all peoples. In fact, the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Galatia that “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” [Galatians 3:28]

With this in mind, I found it remarkable that as time went on much of the church began to go back on this core value of openness by trying to create barriers between ‘Christian’ and ‘pagan’ through food. In particular, church authorities portrayed Jews as ‘anti-Christians’, so encouraged the consumption of foods that Jews were forbidden in the Mosaic Law to eat, such as pork. It seems like proponents of these ideals lost touch with some central doctrines of Christianity: that all are saved by grace apart from works, that salvation is for everyone who believes, and that Christians should be living to spread this good news and demonstrate a Christlike love to all who will hear. I find it encouraging that in recent times (particularly after WWII), the church as a whole has opened up to interfaith interaction, and now seeks to share life with those outside of itself. I hope that all embrace the dining table as a place of community in the midst of diversity. Let’s eat together!

Last Monday, I got to listen to Professor David Freidenreich talk about religious differences within the context of food practices in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Within each of the three religions, I was surprised to find that each of the religions have developed rules and regulations for not only how food is prepared, but who serves it, and who is allowed to share food with one another.

He opened the talk with a joke about a priest, a minister, and a rabbi walking into a bar together, but realistically, he pointed out, that these three people would never have walked in anywhere together at all. Rather, they each would most likely reserve their own tables apart from each other, ordering a meal according to their belief system. Now, having a separate belief system of how one should eat food is fine with me, but when it comes down to a belief that one is better than the other, the system becomes a matter of who is better than whom and a matter of keeping the other person out.

One of Freidenreich’s more interesting parts of the talk was where he defined the Jewish practice of eating kosher food. Normally, this is meant to mean food that is deemed worthy of eating because it has been blessed by a rabbi, but it has originally meant food that was created in order to separate the Jews from gentiles in the surrounding areas. So the practice of Jews not eating pork began to withdraw them from sharing meals with gentiles. And it was these practices among many other dietary laws that led Jews to believe that they were closer to God for following these laws.

Foods across cultures are meant to unite people, not separate them. As for the title of this entry, I say, so what if a priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar? That shouldn’t stop them from believing in what they do and being able to share with one another.

Professor David Freidenreich’s fascinating talk explored the they way that religious food laws have shaped personal identity in Judaism, Christianity, and Shiite and Sunni Islam from the Medieval period until modern day. He framed the rather pedantic issue through an analogy with the recent French vs. Freedom fry debate during the 2003 Iraq war. Proponents of the war denounced France’s opposition to the invasion by declaring that potato fries should be renamed “Freedom Fries.” This single food “law” created a feeling of patriotism for supporters of the war and enabled them to identify others who disagreed with their beliefs.

Professor Freidenreich explained the purposes of Kashrut in Judaism and halal food in Islam, and in the process debunked many misconceptions. For example, some have assumed that the Jewish dietary laws were originally meant to keep Jews separate from gentiles. In fact, the purpose was more likely described as keeping Jews closer to God by ensuring they only consume the foods “fit for God” – those that could be sacrificed. In the Medieval era, the Canaanite gentiles who lived near the Jews did not eat pork anyway so this rule did not serve to separate them. It was not until the Greeks came, with their pork-heavy cuisine, that the law forbidding pork began hindering Jews from sharing meals with non-Jews. Interestingly, the Hellenic period also shifted the way Jews explained their food laws as they began to borrow from the developing Greek rhetoric on morality and hygiene.

Overall, it is not surprising how powerfully food laws shape personal identity. Eating the same food is a way to bond with people of one’s own culture and sharing a meal with others symbolically and practically facilitates cultural exchange. However, the history and evolution of food laws in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is nuanced and offers an intriguing anthropological perspective on these people’s sense of self.

The series Other People’s Food in the Sporkful Podcast provides a completely different, modern day take on food and cultural identity.