Mar 30 2025 34 mins
This podcast episode explores the multifaceted relationship between food, identity, and community, particularly within immigrant and Jewish communities in America. It features a discussion with a professor emerita specializing in American Jewish and immigration history, who shares personal anecdotes and insights related to how food serves as both a boundary, preserving cultural traditions and a bridge, fostering connection and understanding across different groups. The conversation touches on historical and present-day dynamics, how food cultures have shifted, the politicization of food and the challenges and opportunities this presents.
Hasia R. Diner is an American historian who serves as Professor Emerita at the Departments of History and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. She previously held the position of Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History. Diner is the Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History and has also served as Interim Director of Glucksman Ireland House NYU.
She was the former series editor for the Goldstein-Goren series in American Jewish History. Her prolific scholarship includes notable works such as "Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration," "The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000," "We Remember With Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962," and "Immigration: An American History," co-authored with Carl Bon Tempo.