Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture, and American Jewish Identity

FAIN: GI-50177-10

Jewish Museum of Maryland (Baltimore, MD 21202-4606)
Karen Falk (Project Director: August 2009 to October 2012)

Implementation of a traveling exhibition and related publication, programs, and online resources examining Jewish American foodways.

The Jewish Museum of Maryland (JMM) requests NEH support for a major exhibition and related publications, programs, and robust web-based resources titled Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture, and American Jewish Identity. For Jews, as for other Americans, food is never just about consumption: food is a means to observe and to celebrate, to maintain tradition and to mark transition, to preserve memory and to produce new meaning. American Jewish foodways, in short, open up a host of conversations about the history and experience of being ethnic and American in the 21st century. After opening at the JMM in Baltimore, the exhibition will be traveled to New York, Atlanta, and Portland, OR. By incorporating historical and cross-cultural perspectives, the Chosen Food project will demonstrate how the humanities reveal the extraordinary in the everyday, bringing to diverse public audiences a new understanding of history and culture through a close examination of food and foodways.