Israeli Food and Foodways

I plan to develop an introductory course that fulfills University of Kentucky's general education core curriculum requirements for global dynamics and humanities and introduces students to Israel through its food and foodways. This course, tentatively titled “Introduction to Israeli Food and Foodways,” would serve as both a rich, sensory introduction to the diversity of Israeli society and a basic food-preparation course, where students would have the opportunity to participate hands-on in the preparation and sampling of several recipes. The University of Kentucky is uniquely positioned to offer such a course in its most enriching and experiential mode because, as a university with a strong agricultural extension mission, we have a 25-person, state-of-the-art teaching kitchen available for faculty use; it is known on campus as the “90.” In the 90, 25 students are able to participate in hands-on cooking classes alongside their explorations of the historical roots of recipes and ingredients. Concomitant with the course, I plan to establish an oral history archive of chef/restauranteur/food writer interviews focused on the definition and cultivation of Israeli foodways that students could listen and respond to during class. We are also uniquely situated for such work, as we have one of the leading oral history centers in the country, the Louis B. Nunn Center for Oral History, and one of the largest active Jewish oral history projects in the region, the Jewish Kentucky Oral History Project, which I cofounded in 2015 and for which I was recognized with the 2020 Midwest Archives Conference Presidents’ Award. In addition to my collaboration with the College of Agriculture, I have been partnering with the Nunn Center since 2013.