“Where Do You Draw the Line?”

Abstract

This study explores the importance of food and the negotiation of kosher laws in the context of strategies to maintain an individual and collective Jewish identity among a British Reform Jewish community in a non-metropolitan area. Based on interviews with active members of the local synagogue, it explores the challenges to maintaining Jewish life in a small, disparate community remote from any major Jewish settlement. In the interview data, food emerges as a major point of reference for defining identity and for positioning members of the community in relation to religious traditions. Food observance further serves as a means of defining boundaries within as well as outside the community. This discussion raises several important issues: the place of religious observance in modern societies, the question of membership and boundaries of communities, the diversity of contemporary Jewish Reform observance and, finally, the specific role of food and foodways in negotiating these challenges.

Keywords:

• Jewish food
• Kashrut
• Reform Judaism
• British Jewry
• habitus
• vegetarianism

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Diemling

Maria Diemling is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Canterbury Christ Church University. She has published on various issues of Early Modern Jewish history and has a particular research interest in Jewish–Christian relations. She is currently working on images of the Jewish body in Early Modern Germany. Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Canterbury Christ Church University, North Holmes Road, Canterbury, Kent CT1 1QU, UK ([email protected]).

Larry Ray

Larry Ray is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent. His publications and research include the areas of sociological theory, globalization, postcommunism, memory, violence and the Holocaust. His current project is an examination of Jewish identity and memory in the UK and Europe which includes the role of music, food and community networks in sustaining identities and articulating relationships to the past. He is a past President of the British Association of Jewish Studies. School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, Cornwallis North East, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF, UK ([email protected]).