Ambivalent nostalgia: Jewish-Israeli migrant women “cooking” ways to return home

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the way middle-class women cook at home following their international migration, the memories provoked by home-cooked dishes, and the contesting emotions they express and materialize in relation to these dishes. The ethnography is based on fieldwork during 2007–2014, exploring the everyday experiences of 25 Jewish-Israeli mothers living in Auckland, New Zealand in the 2000s. Elaborating on the theory of everyday nostalgic consumption, it is demonstrated that the women take three emotive steps through their cooked dishes and memories, returning to past familial homes: longing and pleasure, ambivalence, and self-irony. They share a kind of ambivalent nostalgia that not only becomes their means to travel in time and space, but also enables them to negotiate kinship relationships between four generations, and express ambivalence as critique of their familial homes.

KEYWORDS:

• Home cooking
• Jewish-Israeli
• migrant women
• nostalgia
• ambivalence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I use pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the women in the study.

2. Jewish ethnicities are divided into two main groups: Ashkenazim who emigrated from East and Central Europe, mostly prior to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. They mainly constitute the Zionist elite that colonized the other Jewish ethnicities to various extents (Clifford 1994; Khazzoom 2003; Shenhav 2004; Shohat 1997; Shohat 1999); and Mizrahim who emigrated from Arab countries around the Middle East and the Mediterranean, mostly after the establishment of the Jewish state. This ethnic division, however, is highly stereotypical, and homogenizes varied groups. Nevertheless, in my study group, eleven women identified as Ashkenazi, five women as Mizrahi, and nine women claimed mixed ethnicity. Several women were also in mixed ethnic marriages. In this article I do not discuss other Jewish ethnicities, such as the Sephardim, Russian Jews, and Ethiopian Jews, as these are not part of my study group.

3. Blintzes are thin, crêpe-like, pan-fried pastries stuffed and rolled with various fillings, usually eaten on the festivity of Shavuot, and are another common national-Ashkenazi dish.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hadas Ore

Hadas Ore won The Dame Joan Metge post-doctoral award by the Kate Edgar Educational Charitable Trust to conduct the first study on Māori-Jewish homes in New Zealand. She is a social anthropologist interested in gender, food studies, theories of nostalgia and home, and identity politics. Hadas studied for her BA and MA in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her PhD in the University of Auckland.