Summary of Joseph's Article "Introduction: Feeding an Identity - Gender, Food, Survival"

The article “Introduction: Feeding an Identity – Gender, Food, and Survival” by Norma Baumel Joseph solely focuses on religion, gender, and food patterns throughout people’s cultures. Norma Joseph writes that “[f]oodways are cultural highways” and that they “communicate symbolic meanings and contain cultural codes” (7). Without food, cultures would not have the same depth that they do now and gender/ religious roles would have a totally different aspect in people’s lives. Norma Joseph uses the Jewish culture and life style as an example to show how food is intertwined into that culture and makes, in this case, the Jewish culture what it is today. Also, with the Jewish culture he addresses how women are often at the forefront of keeping the culture alive especially, when it comes to the food aspect of it because, “[m]ost people at all time believed that women belonged in the kitchen. This was their natural state: Cooking and caring for children were what women did, all they did, and all they could do, and in these roles they were all the same” (9). He continues with the idea of women’s roles often going unnoticed by the majority, writing that, “[f]ood appears to play a profound part in Jewish communal identity and religious life, but the woman’s responsibility for this domain has not been seen as critically influential. Her productive power is lost to the observer’s gaze” (8).

In conclusion, religion and gender roles along with food are all intertwined together to create a certain culture and community. Food is at the center of this action because it allows people to identify and relate with other groups of people. Plus, “it is a biological fact that people must eat” and therefore, no matter what we do food will always be at the center with us (7).