I’m not sure how to say this without offending anybody. So I’m going to just blurt it out. Jewish food is awful. I say this with all respect. I’m Jewish myself—Joel Stein is practically a WASP next to me. But the fact has to be faced. And the question asked, is there isn’t a way out of our culinary wandering in the desert?
I’m not talking about Kosher food, which is a special department of its own. Nor am I speaking of what Jews eat in Spain, Israel, or Argentina—rich, dynamic food cultures that have entranced the world. I’m speaking of the familiar Eastern European Jewish food that most American Jews of my generation grew up eating: dry and flavorless brisket, cooked in a salty fluid of Campbell’s beef broth and Lipton onion soup mix. I’m talking about tasteless matzoh balls and aggressively bland “farmer’s cheese”; pasty, cold chopped liver with inexplicable pieces of hard boiled egg implanted in it; dense lokshon kugels, sweet noodle casseroles as unappetizing as a Christmas fruitcake; and of course, the always terrifying herring in cream sauces, a food so vile in appearance that it could turn a glutton anorexic overnight.
And of course, her attitude toward chicken fat, either in its liquid or solid form, can be said to lack enthusiasm too.
I don’t claim to have an answer for this problem, which is one of the most baffling in all of American culinary history. Most people who grow up eating bland or poorly-cooked food tend to be indifferent to their meals later in life. Or, alternately, they realize all at once what they’ve been missing, and become intrepid and passionate foodies. But an ethnicity in which we all eat bad, bland, heavy food and then leave it forever, except for an occasional ceremonial appearance, as at Passover? For the sake of nostalgia, or at most a loyalty to the past, we pretend that Jewish food is good, at least once or twice a year. But it isn’t. Why? Perhaps the answer is in the Talmud, the Gemara, or the mystic literature of the Kabbalah. I know you won’t find it at the bottom of a bowl of kasha varnishkes. There is nothing there but despair.
Ozersky is a James Beard Award–winning food writer and the author of The Hamburger: A History. You can listen to his weekly show at the Heritage Radio Network and read his column on home cooking on Rachael Ray’s website. He is currently at work on a biography of Colonel Sanders.
See more of Josh Ozersky’s Taste of America food columns here.
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