Jewish Apple Cake?
Cake? Of course—love it. Apple Cake? For sure—had that too. But wait. Jewish Apple Cake? What’s that?
That’s exactly what I came across the other day in our supermarket. Jewish apple cake. Kosher, yes—you can see the chaf kay on the label. But there are lots of kosher foods that aren’t labeled “Jewish.” After all, do we buy “Jewish kosher chicken?” Of course not. “Jewish bagels?” Nope. And Wikipedia isn’t very useful—they’ve heard of the term, but don’t seem to know where it comes from.
Is it Jewish because my grandmother made it? Because it's non dairy? Because the last time I had it was at an oneg? Or perhaps because it’s for sale next to the gefilte fish left over from Pesach? (Why does it never spoil?) Who knows--not even an infinite number of data points can adequately explain identity.
We think about this a lot at Behrman House. (Yes, food to be sure, but more importantly what’s “Jewish” about our lives.) What is Jewish food? Jewish art? Jewish humor?
What’s at the heart of the question is identity formation. What makes us Jewish in America today? Each of us has a slightly different answer. Like a Venn diagram there’s much overlap—ways in which we observe holidays, what we believe about our history, how we mark lifecycle events and milestones in our lives.
There are also differences—we observe slightly differently and our beliefs aren’t always fully in alignment. Many of us have developed our own ways to enhance the ways we mark lifecycle events and milestones.
So while Jewish Apple Cake in some ways isn’t Jewish at all—it’s really just apple cake—in other ways it’s one of the many things that helps us define ourselves as Jews in America, and helps our children form their own Jewish identities. We share Jewish Apple Cake as part of our common heritage. Look up the variety of recipes for any “Jewish” good and be largely the same, with variations around the edges. The largely the same is our common Jewish identity. And the little differences—maybe a different spice, or an egg—that’s the part that form our own individual Jewish identity with the context of American Judaism.
