Kosher to Go
Perspectives on Religious Food Regulations – Dialogical Lecture Series 2021
Many societies regulate what and how people eat – even our secular culture does so. Overcrowded supermarket shelves constantly give rise to new ethical or health trends that target our eating habits: fair trade, organic, ecologically friendly, vegetarian, vegan, and slow food, to name just a few. Food rules and prohibitions are constitutive not only for modern societies, but especially for traditional ones. Food rules provide orientation and meaning. They consolidate a specific identity and protect it by delimiting it from the outside. In Judaism, kashrut is a fascinating and extremely complex system of dietary rules that can be seen as a symbol for the Jewish interpretation of the self and the world.
In the dialogical lecture series, Jewish dietary laws were considered in relation to the dietary rules of other world religions (Christianity, Hinduism, Islam) and interpreted using perspectives from anthropology, ethnology, and the sociology of food. In this way, the origins and functions of dietary rules were examined up to the present day. An expert on Judaism and a scholar from another discipline were invited to each session to illuminate the topic from their respective viewpoints.
Video Recordings of the Lecture Series Kosher to Go (2021)
Holy Food and Drink – Why Do Dietary Rules Exist? With Prof. Kikuko Kashiwagi-Wetzel (Kansai University of Osaka) and Prof. David Kraemer (Jewish Theological Seminary of America), video recording from Thu 22 April 2021.
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Kosher and Halal – Animal Slaughter in Judaism and Islam. With Aaron S. Gross (University of San Diego) and Serdar Kurnaz (Humboldt University of Berlin). Video recording from 19 May 2021.
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Between Sanction and Sanctification – Alcohol in Judaism and Christianity. With Jordan D. Rosenblum (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and David Grumett (University of Edinburgh). Video recording from 22 June 2021.
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Do you eat Insects? – Forbidden Animals In Judaism and Hinduism. With Dr. Syed (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich) and Dr. Mattern (University of Tübingen). Video recording from 30 September 2021, in German.
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The Kitchen as a Substitute Sanctuary? Modern Debates Around Eating. With Kathrin Burger (science journalist and author) and Jonathan Schorsch (Professor of Jewish Religious and Intellectual History at the University of Potsdam). Video recording available in German.
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