Chocolate, Coffee, Tea and Me
Thank you to the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit for the invitation to speak at their event Chocolate, Coffee, and Judaism created in conjunction with the Detroit Institute of Arts exhibit “Bitter|Sweet: Coffee, Tea & Chocolate.” Not only did I have the opportunity to meet a curious audience, I also presented with Professor Howard Lupovitch from Wayne State University and the exhibit’s curator, Dr. Yao-Fen You. Federation’s Judy Loebl was a great host.
Since we are in the midst of a conversation about (the possibility of, perhaps,) a local New York area museum exhibit about Jews and chocolate, I was especially excited to see the chocolate appurtenances in person. Some I had seen in books, such as this porcelain of a woman drinking chocolate for breakfast. I love this piece since it demonstrates the use of the relatively new European technology of porcelain manufacture along with the relatively new appetite for breakfast chocolate drinking. The portrait also furthers a conversation about the colonial extract aspects of chocolate which continues to concern us in our chocolate consumption even today.
As the first hot, caffeinated drink to tempt Europe prior to coffee and tea, chocolate created a market for serving objects. These included chocolate pots and several styles of cups, such as these.
I also made special note of the design of the show, how the objects were displayed, the questions posed to viewers (such as which country sells the most coffee beans), the audio of Bach’s known Coffee Cantata, and the film clip of chocolate making from the Hampton Court Palace in England. The visual and the auditory were topped off by chocolate aromas at the gallery exit, where museum staff poured tastes of spicy sipping chocolates.
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Sweet Treat: Chocolate and the Making of American Jews
You may wonder: how did chocolate help define American Jews? Through chocolate, we see that Jews were part of America since its earliest days. Well, since 1701 at least, Jews in the Colonies made part of their living through chocolate. Several Sephardim, leaders of their New York and Newport Jewish and secular communities, participated in
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How About Some Uterus Challah?
When Logan Zinman Gerber felt enraged about the loss of reproductive rights in the U.S., she baked challah. Not any challah. She shaped it into a uterus. It wasn’t long after the birth of her daughter that Gerber, a longtime challah baker and staff member of the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, considered
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I’m grateful for this story written by Rachel Ringer, published at JTA/NY Jewish Week on December 20, 2023: (New York Jewish Week) — In 2006, Rabbi Deborah Prinz was on a trip to Europe with her husband, Rabbi Mark Hurvitz, when they wandered into a chocolate shop in Paris. While meandering about the store, Prinz picked
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Sweet Treat is a delicious gastronomic adventure into the history and resilience of American Jewish chocolate making. This exhibition invites you to follow the chocolate trail to America, a scrumptious journey through time and place. Chocolate gives us a lens to understand Jewish migration, as the chocolate trade parallels the migrations of the Jewish
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Some Previous Posts
(in alphabetical order)
- "Boston Chocolate Party" Q&As with Deborah Kalb
- 2022 Media for The "Boston Chocolate Party"
- About Rabbi Deborah Prinz
- Baking Prayers into High Holiday Breads
- Boston Chocolate Party
- Chocolate Chip Politics
- Digging into Biblical Breads
- For the Easiest Hanukah Doughnuts Ever
- Forthcoming! On the Bread Trail
- Funny Faced Purim Pastries
- Good Riddance Chameitz or, The Polemics of Passover's Leaven
- Injera*
- Israeli Chocolate Spread
- Jewish Heritage Month: Baseball & Chocolate!
- Matzah - But, the Dough Did Rise!
- Plan a Choco-Hanukkah Party: 250th Anniversary Tea Party
- Prayers Into Breads
- To Shape Dough: A Trio of Techniques
- Why Is Challah On My Matzah Box?