Date of Award
Fall 12-15-2022
Degree Type
Honors Thesis
Major
International Studies
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
International Studies
First Advisor
John Zarobell
Abstract
Poland, a country ravaged by the events and memory of the Holocaust, has enjoyed a great deal of cultural and religious Jewish revival in the decades since the fall of the Iron Curtain—something never thought possible after War World II. It has also seen a proliferation of high-end restaurants and a robust gastronomic culture develop as it is incorporated into a modern European food landscape. At times their lives paradisiacal and at other times turbulent, Polish Jewry once constituted the largest Jewish community in the World, so what is its status now? And what do non-Jewish Poles think of Jewish Poland? Through menu and other content analysis of self-appellated “Jewish Restaurants” in Poland, this paper seeks to answer the question: How are Jews and Jewishness conceived in a contemporary Polish culinary context, in light of enforced ethnic homogeneity and mounting far-right nationalism in a historically diverse land?
Recommended Citation
Siddall, Elias Andrejs, "Latkes or Placki Ziemniaczane?: the Culinary Conception of Jewishness in Poland’s National Imagination" (2022). Undergraduate Honors Theses. 55.
https://repository.usfca.edu/honors/55
