Foreigners and Their Food Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law By David M. Freidenreich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 325 pages.)

Abstract

Are dietary religious laws an obstacle to community relations between members
of the Abrahamic faiths? The new edition of Pierre Birnbaum’s Le Peuple
et Les Gros, under the title Genèse du Populisme (Hachette Pluriel: 2012) explores
how eating pork in Paris and other cities can be read as a sign of identity
crisis in French society, as a way of excluding from the public space those
who are different, in this case Jews and/or Muslims who follow dietary laws
forbidding its consumption. Similarly, in Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing
Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law, the question of
community, religious laws about food, and a thorough analysis of the relevant
sacred texts is revealing. This book explores how the Abrahamic faiths conceptualize
“us” and “them” through the rules related to food preparation by
those who are not “us” and the precise act of eating with “them.” Moreover,
it echoes an important marker of how communities remain segregated at meal
time even though sharing food is seen as a familial, communal, and, most importantly,
a sacred act.
Foreigners and Their Food opens with Freidenreich’s personal struggle
with food and its significance in deconstructing boundaries between different
traditions. The author, an ordained rabbi, readily admits to a bias of comparative
analysis when interpreting the texts and laws; however, this admission
accentuates and delineates a thorough analysis and rich interpretation that the
study of religion is yearning for in intertexual analysis.
The book begins with a discussion of “imagining otherness,” one that
alerts readers to the significance of food, its symbolic nature of inclusion/
exclusion, and the absence of any analysis as to how it impacts so many religious
adherents who rely upon these laws but cannot critically reflect upon
them as markers of “us” and “them.” Freidenreich looks at what Leviticus,
Deuteronomy, and similar traditional texts state, but he is clearly reaching for
meanings that lie beyond the text. He points out as a general theme that “Absent
from Biblical passages regarding these dietary laws, however, is any suggestion
that the norms enjoined upon Israelites stand in opposition to
non-Israelite practices” (p. 21) ...