Historic, adaptable, transmissible, territorial, diasporic and nostalgic would best define what is the cuisine of the Jews. As such, there is not one Jewish cuisine but many types of Jewish cuisine, as many as communities and diasporas.
This book, which is the result of a doctoral thesis on medieval history defended at the end of 2019, explores in particular the Jewish cuisine that originated and developed in Spain. This cuisine has two unique qualities.
Its recipes were created in the 13th century in a territory under Muslim rule, which are revealed to us for the first time. Therefore, it is written in Arabic in the context of a multicultural society but crossed by strong intercommunity tensions.
The second originality of the cuisine of the Jews of Spain lies in the complex – and sometimes unexpected – ways by which it has gradually become heritageized. Persecuted by the Inquisition, Jewish culinary practices in a Christian Spain only persist through words and ingredients.
But neither persecution nor expulsion completely let them disappear: the Sephardic diaspora gave them a second life in Morocco, the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East and as far as Latin America. These are the threads that this book patiently intends to unroll.
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