I am extremely grateful to learn from Eating at God's Table, not least because Jody Myers was a generous and creative colleague in Jewish food studies who passed away too soon. Myers died of a brain tumor in 2022, and this posthumous book gives us her final contributions to the subfield she helped to shape. Her study of the foodways of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, Pico-Robertson in Los Angeles, California, is an unusual and particularly fruitful addition to Jewish studies, food studies, folklore studies, and related fields. It draws readers into everyday moments that structure the lives of Myers’ informants.In Eating at God's Table, Myers encourages us to think about the relationship between space and foodways. Although Jewish American urban neighborhoods of the early twentieth century are a widely studied subject—including and beyond New York's Lower East Side—there is surprisingly little ethnographic work on contemporary Jewish neighborhoods, perhaps because the concept mostly lingers among Orthodox Jews. Neighborhood life is arguably more important to Orthodox Jews than to other Americans because they do not drive on Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) and holidays and thus require walkable neighborhoods. But few scholars have examined the Jewish diversity within such neighborhoods like Myers has.Myers is carefully attentive to the ways that a wide range of Orthodox Jewish groups coexist, intersect, and occasionally clash within the confines of the Pico-Robertson neighborhood. Myers’ attention to diversity among Orthodox Jews—including Modern Orthodox and Centrist Orthodox, Chabad Hasidic, Persian, Sephardi, and Middle Eastern Orthodox Jews—and the ways they live alongside one another in many places in the United States is an important contribution to Jewish Studies. Remarks by other Orthodox Jews about Chabad, a branch of Orthodox Judaism with a particular focus on messianic ideology and outreach to non-Orthodox Jews, are especially telling insofar as they highlight borders and divisions among communities within this neighborhood. Myers also avoids presenting Orthodox Jews in a vacuum; she carefully shows the broader racial diversity of Pico-Robertson and the way Orthodox Jews in this neighborhood exist within the wider landscape of Los Angeles.Myers’ ethnography is deep and consistently empathetic to her Orthodox Jewish informants. She is clear about her own positionality as a non-Orthodox Jew who lived near the neighborhood for many years and who long cultivated relationships that convey her respect for and knowledge of the communities she studies. In one memorable anecdote, Myers describes inviting an Orthodox friend to her home and diligently acquiring food that is strictly kosher (following Jewish religious dietary laws), even though he politely but ultimately refuses to eat at her home, supposedly due to a technicality about Shabbat rules. Myers uses such stories both to explain her complicated relationships with her informants and her understanding of the many social and religious factors that determine how individual Orthodox Jews keep kosher.Chapter 1 consists largely of four fictional accounts of Orthodox residents, composite characters based on Myers’ ethnographic research, demonstrating the subtly powerful importance of foodways in the daily life of neighborhood residents. Myers gives us sketches of an Ashkenazi Centrist Orthodox woman showing the neighborhood to her cousin as she runs midday errands, along with her Modern Orthodox mother; an Iranian man getting groceries in the evening; a Chabad mother driving a carpool of schoolchildren and running afternoon errands; and three teenage boys biking through alleyways and having a snack during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. They provide a detailed narrative that immediately immerses readers into the world Myers studied. Foodways are integral to these stories—from searching for a jar of kosher pomegranate syrup to feeding children packaged snacks in a minivan. But, as in real life, food practices are woven into the everyday lives and broader religious contexts of Myers’ subjects. These vignettes are among some of the most striking and creative academic writings I have read.Myers’ attention to how her informants feed others in chapter 5 is also an excellent and important contribution to food studies, Jewish and otherwise. Here, Myers examines both charitable giving and home hospitality, especially for Shabbat meals. She reveals the ways that sharing—or not sharing—food may establish communal boundaries. For example, Myers accompanies a member of a Modern Orthodox synagogue as he delivers toiletries to unhoused people. The synagogue member speaks to an unhoused man who seems unwell and under the influence of drugs, suggesting that he attend free meals at the synagogue. When Myers follows up months later, she learns that the man looks much better. Unhoused people “are our neighbors. They are us,” the synagogue member tells her. But, Myers explains, “in this case ‘us’ does not mean full inclusion; it means that their existence and plight must not be ignored and they must not be labeled as outsiders. It does not mean inviting them into one's home or close circles, however” (p. 234). Myers carefully attends to the ways in which her informants—even the most charitable—draw communal boundaries, though her analysis never comes off as a mean-spirited “gotcha” moment.Parts of the book, however, are unevenly written. Chapter 2 includes elaborate descriptions of how keeping kosher works in the United States and long explanations of the differences between Orthodox Jewish groups. This will help readers unfamiliar with this material, but it could be tighter and better integrated with Myers's wonderful ethnographic narratives. Likewise, some detailed explorations of general Jewish food issues, like the ethics of kosher production in chapter 4, take us away from the particularity of Pico-Robertson rather than more deeply into it.Readers familiar with Myers's previous work will surely wonder what the final book might have been if Myers had lived longer. Still, this book is a rich and welcome contribution to the study of foodways. Myers’ clear and engaging writing makes this of interest to both specialists in US Jewish food studies and those in related fields, as well as to students and nonacademic readers. I have already added this book to an undergraduate syllabus, and I am eager to discuss it with my students. Myers is attentive to the ordinary activities of Orthodox Jews in relation to food: the difficulty of finding parking near grocery stores in Los Angeles; pushing and shoving within small, crowded stores; large and small acts of hospitality; and the everyday ways in which Jews communicate whom they trust to share their food practices. Most significantly, Myers uses her study of foodways to trace the dynamic and intersecting networks and boundaries of communities within a vibrant neighborhood.
Rachel B. Gross (Thu,) studied this question.