Efron, John M: All Consuming

"In Judaism, meat holds unparalleled significance, for it constitutes the very focal point of the dietary laws. With an intricate set of codified regulations concerning forbidden and permissible meats, highly prescribed methods of killing, and elaborate rules governing consumption, meat is the most visible not to mention gustatory marker of Jewish difference and social separation between Jews and non-Jews. It is an object of tangible, touchable, and tastable difference like no other. All Consuming considers the moral, ethical, religious, ritualistic, aesthetic, communicative, artistic, and linguistic network of ideas, practices, and attitudes surrounding meat and Jewishness from the Middle Ages through today. In this book, historian John M. Efron focuses on Germany as a particularly rich backdrop against which to view the contested culture of meat and its role in the formation of ethnic identities. To an extent not seen elsewhere in Europe, in sculpture, art, text, law, scholarship, commerce, and popular culture, Germans have identified, thought about, studied, decried, and gladly eaten meat understood to be "Jewish." Likewise, Jews also vigorously defended their meats and the culture and rituals surrounding them by educating Germans and Jews alike about their meaning and relevance. Exploring a cultural history that extends for some seven hundred years, Efron goes beyond a discussion of dietary laws and ritual slaughter to take a broad view of what meat can tell us about German-Jewish identity and culinary culture, Jewish and Christian religious sensibilities, antisemitic stereotypes, Nazi persecution, Jewish acculturation, and religious freedom for minorities in Germany, providing a singular window into the rich, fraught, and ultimately tragic history of German Jewry"--