VDM Kravva, V: Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you if you are

The book examines the role of food and eating in the maintainance and negotiation of a community's boundaries. The author draws material from from her fieldwork among the Jews in the city of Thessaloniki in Northern Greece. The past of this community is characterised by many dramatic changes that resulted in its gradual marginalisation. The author attempts to examine this dialectic relationship beteween the past and the present through examining food and food narratives. Food is also seen as playing a crucial role in giving meaning to notions of 'being' and 'feeling' Jewish in a non-Jewish city. The centrality of food and eating in solidifying the feeling of 'belonging' to the community is also discussed. The book offers insights to the topics of food, memory and in the course of the analysis notions such as 'traditionality' and 'authenticity' are analysed and assessed. What is attempted is to co-examine issues drawn from the anthropology of food and memory and the study of ethnic and religious groups. As it is argued food creates real or imagined distincions between Self and Other and sustains images of cultural continuity.