Leonard Gilman Lecture on Jewish Culture

This talk examines the ways that the 20th century cookbook, The Way to a Man’s Heart: The Settlement Cook Book, became a beloved Jewish icon. Filled with non-kosher recipes, the cookbook has been called “unabashedly Jewish” and “a Jewish Joy of Cooking” by generations of reviewers and cooks, yet dismissed as Jewish “by association only” by some historians. Nevertheless, the heirloom quality of this book transcended generations leading to the perception of the book as a Jewish, albeit not Judaic, standard. Rubel will analyze the ways in which a cookbook can be coded as Jewish, despite having no direct references to Jews or Judaism.

Nora Rubel, Chair of the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester, teaches and writes on a wide variety of topics related to gender, race, and ethnicity in American religion, particularly in relation to food and popular culture. She is the author of Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination (Columbia University Press 2009), co-editor of Religion, Food and Eating in North America (CUP 2014) and Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family (Rutgers University Press 2024). Her latest book, Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book is due out from Columbia University Press in Spring of 2026.

Leslie McRoberts, Head of MSU Libraries Special Collections and MSU Archives, will offer a pop-up of Settlement House and other cookbooks from the MSU Libraries' Special Collections cookery collection.

Co-sponsors: The Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel, College of Arts and Letters, James Madison College, College of Social Science, Residential College of Arts and Humanities, International Studies and Programs, Department of Religious Studies, MSU Libraries, and the Department of History