AIAR Book Launch: Susan Weingarten’s Ancient Jewish Food in Its Geographical and Cultural Contexts

Name: AIAR Book Launch: Susan Weingarten’s Ancient Jewish Food in Its Geographical and Cultural Contexts
Start: 2025-10-20T17:00:00+03:00
Location: Salah ed-Din Street 26, 9711049 Jerusalem, Israel

Schedule

Mon, 20 Oct, 2025 at 05:00 pm

UTC+03:00

Location

Salah ed-Din Street 26, 9711049 Jerusalem, Israel | Jerusalem, JM

**Postponement Message**
Dear Friends,
Due to the planned protest events and expected road closures in Jerusalem this Wednesday afternoon, we have decided to postpone the Book Launch Event originally scheduled for that time.
The event has been rescheduled for Sunday, October 20, and we look forward to welcoming you then.
In the meantime, we are pleased to launch our Academic Program next week with a lecture by our Assistant Director. We warmly invite you to join us for this event and to take part in what promises to be a rich and engaging program throughout the year.
Thank you for your understanding and continued support.
Please join us for a book launch panel of Susan Weingarten's new book, Ancient Jewish Food in Its Geographical and Cultural Contexts: What’s Cooking in the Talmuds? at 17:00 IDT | 10:00 EDT on Oct 20, 2025 at the Albright and on Zoom. Post-Event Reception at 18:00
Program:
- Presentation: Susan Weingarten (AIAR)
- Respondent: Limor Yungman (HUJI) – “From Stomach to Heart: A Thousand Years of Arabic Culinary Literature”
– Respondent: Yuval Sahar (TAU) – “The Rise and Fall of the Endive as a Plant Food”
Zoom Webinar ID
849 7930 8949
Passcode:
039904
Zoom Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84979308949?pwd=UbZOxb9ImmD2LTVQOEfzJ9a9WdzUyV.1
Abstract: Traditional rivalries between West and East, dating back at least as far as Herodotus, were expressed in the public rituals and symbolism of food and luxury at imperial banquets. Thus in Late Antiquity, banqueting was one of the arenas of rivalry between Roman Emperor and Sassanian King of Kings. Both in Palestine and in Babylonia, this rivalry is mirrored in the food cultures and conspicuous consumption of the Jewish community heads, the Palestinian Patriarch and his rival, the Babylonian Exilarch, as depicted in the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds respectively. In this presentation I shall look at how these rivalries are played out through the food on their tables.
Bio: Susan Weingarten is a food historian living in Jerusalem. She has published The Saint’s Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome (2005); Haroset: A Taste of Jewish History (2019) and many papers on Jewish food in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.