In Jewish culture, culinary traditions weave together the fabric of our shared history — each ingredient and recipe steeped in symbolic meaning and ancient tales passed down to future generations. From simple, everyday staples to festive delicacies, Jews around the world continue to rely on food for much more than nourishment.
For us, it helps anchor our identity, memory, and belonging. Whether it’s matzah recalling the Exodus or tzimmis sweetening the path of life, every dish speaks to the journeys of our ancestors.
These stories aren’t just nostalgic — they are vibrant and living. Through centuries of migration, adaptation, and creativity, Jewish kitchens became laboratories for blending local ingredients with ancestral practices. This legacy of traditions ensures that flavors tell more than taste — they transmit values, survival, reflection, and hope across generations.
Bagels and beyond
There’s a reason bagels have become synonymous with Jewish culinary traditions — their chewy circle of everyday comfort is both humble and iconic. However, bagels are just the start. Today, new Jewish food continues to emerge, shaped by diasporic influences and evolving tastes.
Take bourekas: these savory pastries, with roots in Middle Eastern flatbreads like Turkey’s börek, Greece’s boureki, and Armenia’s byorek, have been embraced within Jewish kitchens from Jerusalem to Los Angeles. Sephardic communities made them their own, blending flaky pastry with fillings of cheese, potato, or spinach, giving rise to fresh stories of flavor and identity. Their shapes often signal their filling — distinct visual cues rooted in tradition, yet flexible enough to welcome new interpretations.
Like bagels, bourekas invoke nostalgia — the smell of warming dough, the crunch of a sesame seed-encrusted top. Yet they also represent new traditions, reinvented for contemporary tastes and creative kitchens. From pop-up bakeries to Instagram Reels, bourekas stand as edible bridges between the storied past and the curiosity of culinary innovation.
Telling your own story
Telling stories through food is an act of love and legacy. Being Jewish in 2025 involves blending Jewish history with personal narratives and present-day values. It means honoring the old — like braiding challah or simmering cholent — while giving them a new twist. Think beet-infused kugel, vegan cholent for Sabbath, or incorporating global spices in classic recipes.
As we remain devoted to defining the meaning given to Jewish food, our kitchens become memoirs. One’s “aunt’s brisket” might be seasoned with turmeric and harissa, or your grandmother’s kugel might go gluten-free without losing its soul. These adaptations are not departures — they are continuations of tradition, lovingly reimagined for modern palates.
In forging your family’s culinary story, it’s important to draw on Jewish cultural traditions yet add your own chapter also. Maybe it’s a festival-inspired mezze plate, or a fusion of Ashkenazi and Mizrahi flavors, reflecting diverse heritage. Perhaps your Passover seder includes storytelling alongside vegan matzah ball soup.
Undoubtedly, food remains one of the most intimate ways to connect — across time and distances, as well as between generations. By bringing joy and creativity into the kitchen, you invite your own generations who follow to continue the story, with imagination, pride, and the strong sense of belonging that those before us felt.