Blintzes, Lox and Knishes ~ Jewish Immigrants Bring Food to America

Sandwiches with pastrami, bagels with lox and cream cheese, blintzes, knishes, and pickles on the side: Jewish delis have a long tradition in the city of New York.  Many of the foods brought by Jewish immigrants in the 19th & 20th century have become iconic foods associated with New York City.  

There was one job that was open to all; immigrants of all social standing found opportunities for work as pushcart vendors. The streets of New York's Lower East Side were crammed with pushcarts and stalls and people.   

In the mid-19th century, many German Jews  emigrated to the United States.  Later came the influx of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe.  These immigrants hoped to leave behind the poverty and pogroms of the Old World to find a better life in America. 

Artist:  Ben Katchor

The blintz originated from Eastern Europe from a Jewish community called Ashkenazi. Historically, Ashkenazi Jews were forbidden to harvest crops in their home countries, and thus the cuisine is traditionally void of vegetables and heavily reliant on meat, potatoes, and dairy.  The word ‘blintz’ has its roots in the Yiddish word for ‘pancake.’

Herring was traditionally served once a week on the Sabbath, or Friday night.  In European inland communities. where you don't have access to seawater fish, herring might've been the only fish available. There are sayings in Yiddish, like, "Ven siz nisht da kein fish, iz men yotzim mit herring.” If there is no fish, well then, you can have herring—meaning, herring is not even fish.

Soon plentiful and inexpensive salmon arrived in New York from the Pacific Northwest.  Stores began selling salmon and lox, a fish that most Jews from Eastern Europe had never encountered.  In America, for the first time, for many of these Jews, they have choices about what to eat.

 

Both the knish and the blintz would be found at a Jewish Dairy Restaurant. These restaurants made it possible for Jewish immigrants in New York to eat out according to kosher laws, by keeping milk and meat strictly separated.  The clever drawings of the cartoonist Ben Katchor depict this era in New York. 

As for bagels, historically European Church officials and local nobles often forbade Jews from baking bread at all, which the Church viewed as a holy food. That changed in Poland, but bread that had to be boiled first, and thus distinctive from bread supplied by Christian bakers. When Jews moved from Poland to America, they brought their tradition of baking and selling bagels with them.

The European Jewish immigrants contributed greatly to the New York City and American Cuisine. 

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