In a way, this project for me has been the beginnings of processing multiple different traumas. The shape of Jewish DNA has been permanently changed due to thousands of years of persecution and violence. Ghosts of the Spanish Inquisition, porgams, the Holocaust, floating around the minds of Jews across the world. Not only trauma from large-scale massacres as listed above, but the trauma that comes from extreme poverty, abuse, going hungry, everything that happened to our parents and grandparents still rings in our bones today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Food is also something that holds a lot of weight when it comes to trauma. Since early high school, I have been struggling with food. Falling in and out of restriction and binging, it has been a problem for years. It’s so painful to push away something that I hold as close as food. The ghosts of my grandparents saying I eat too much or 16 year old me having a panic attack when I ate a sandwich float around in my head the same as the ancient ghosts of my generational trauma. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In any situation where there are ghosts involved, there is only one thing to be done. You have to exorcize them, set them free so that they can find where they need to go. This is what I feel this project is, I am setting these ghosts free. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cooking the dishes and following the culinary journey of Eastern European Jews feels like a way to honor and free them. It is as if the challah I bake and the stew that I let bubble on the stove for hours has opened a portal for them. It makes their stories more real, tasting the flavors they may have tasted, feeling the texture of the bread on my hands and the beef on my tongue; I am following in their footsteps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whenever I eat one of these traditional dishes, I can’t help but imagine a thread stringing back years and years, a continent and an ocean all the way to my ancestors in Ukraine. I imagine a girl around my age, maybe she looks like me, long dark braids tied with ribbons, a long apron, eating the same food. I wonder if she likes it, if she would like me. It is as if, when I make these foods, we are eating at the same table laughing over bowls of soup and comparing our lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think about her often, one of the many ghosts in my head. But, out of all the ghosts she is my favorite. And although we may not have spoken the same language, I know that we can both understand the flush of sweet warm air on your face as you take bread out of the oven or the satisfaction of food you made warming the belly of people you love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mysticism and ritual that this culinary connection has brought into my own personal food theory has been so healing. Who am I to deny myself something so sacred? While there are still many ghosts that float around my head, with each stir of the pot, with each knead of the bread, they float away to find their place in history. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Judith Landshut<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":462,"featured_media":192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/462"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-f20-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}