Cholent (Hardback)

It sounds insane. Why would anyone deliberately leave a pot cooking for fifteen hours straight? But that’s what Jewish people worldwide have done for more than 1,700 years.

In this richly-researched book, Jewish food scholar Joel Haber explains the reasons for this practice, digging into how one special food—“the Shabbat stew”— has changed as Jews have migrated. Despite unique ingredients and names (cholent, hamin, skhena, khalebibi, and more), these many stews prove to be versions of the same dish, rather than different ones. A popular one-pot meal traveled with Jews wherever they moved, morphing with what ingredients were available and popular. The book uses this singular “stew with a thousand flavors” to trace the routes of Jewish migrations throughout the Diaspora.

Exploring the changes to the dish, and to Jewish life in each place, Joel highlights how this dish embodies the Jewish story. The Jewish nation is the most globalized on earth, one people with numerous visible communal variations. This book celebrates Jewish uniqueness, as seen through the nearly 30 tried and tested recipes the book includes. Reflecting that unity-within-diversity, the kaleidoscopic Shabbat stew is truly the most Jewish food on earth.