I found chapter 3 of Race and Religion very enlightening, because it made me reconsider my beliefs about culture. I remember learning about culture in elementary school; my teacher explained to the class that culture is what people do, the clothes they wear and the foods they eat. I now see that this definition of culture is oversimplified.
Culture is not the food and clothes that a particular group wears, although these may be considered markers and representative objects by people in these groups, and outsiders looking in. Culture, I think, is something deeper than material objects. It includes the beliefs, values, and practices of a specific group. For the Blacks and Jews living in Crown Heights, food and clothes aren’t the most important things. For Black residents, collard greens are important not because it is a national food, but because for them it represents their history in slavery. For Lubavitchers, the actual food that they eat is not nearly as important as the preparation, blessing, and consumption of kosher food.
However, can the connection between food and culture be considered a good thing? It is never right to oversimplify something,, but food is something that everyone knows and understands. The easiest way to learn or at least have a first exposure to another culture is to try that culture’s food.
The exchange of cultural food can be a great icebreaker for people from different cultures, so it is understandable that community leaders in Crown Heights first jumped to the exchange of food as a solution to the tensions between Blacks and Jews in Crown Heights. The problem with this is that Lubavitchers don’t consider their food to be “cultural,” in fact, they don’t see themselves as having a culture at all. They follow Kashrus and the commandments of God so that they can find redemption. This isn’t something that can be easily shared, like an ethnic dish, and Lubavitchers cannot simply eat the foods of Black residents in Crown Heights because they are not kosher. Although food is supposed to make cultural exchange easier, in the case of the Blacks and Jews in Crown Heights, it just creates a larger divide. Food is not something that will facilitate cultural exchange and “intergration” in the Crown Heights, but hopefully something else will.
