Matzoh Ball Gumbo

Since early colonial times in America, Jewish southerners have been tempted by delectable regional foods. Because some of these foods - including pork and shellfish - have been traditionally forbidden to Jews by religious dietary laws, southern Jews face a special predicament. In a culinary journey through the Jewish South, Arkansas native Marcie Cohen Ferris explores how southern Jews embraced, avoided, and adapted southern food and, in the process, have found themselves at home. From colonial Savannah and Charleston to Civil War era New Orleans and Natchez, from New South Atlanta to contemporary Memphis and the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas, examines the expressive power of food throughout southern Jewish history. Jews in the South reinvented traditions as they adjusted to living in a largely Christian world where they were bound by regional rules of race, class, and gender. In some cases, Jews merely adjusted their eating habits to match those of their new neighbors. In other cases, they created a new cuisine that revealed a merging of the many cultures they encountered in the New World. At the dining table, Jewish southerners created a distinctive religious expression that reflects the evolution of southern Jewish life. Featuring a trove of photographs, Matzoh Ball Gumbo also includes anecdotes, oral histories, and more than thirty recipes to try at home. Ferris's rich tour of southern Jewish foodways helps us answer the question, ''What does it mean to be both southern and Jewish?''