"The Jewish Deli in America" — Bennett Center Lecture Feb. 12
The Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies kicks off its spring lecture series on Thursday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m. with , associate professor of Religion and Judaic Studies at Dickinson College, in a lecture titled “Where Harry Met Sally: The Jewish Deli in America.”
The event will be held in the Dolan School of Business Dining Room. The lecture is free, but please call (203) 254-4000, ext. 2066 to reserve seats.
Dr. Merwin is founding director of the Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life at Dickinson College. He has published numerous scholarly articles, as well as other articles in the New York Times, Washington Post , International Herald Tribune , Haaretz , Forward, Moment , Hadassah , and others. For the past 14 years, he has written a weekly theater column and a bi-monthly column investigating overarching themes in American Jewish culture for the New York J ewish Week , the largest-circulation Jewish newspaper in the nation.He is currently working on a book about the history of the Jewish deli.
“We may never know which Jewish delicatessen was the first to open in New York; the deli, from the Latin word delicatus , meaning anything that was alluring, enticing, or voluptuous–morphed in successive stages out of the gourmet take-out stores of Europe, only gradually sprouting tables at the turn of the twentieth century and becoming a particularly relaxed and raucous type of restaurant that brought together Jewish immigrants from different Eastern European nations and enabled them to begin to form a collective American Jewish identity while fressing on smoked and pickled meats, crunchy cucumbers, and spongy, slightly sour, seeded rye bread.” (from “How Katz’s Delicatessen Became a New York Icon” by Ted Merwin, )
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This lecture is made possible in part by a gift from Shayle Robins.
