Nora Rubel

Elizabeth Denio Professor, Associate Professor of Religion University of Rochester

Rochester NY

Rubel is an expert in Jewish studies and Jewish food and holidays.

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Spotlight

Dec 3, 2025

2 min

As families around the world prepare to celebrate Hanukkah, University of Rochester professor Nora Rubel can expound on the deeper stories behind the holiday’s foods, rituals, and evolving traditions. Rubel, a scholar of Jewish studies and chair of the Department of Religion and Classics, specializes in how Jewish identity is expressed through everyday practices and food. For instance, her work explores how dishes like latkes and sufganiyot (fried jelly donuts) carry meanings beyond the kitchen. “Food is one of the most powerful ways communities tell their stories,” Rubel says. “During Hanukkah, the foods we make and share help us remember the past, celebrate resilience, and connect with one another.” Hanukkah runs from Dec. 14 through Dec. 22 this year. Oil at the Heart of Hanukkah: Why Fried Foods Matter Many people recognize the holiday through its signature fried foods. But Rubel notes that these traditions developed over centuries and vary widely across cultures. Ashkenazi Jews typically serve potato latkes. Sephardic and Mizrahi communities prepare sufganiyot, bimuelos, zalabiya, and other fried sweets. Some families incorporate dairy dishes, drawing on medieval interpretations of the Hanukkah story. What unites these foods, Rubel explains, is the symbolism of oil, which commemorates the miracle at the heart of the Hanukkah story. Many Ways to Celebrate Rubel emphasizes that Hanukkah is not a monolithic holiday. Its rituals, from lighting the menorah to singing blessings and exchanging gifts, vary across communities and generations. Some families add new traditions such as: Hosting “latke tasting” gatherings Experimenting with global Jewish recipes Incorporating social justice themes into nightly candle-lighting Sharing stories of family immigration and heritage “Hanukkah is a living tradition,” Rubel says. “It continues to evolve, and food is one of the ways people reinterpret what the holiday means for them today.” A Resource for Understanding Jewish Life Rubel’s broader scholarship focuses on American Jewish life, cultural memory, and how religious identities are shaped in the home as much as in the synagogue. She is a go-to resource for journalists covering holiday practices, regional Jewish cuisines, and the meaning behind rituals that shape the season, and is featured in “Family Recipe: Jewish American Style,” a new documentary now airing on PBS stations across the United States. Rubel is available for interviews throughout the Hanukkah period and beyond, and can speak to how traditions differ in Jewish communities around the world, the evolution of Hanukkah in American culture, and contemporary interpretations of rituals and identity. Click on Rubel's profile to connect with her.

Areas of Expertise

Religion and Food

Jewish food

Jewish Culture

Black Jewish Studies

Judaism

Jewish American Immigration

Jewish Holidays

American Religions, Race and Ethnicity

Jewish Cuisine

Media

Social

Biography

Nora Rubel is an expert on American Judaism, as well as food and ethnicity. She’s the co-editor of the 2014 anthology "Religion, Food, and Eating in North America" (Columbia University Press), and is author of "Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination" (Columbia University Press).

She is working on a book titled "Recipes for the Melting Pot: Reading The Settlement Cook Book," under contract with Columbia University Press.

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ph.D

American Religions

2005

University of North Carolina

M.A.

University of North Carolina

2001

Boston University

M.A

Religion and Culture

1998

Affiliations

American Academy of Religion: Chair, Religion and Food Group, 2013 to present
Reviewer: Journal of Africana Religions, 2013 to present
Reviewer: Teaching Theology and Religion, 2008 to present

Selected Media Appearances

The cookbook that taught generations of Jews how to become American

University of Rochester online

2026-07-01

This may have been what ultimately led to Nora Rubel’s long-awaited new book Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book (Columbia University Press, 2026). But it wouldn’t make the grade for cooking instructions in the iconic book Rubel profiled—one that would become the most successful charitable cookbook in American history. Every recipe in The Settlement Cook Book, which has sold more than two million copies and evolved through more than 40 editions since its 1901 debut, is tested, retested, and standardized using exact measurements and detailed directions.

This precision helped cement its enduring reputation—a reputation that intrigued Rubel, the University of Rochester’s Elizabeth Denio Professor in the Department of Religion and Classics, as far back as her time in graduate school in the early 2000s.

Documentary: Family Recipe: Jewish American Style

PBS tv

2025-12-02

Elizabeth Denio Professor Nora Rubel, Chair of the Department of Religion & Classics and Co-director of the Center for Jewish Studies, among the featured experts. The PBS feature is a historical, genealogical and culinary journey through the Jewish diaspora in homes across America.
“Jewish cuisine is influenced by the economics, agriculture and culinary traditions of the many countries where Jewish communities have settled and varies widely throughout the whole world,” says Rubel.
“Jewish food, as we think about it now, is a culture of foods connected with holidays and rituals. In the United States, these foods are an amalgamation of recipes carried here by Jewish immigrants from their countries of origin. Cookbooks and family recipes are vital historical documents that preserve culture and history by recording culinary traditions, revealing social life, and demonstrating how communities adapt over time.”

The dill of a lifetime? In a nation that’s enduring its own sour patch, the pickle dominated 2024

Associated Press online

2025-01-02

After years of rising locavore ethos, the pandemic’s forced inward focus in 2020 and 2021 led many Americans to revisit DIY approaches to food, including baking sourdough bread and, yes, pickling things. It’s what Nora Rubel, who researches food and culture, calls “an embrace of ‘grandmothercore’ culture” by, well, grandchildren. “Gen Z is taking pickles as their thing. This is the new avocado toast,” says Rubel, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Rochester.

Selected Articles

‘You can’t make a Yankee of me that way!’ The Settlement Cook Book and Culinary Pluralism in Progressive-Era America

Food and Power

2018

Mary Antin, in her 1912 seminal immigrant autobiography The Promised Land, wrote about her mother’s cheesecake in Polotzk, extolling the virtues of both the cake and its accompanying nostalgia...

The Feast at the End of the Fast: The Evolution of an American Jewish Ritual

Tastes of Faith: Jewish Eating in the United States

2017

First Day Quiz

Teaching Theology & Religion

2009

I have used this introductory exercise on the first day of class in two courses: “Race, Religion, and Ethnicity in America” and “Religion in America.”