Nora Rubel
Jane and Alan Batkin Professor of Jewish Studies University of Rochester
Areas of Expertise
Media
Social
Links
Biography
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
Rutgers University
B.A.
Religion and American Studies
1996
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 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.
The Bakers Reimagining Traditional Jewish Pastries
New York Times print
2023-03-14
Until recently, however, “there were no high-end Jewish restaurants,” says Nora Rubel, 48, a religious studies professor at the University of Rochester. “Jews didn’t create the same kind of culinary culture in the United States as, for example, the Italians did. So you could go to a high-end kosher restaurant, but it wasn’t Jewish food — it would be French cuisine or a steakhouse.”
A Jewish studies professor and her cheesesteak-loving husband are behind Rochester's new kosher 'butcher shop'
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
2021-07-19
It's a fitting side project for Nora Rubel, a Jewish studies professor at the University of Rochester who studies food, culture and ethnicity.
Nora Rubel at the University of Rochester says you find recipes with horseradish in the earliest American Jewish cookbooks
NPR radio
2021-03-27
Nora Rubel at the University of Rochester says you find recipes with horseradish in the earliest American Jewish cookbooks.
Unpacking the Immense Popularity of Shtisel
The Atlantic online
2019-06-20
Last Wednesday, Gady Levy, the executive director of the Streicker Center at New York’s Temple Emanu-El, herded the Israeli actors Neta Riskin and Dov Glickman through the cavernous synagogue’s hallways. Riskin and Glickman, who play the daughter-father pair Giti and Shulem on the Israeli television show Shtisel, had just left a room jammed with donors waiting to get their picture taken with their favorite characters. Downstairs, another group was awaiting its photo-op. Outside the building, the line for the main event—a panel discussion with the actors—took up an entire block on Fifth Avenue and curled halfway down both 65th and 66th Streets.
Still, it’s telling that so many American Jews are eager to find universality in a form of particularity that, in the past, they found deeply unpleasant. In her 2009 book, Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination, the University of Rochester’s Nora Rubel notes that haredim have often been a “source of anxiety and embarrassment for ‘modern’ Jews.”
Talk of the Table | The Foods of Passovers Past
Moment online
2019-04-04
Younger generations’ cluelessness is easy fodder for the outraged defenders of beloved Passover dishes. But it’s always been true that, as tastes change and new ingredients proliferate, popular holiday recipes fade into obscurity.
Looking through mid-century cookbooks, Nora Rubel, a Jewish studies professor at the University of Rochester, discovered recipes for several Passover desserts, such as chremslach, a fried matzah pancake (or “glorified latkes,” as one of the recipes describes them) and charlotte. A European dish, charlotte is a type of Passover cake, “often lumped in the same category as a kugel,” although it looks more like a trifle, says Rubel. “That’s one thing that shows up everywhere that I don’t think anyone I know has ever made—or had.” She has found recipes for matzah charlotte, farfel charlotte, apple charlotte and was particularly intrigued by fruit meringue charlotte, made of matzah farfel, prune or apple juice, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, melted shortening, eggs, salt, sugar, chopped nuts and sliced bananas or apples.
Connections: Discussing Ashkenazi Jewish food with the authors of the "The Gefilte Manifesto"
WXXI radio
2019-02-11
We talk with the co-founders of the Gefilteria in Brooklyn. They are also the co-authors of "The Gefilte Manifesto" -- a narrative cookbook with new approaches and recipes for Old World Jewish foods.
We sit down with them to discuss their work, their views on how to revitalize aspects of food culture, and a presentation they will give at the University of Rochester. In studio:
Liz Alpern, co-founder of the Gefilteria and co-author of “The Gefilte Manifesto"
Jeffrey Yoskowitz, co-founder of the Gefilteria and co-author of “The Gefilte Manifesto"
Nora Rubel, Jane and Alan Batkin Professor of Jewish Studies, and chair of the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester
Connections: Discussing the psychology and impact of hate and intolerance
WXXI radio
2018-12-20
According to several recent reports, hate crimes and violent incidents motivated by bigotry are on the rise. In November, the FBI released a report that showed hate crimes in the U.S. increased 17 percent in 2017, with anti-Semitic crimes spiking at 37 percent.
This hour, we have a conversation about the impact of hate and intolerance with local professors who have studied the subject. We discuss recent incidents of hate, lessons from history, and the psychology of stereotypes and intolerance. Our guests:
Nora Rubel, the Jane and Alan Batkin Professor of Jewish Studies and chair of the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester
Laura Elenbaas, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester
Thomas Fleischman, assistant professor of history at the University of Rochester
Hate and Violence on the Rise: Is history repeating itself?
Futurity online
2018-12-05
Here, University of Rochester faculty—Nora Rubel, professor of Jewish studies and chair of the department of religion and classics, Thomas Fleischman, assistant professor of history, and Laura Elenbaas, assistant professor of psychology—discuss hate and intolerance with Jim Ver Steeg of university communications...
Yom Kippur: A time for feasting as well as fasting
The Conversation online
2018-09-17
But whether or not one fasts on Yom Kippur, the tradition has developed over just the last few decades, according to scholar Nora Rubel, of a lavish, festive meal at the conclusion of the fast...
How Yom Kippur Fasts Became All About The Feasts
NPR radio
2017-12-29
According to University of Rochester religion professor Nora Rubel, there's one problem with this idea of celebrating around a laden table: For Jews of Eastern European background, the table-groaning Yom Kippur break fast feast is a relatively recent development...
Merry ... What Wait? Families Celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah
Democrat & Chronicle online
2016-12-18
Nora Rubel is Jewish and her husband, Robert Nipe, was raised Presbyterian. Earlier in their marriage Rubel struggled over whether or not to have a Christmas tree in their Brighton home when her mother, whom she says is her “biggest critic,” suggested that she should do it to please her husband, especially since “he was bending over backwards” and agreeing to raise their two daughters (now ages 8 and 12) in the Jewish faith. “I was relieved,” says Rubel...
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 Power2018
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 States2017
First Day Quiz
Teaching Theology & Religion2009
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.”
