Idit Pinte-Ginsberg is the former academic coordinator of the Israel Folklore Archives at the University of Haifa, and this book was written and published first in Hebrew in 2016 and translated into English by the author in 2021. It is a clear, carefully researched and annotated volume of great use for those teaching foodways, religious or Jewish studies, or folktales at the undergraduate or graduate level, and a very functional model for presenting a diverse collection of tales on a theme.
The Angel and the Cholent analyzes thirty tales having to do with food from the Israeli Folktale Archive (IFA). It is divided into a preface, brief acknowledgements, a very helpful index that includes tale title and IFA number, and five chapters, each of which reproduces, provides, and analyzes six tales. Each chapter begins with an exploration of the theme, drawing on religious texts and scholarship to introduce the concepts developed in the tales. Each tale is introduced with a title, the IFA index number, and the name of the recorder or collector and the name and geographic origin of the tale teller. The tales themselves are given in English. After the tale is a discussion that begins with brief biographical information about the storyteller and the circumstances of the telling, a discussion of the classification of the tale type and related tales, and analysis of the tale itself with explanatory notes, sometimes including URLs, giving background information or references to scholarship.
The preface begins by underlining the centrality of food to human life and human society, and states that the book “examines the way folktales reflect customs, beliefs, and cultural perceptions related to food” (xiii). The preface grounds the text in foundational works in food and food studies by Carole Counihan, Sandra Gilbert, Stanley Mintz, Mary Douglas, and Michael Owen Jones; in the study of folktales with Dan Ben-Amos and Eli Yassif; and in the study of foodways in narrative with Cara DaSilva, Kathleen German, and Sandra Gilbert. The preface introduces the Israeli Folktale Archives. Pinte-Ginsberg describes the scope of the collection (twenty-five thousand cataloged folktales) from immigrant groups and Israel’s Arab society. The preface explains that the thirty tales considered in this book were told by twenty-nine storytellers from seventeen locations or ethnic groups in order to represent the wealth and breadth of the archive.
Chapter 1, “Worldly Pleasure: Food and Taste,” is concerned with “sensory encounters with food” and the role of taste in both senses in Jewish culture. The tales discuss sensory and sensual experience as well as respect for food and pleasure, and the complexity of gluttony and overeating. The tales in this section are “The Rebbe and Worldly Pleasures” (IFA 16176), “Love Like Salt” (IFA 5691), “Home-Cooked Food” (IFA 14221), “Who Will Be the Baal Shem Tov’s Neighbor” (IFA 9127), “Big Eyes” (IFA 17230), and “Diet” (IFA 4515).
Next, Pinte-Ginsberg turns to gendered relationships to food in chapter 2, “’He Brought a Chicken for Her to Cook’: Food and Gender.” She points out the ways that these tales can reflect gender identity, provide a means for communication between genders, and interrogate power relationships, sex, and authority. The tales in this section are “The Boundaries of Craving” (IFA 22813), “Stone Soup” (14701), “The Bride Who Knew It All” (IFA 5872), “The Second-Rate Challah” (IFA 15354), “Woman Raises, Woman Lowers, A Man’s Honor is in a Woman’s Hands” (IFA 5066), and “No Answers are Given But By Women” (IFA 22918).
Seven stories concerned with class, money, and food are analyzed in chapter 3, “With a Good Eye and From All Their Hearts: Food and Class,” including “Christian Hell and Jewish Hell” (IFA3346), “Hosts Who Do Not Feed Their Guest” (IFA 2400), “Three Great Mitzvot” (IFA 11180), “A Guest for Shabbat” (IFA 13385), “Poor Man’s Beans” (IFA 12582), “The Way to Become Rich” (IFA 16648), and “The Prince of Smelling” (178). Food quantity and quality is a marker of class, and Pinte-Ginsberg uses the concept of commensality to foreground food sharing/not sharing in the tales, and mutual social responsibility central to Jewish religious ethics. This chapter, like the others, avoids essentialization of culture and ideology and engages with the dissonance in the tales between social expectations and individual psychological and physical reality.
Tales engaging with Kashrut—the rules dictating what is “suitable and proper for consumption by Jews” (109) is the subject of chapter 4, “It is Kosher and Fit to Eat: Food and Kashrut.” Pinte-Ginsberg succinctly explains the scope and history of thought and practice surrounding Jewish food identity. The tales debate the cost (financial, social) of observance of kashrut law, and the difficulty of sharing meals with gentiles. The tales in this section are: “If Only You Knew the Taste” (IFA 20195), “The Jewish Rabbi and the King” (IFA 6110), “There is No Trust in a Gentile Even After Forty Years” (IFA 3060), “Batel Bashishim—One Sixtieth Is Negligible” (IFA 9782), and “The Butter Cake of Pasha-Leah” (IFA 10660).
Chapter 5, “Fish in Honor of the Shabbat: Food and Sacred Time,” extends the religious role of food in daily Jewish life to the role of food as a transitioner from secular (daily) time to sacred time through the festive meals that distinguish them. The five tales in this final chapter depict food concerns, explanations, or criticisms surrounding the provision and consumption of food during Shabbat, Passover, and Shavuot. The tales in this section are “R. Eliyahu Buhbut and the Fish on Shabbat Eve” (IFA 6437), “The Taste of the Shabbat’s Hamin” (IFA 12396), “The Angel in Charge of the Shofar Blasts” (IFA 11131), “The End of a Blood Libel” (IFA 10844), and “Wherefore the Custom of Eating Dairy Products on Shavuot” (IFA 388).
The short epilogue discusses the centrality of food to human culture, and these tales as evidence of ongoing preoccupation with the need to maintain Jewish identity and the fear of cultural and physical annihilation. These tales, Pinte-Ginsberg points out, are bearers of the memory of worlds that do not exist anymore. Following the epilogue is an appendix that lists the tale index number, title, teller, country, recorder, and Arne-Thompson tale type.
Folklorists concerned with the deep context of storytelling events will probably wish for more information about the circumstances under which the tale was solicited, recorded, and transcribed, but what Pinte-Ginsberg has carefully and generously shared with the English-speaking world is a valuable substitute for actually visiting the Israeli Folktale Archive.
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[Review Length: 1068 words • Review posted on September 26, 2025]