How Jewish and how rye is Jewish Rye?
A vital part of any culture, food is represented with an extensive vocabulary, ranging from simple native and foreign words (meat, bread, quesadilla, sushi) to more complex definitions focusing on ingredients (chicken curry), ways of cooking (stew), time of eating (breakfast taco), ethnic origins (French onion soup), or something as vague as snickerdoodle cookies. Some of these names are true and straightforward (mac and cheese), while others can be obscure or completely lost in translation (cf. wedding soup, where the Italian word maritata is understood too literally) and contain mysteries waiting to be revealed (baba gannuj). Some names can be factually inaccurate, but still so popular that any attempt to question their meaning seems absurd. Jewish Rye, a famous American bread that is readily available at most bakeries, stores and supermarkets, is a good example. The name of this bread implies that it is made of rye and is Jewish, but both claims have certain issues: the bread is barely rye, and hardly Jewish.
Very few rye breads are made of 100% rye flour, the vast majority uses a mixture of rye and wheat (or some other) flour. The ratio varies, but common baking sense requires bread to be at least half rye to pass for rye bread. By contrast, Jewish Rye rarely has even 20%; its supermarket versions typically range between 5% and 15%, which is not enough to be called rye. In other words, Jewish Rye is not as rye as people may glean from its name.
The flour part is simple, the Jewish one is more complicated. In most cases, ethnic names are geographic by nature, such as English muffin, Italian sausage and French onion soup, which all got their names after the countries they came from. These names are not necessarily accurate, they can be partially or completely misleading: German chocolate cake created by American baker Samuel German has nothing to do with Germany, and Russian dressing which used to include caviar, an essential part of Russian cuisine, has no relation to Russia. Unlike Israeli, the word Jewish is not geographic, and can have very different meanings. In the context of food it usually stands for products introduced, manufactured, used or sold by Jews.
Immigrants who introduced Jewish Rye to America in the late 1880s came from different historic regions of Eastern Europe, which did not always match state borders: Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Galicia, Lithuania, Belorussia, etc. The bread they brought with them was not only similar to the European bread of these regions, it was precisely Russian, Polish or Lithuanian, depending on where each Jewish baker came from. Baking products and food in general have never been among the top priorities of traditional Jewish values, so no real ethnic cuisine could be born in the Jewish diaspora regardless of how many studies are devoted to it now and how many recipe books are published. The most important quality of Jewish food was its compliance with kashrus (Jewish dietary laws). While breads from gentile bakeries are generally kosher because their ingredients are kosher by default, there are some nuances related to baking technology (such as greasing bread pans with pig fat), or to the Jewish law (separating challah) which can make non-Jewish bread not kosher. Therefore, the Jewishness of Jewish bread (pas yisroel) was purely legal and had nothing to do with taste, aroma or flavor. Jewish bakers in Europe didn’t have to create or invent new products — they made breads of their non-Jewish neighbors, adapting recipes as required by kashrus. When the time came, they moved to America and brought those breads with them. Jewish immigrants didn’t call their bread Jewish, neither did bakers, nor other people — it was known as korn broyt (rye bread in Yiddish) without any ethnic adjectives. Therefore, Jewish Rye was not Jewish originally, but Americans referred to it this way because it was made and sold by Jews.
A few decades later, when the Jewish deli with its staple pastrami on rye sandwiches became part of American popular culture, the bread changed quite a bit. The korn broyt of the late 19th century was a common East European rye bread: dark, dense, full of flavor, simple and cheap. In Russia, rye was three times cheaper than wheat, and for this reason rye bread was so popular among people with low income. The American grain market was different: rye and wheat prices were approximately the same, and since wheat breads are easier to make, Jewish bakers began using less and less rye. To mask the reduced rye flavor, they added caraway seeds, and this is how a solid 60% or more rye bread turned into a deli bread with only 20% or less rye flour and a strong taste of seeds.
Changes in baking did not come alone — assimilation affected eating habits as well. Many Jewish delis that used to be kosher and never mixed meat and dairy products, began to simplify or totally ignore dietary laws, offering products that combined meat and cheese, such as the famous Reuben sandwich. Made of corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese with Russian dressing, the Reuben is obviously not kosher and therefore is forbidden for Jews. However, in the eyes of many Americans it is still associated with Jewish kosher delis, not least because of the bread. Such is the power of its name — after all, it is tradition, and who argues with tradition?
