What do you get when you combine gonzo journalism with a quest to understand what makes Jewish people tick? You get detailed reportage from the far corners of America, courtesy of veteran Jewish journalist Sue Fishkoff.
At 52, Fishkoff has a track record of following wherever stories lead. She rode all night with a Tel Aviv cabbie for one story. Another assignment brought her to the Sinai desert with U.S. soldiers. When she digs into a topic, she lays it bare for a general readership, as she did depicting the roots of the Chabad-Lubavich movement in The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavich (Schocken, 2003).
“My favorite stories involve Jews in out of the way places sharing their deep feelings about what it means for them to be Jewish in 21st-century, multicultural America,” Fishkoff told RBL. An Oakland-based reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Fishkoff has recently turned her reporter’s attention to eating habits in Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority (Schocken, Oct.). She finds that kosher foods are not just for Orthodox Jews anymore. The tradition’s high standards attract vegetarians, Reform Jews, Muslims, and others—now almost 40% of what’s sold in U.S. supermarkets is kosher, she writes.
“Today,” Fishkoff said, “interest in food politics and the ethics of food production and consumption are so widespread that many Jews who are not particularly observant are looking at how their dietary choices might express their Jewish as well as their human values.”
Fishkoff visited a lot more than supermarkets and kitchens to research the book. She logged thousands of miles and skipped more than a few nights’ sleep to see how kosher happens behind the scenes. “The most interesting work of kosher supervisors happens in the middle of the night inside food manufacturing plants or industrial kitchens,” Fishkoff said, “which meant I had to fly to Tampa, Fla., rural Washington State, and Shanghai, China, just for the pleasure of starting my interviews inside dirty, noisy factories at 2 a.m. And I was in more slaughterhouses than I care to remember.”
Fishkoff found that in an age of heightened interest in healthy, ethical eating habits, food provides an avenue for many Jews to get acquainted with their rich culture. And for anyone hungry for information about the often-misunderstood world of kosher, her book provides a hearty meal.