"For the Reputation of Our Own Nationality": The Settlement Cook Book and the Reforming of Jewish Domestic Culture

This paper examines Lizzie Black Kander (the “Jane Addams of Milwaukee”) and The Way to A Man’s Heart: The Settlement Cook Book.  An upper-class daughter of German Jews, she encouraged Russian Jewish immigrants to leave their particular ethnic flavors behind and learn to use New World ingredients (and New World manners).  With the publication of a 1901 pamphlet that went on to become the most successful fundraising cookbook in America, Kander created an ideal of Jewish American domestic life which influenced generations of women.  Kander’s cookbook came out of her cooking classes at the Milwaukee Settlement and, like many similar instructors, she taught new immigrants culinary and other domestic skills.  As a Progressive era activist, she wished to quickly integrate these immigrants into American culture.  As a Reform Jew, she believed that dietary restrictions were antiquated, irrational commandments out of step with American modern life.  By teaching the Russian Jews to be good Americans, Kander (and her contemporaries) sought to legitimate their own American status. The Judaic nature of the cookbook was therefore questionable from the start.  While Kander’s classes were kosher, the cookbook was not.  Alongside traditional Jewish recipes such as “matzos kloese” (matzo balls) and “filled fish” (gefilte fish), the pages were filled with recipes for shellfish and pork.  Kander’s cookbook also included recipes of “all nationalities”, reflecting an optimistic spirit of America’s diversity.  Kander’s attitudes toward the diet and manners of new Jews reflect not only concerns over immigrant acculturation, but also reveal a Jewish reformer’s unease about the possibility of awakening latent anti-Semitism in the United States.  Little scholarly attention has been paid to Kander or her cookbook, revealing the dominant Protestant influence of the period.  This paper will therefore suggest a new religious—and gastronomical—dimension to the progressive politics of the settlement movement.