The Harry Spindel Memorial Lecture Presents: The Recipes and Rules of Jewish Bread: A Conversation with Barak Olins and Jordan Rosenblum

Please join us for a fireside chat about Jewish bread between award-winning baker Barak Olins and historian of Jewish food Jordan Rosenblum. Moderated by Peter M. Small Associate Professor of Religion Todd Berzon, this wide-ranging conversation will explore the recipes and regulations that have governed and continue to govern the production and consumption of Jewish bread across history. Bread, both as a powerful metaphor and a tangible substance, has always held profound historical and religious significance for Jews. Bringing their unique and complementary perspectives to bear, Rosenblum and Olins will discuss the relationship between the history of Jewish bread, the mechanics of making it, and the distinctive reverence it garners. Come hungry to learn!

A native of Tennessee, Barak Olins moved to Rockport, Maine, to build boats. In 1995, he opened Cafe Uffa in Longfellow Square. In 2000, he launched ZUbakery out of a barn in Freeport. And for nearly twenty years, he sold his baked goods exclusively at the Brunswick farmer’s market. In 2022, he opened a brick-and-mortar boulangerie in Portland’s West End. In 2024, Zu received the national award for outstanding bakery from the James Beard Foundation.

Jordan D. Rosenblum is the Belzer Professor of Classical Judaism and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His most recent book, Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig, won a 2024 National Jewish Book Award. In addition, he is the author of Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature; The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World; and Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism, as well as coeditor of four volumes, including Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food and Animals and the Law in Antiquity. He is currently working on a history of kosher controversies.

Todd S. Berzon teaches and studies the religious world of late antiquity, with a particular focus the relationship between Jews and Christians. He is the author of Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity. His most recent work is the forthcoming monograph Holy Tongues: Linguistic Presence in the Religious World of Late Antiquity.

Sponsored by the Harry Spindel Memorial Lecture Fund.

For more information, contact Jenn Berube Lord at jberube@bowdoin.edu or 207-725-3928.

Open to the public free of charge.

A livestream of this talk will be available on Bowdoin's live events website: https://www.bowdoin.edu/live/

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Co-hosted with: Center for Multicultural Life, Bowdoin Culinary Club, Bowdoin Organic Garden, Hillel, Religion, Jewish Life

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