Still other versions of kosher stem from industrial food production and the development of labels that allow each consumer to decide just which ones they will follow. The result leads to a kind of personalized form of kosher practice, one potentially with almost infinite variety.

As literary scholar Josh Lambert observed in his essay “One Man’s Kosher is Another Man’s Treif,” “my parents have never tasted swordfish, but adore caviar. In other words, they – like many people – have a kashrut [kosher] standard that makes sense to nobody but themselves.”

This diversity leaves American Jews, especially women who still do most of the food preparation in Jewish homes, with a complex conundrum. Which foods should they cook? How should they cook this food? Should they turn to recipes handed down by mothers and grandmothers? Or should they try something new and different?

The conundrum is not new. Jews initially came to the United States as immigrants. Many left behind their parents and grandparents. Most possessed a limited knowledge of food preparation. Into this gap stepped women who wrote cookbooks.

Although the earliest Jewish cookbooks date to 1815 in Europe, the first American Jewish cookbook did not appear until 1871. Esther Levy’s “Jewish Cookery Book on Principles of Economy Adapted for Jewish Housekeepers” was published in Philadelphia.

Aunt Babette’s 1889 “Cookbook” soon eclipsed Esther Levy’s. Bertha F. Kramer, who wrote the “Aunt Babette’s Cookbook,” included American foods alongside Jewish ones, promoting integration of two types of foods.

Soon competition flourished as other publishers and writers saw the potential market with increasing numbers of Jewish immigrants arriving on American shores.

These Jewish cookbooks, written in Yiddish and German as well as English, guided women in how to prepare traditional Jewish foods even as they also promoted American food, such as apple pie. In a sense, they stepped into the breach within families caused by immigration, teaching their readers what to do and how to do it. Many also included explanations of the kosher system as well as holiday menus.

Even after Jewish families became intergenerational, and children often had access to traditional Jewish recipes through their grandparents, the popularity of Jewish cookbooks did not diminish. As Joan Nathan wrote in her 2004 “Jewish Holiday Cookbook,” “Like many Jews in America, I have become passionately involved in discovering my roots.” And that passion has led her, as a food writer, to seek “to discover the origin” of Jewish dishes and their ingredients along with the recipe.

The ongoing interest in Jewish food as expressed in diverse cookbooks prompted Nurith Gertz, an Israeli scholar of Jewish culture, and me to include excerpts – both recipes and the stories often told that accompanied them – from Jewish cookbooks in an anthology for The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization.

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