the first Jewish cookbook in English

FIRST EDITION. The first Jewish cookery book in English, this book is a landmark in Jewish social history.

Judith Cohen, the anonymous author, married Moses Montefiore in 1812. Her sister was married to Nathan Mayer Rothschild, Moses Montefiore’s business partner. Montefiore retired from business in 1824 at the age of 40, and he and Judith devoted the rest of their lives to humanitarian efforts on behalf of distressed Jews around the world. Together they became perhaps the most prominent members of the Jewish community in both England and throughout the world.

Judith Montefiore played a key role in the emergence of the modern women’s movement through the example she set in the Jewish community in England. She actively promoted social integration of the leading members of the Jewish community into the larger secular society by presiding over sophisticated parties. Inspired by her Christian counterparts, Lady Montefiore began to attend synagogue services, even though women’s attendance at prayers was strongly discouraged. While the male members of her family encouraged her to remain at home in the traditional role of Jewish women, she insisted: “Surely at a place of devotion, the mind ought to testify due respect and gratitude towards the Almighty.” In light of her social prominence, her visibility at synagogue services encouraged other Jewish women to attend. Lady Montefiore was also active in philanthropic causes and in fostering her husband’s support of the nascent Jewish community in Palestine.

The  Jewish Manual was not only the first Jewish cookbook, it was also the first published book of social guidelines for the Anglo-Jewish woman. It instructed Jewish housewives on how to preside over a household conforming to the standards of the English middle and upper classes at a time when the Jewish population was attaining new status and wealth. Lady Montefiore stressed modesty and tasteful restraint. As she wrote in the introduction: “The Cuisine of a woman of refinement, like her dress or furniture, is distinguished, not for its costliness or profusion, but for a pervading air of graceful originality.”

“Among the numerous works on Culinary Science already in circulation, there have been none which afford the slightest insight to the Cookery of the Hebrew kitchen. Replete as many of these are with information on various important points, they are completely valueless to the Jewish housekeeper, not only on account of prohibited articles and combinations being assumed to be necessary ingredients of nearly every dish, but from the entire absence of all the receipts peculiar to the Jewish people” (Preface).

This is a landmark book in Jewish social history.

Please inquire