Why does shabbat food have to be traditional ashkenazi food?

Raizle

Wed, May 15 2024, 2:12 am

amother OP wrote:

I'm a BT who grew up very OOT and didn't grow up with any connection to the traditional ashkenazi food that most of you probably know very well. I knew matzah ball soup and pastrami & rye from a treyf "kosher deli" but had no clue what's a kichel or a kugel or the difference between them.

I find the traditional ashkenazi shabbat food to be bland and boring, and I'd never go out of my way to cook it. I make whatever I want for shabbat and when we have guests, I make whatever I think is popular and that I think will have mass appeal. but you'll never find a kugel or gefilte fish on my table.

I've had discussions with others about this and they think it's important for shabbat food to have traditional ashkenazi food to maintain a link to our heritage. I don't see it that way. I see it that we were stuck in europe as very poor people with limited access to spices and good ingredients and developed a cuisine of mediocre peasant food, and I can embrace my judaism and pass it on to our kids without having to cook and serve that food. what do you think?

I think there is some confusion.
We are meant to have challah. That's any loaf of bread from sweet braided bread to sour dough rolls.
Traditionally we have fish on Shabbos. But that fish can be anything from gefilte fish to Moroccan spiced fish. And if you don't like fish then that defeats the purpose and probably shouldn't have it.
Then there is cholent. Traditionally we have hot food being kept hot from before Shabbos in order to counter the arguments if the karaits that denied Torah she b'al peh and sat in the dark and cold all Shabbos eating cold food. That hot food can be anything! I sometimes do a roast.
The idea of having the exact foods they ate in Europe being an inyan is just silly and it's not an inyan at all.

amother

Daffodil

Wed, May 15 2024, 2:39 am

Comptroller wrote:

No, not at all.
Actually, to the one who was not so nice, who asked me if I was crazy when I offered her - I don't remember what it was - I answered "All the better, there will be more for the rest of us" - and then she really flipped out... which I found inappropriate...

Yes, maybe this one was really crazy or lacking social skills...

Actually they were both very rude. The fact that you handled it wellַ, and you handled it very well, didn't take away from the fact that their behavior was rude.