On Thursday, I celebrated a makeshift, “quarantine” Passover with my mom and dad. Instead of an elaborately set table for twelve, we ate at the kitchen counter. Instead of spending an hour re-telling the history of the Jew’s enslavement and eventual emancipation in Egypt, we silently agreed to dive straight into our food. And instead of the usual feast, . . . actually that part was the same. My mom spent all day roasting a beautiful brisket. She made a veritable bath of Matzah-ball soup. She baked enough Kugel to serve my entire extended family, and went through about a dozen onions to make the gravy. And despite the stress of these unprecedentedly insane times, I found my doubts and anxieties expelled instantly by the taste of my mom’s cooking.
Jewish soul food and African-American soul food have a lot in common. Both are culinary traditions born out of hardship, with many ingredients pulled from scraps - liver and gizzards and bones to make soups and stews. Both heavily rely on fat and schmaltz and lard. And at the center of each tradition is an emphasis on community and family. This tradition is on full display in Soul Kitchen and Once Upon A Time When We Were Colored.
Balthrope writes, "Many slaves received the worst scraps of food... black cooks learned to create flavorful meals through the use of various spices and a little imagination.” This history of black cooking in America is deeply rooted in the hardships of slavery, which has created a lasting oral tradition that relies less on precise measurements and more on an emotional connection to food - hence Big Mama’s “four pinches of this.”
In the two films, food is a bastion of comfort no matter what oppressive forces may face our characters. I believe that message of food as a way to comfort and unite families is more necessary now than ever before. Whether your family is Jewish or black or anything in between (like Drake), we could all use with a bit of soul food.
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