Fit For Food: “Eating Jewishly” and the “Islamic Paradigm” as Emergent Religious Foodways in Toronto by Aldea Mulhern A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto © Copyright by Aldea Mulhern 2017 Fit For Food: “Eating Jewishly” and the “Islamic Paradigm” as Emergent Religious Foodways in Toronto Aldea Mulhern Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto 2017 Abstract This project is about Jews and Muslims who participate in the food movement in Toronto, about how and why they do, and about what challenges and opportunities this presents to contemporary understandings of kashrut and halal as religious dietary laws. In early twenty-first century Canada, food is a site where consumer ethics and religious diversity intersect. The two groups I focus on are Shoresh Jewish Environmental Programs, a charitable organization running Jewish environmental practices at multiple satellite sites, and Noor Islamic Cultural Centre, a mosque where community members gather regularly for religious ritual and political and cultural events. Both are intentionally non-sectarian religious communities that invite pan-Jewish or pan-Muslim participation, have norms viewed as progressive by the wider religious community, and run considerable food-related programming that actively connects religion with alternative foodways. Both advocate for more “conscious” food practices, including local, organic, sustainable, humane, and social-justice-oriented food choices. They develop religious foodways that are, on the one hand, fundamentally connected to traditional religious food law, and on the other hand, significant departures from typical understandings of kashrut and halal. The ii foodways that emerge in this milieu are “eating Jewishly,” in relation to kashrut, and an “Islamic paradigm” for eating, in relation to halal. The aim of this comparative project is to show how religious communities do the work of constructing religion through material practices at once economic and symbolic. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork conducted with Noor and Shoresh from 2012 to 2015, I show how both organizations develop their religious foodways: as ethical interventions, as means of invigorating community, and as means for resisting industrialized orthodoxies. People at Noor and Shoresh bring religious life to bear on public lives, tying together social justice, environmentalism, and eating in a practice for recalibrating market values. Constructing religion as a domain of practical ethics, participants at Noor and Shoresh draw on religion for resources to develop emergent religious foodways that cut across and re-inscribe boundaries between insider and outsider, moral value and market value, and even Muslim and Jew. iii Dedication This work is for the people I met through Noor and Shoresh. Many people shared with me their time, their space, their thoughts, and their food; in so doing turned questions in my head into relationships in the world, For Risa, Sabrina, and Andrea, and for Khadijah, Azeezah, and Samira, without whom this particular story would not exist, and for those who do not appear by name in these pages because I have not found the way to tell that story yet, And for my mother Phyllis and sister Zenia, for the years of love shared, miles of road travelled, and commitment to discovering, in each of us, our best selves. iv Acknowledgments I owe debts of love and gratitude to every friend whose laughter, patience, and advice has helped me to find the writer in me: Rebecca Bartel, Paul Bowlby, Arun Brahmbhatt, Jenny Bright, Ian Brown, Judith Ellen Brunton, Marilyn Colaço, Anne Marie Dalton, Maria Dasios, Bonnie DeBruijn, Kyle Derkson, Ken Derry, Michel Desjardins, Vincent Grandjean, Mary Hale, Fereshteh Hashemi, Paula Karger, Rebekka King, Elizabeth Klaiber, Kasra Koochesfahani, Debra Krieger, Roxanne Korpan, Pierre Lairez, Reid Locklin, Craig Martin, Florence Pasche- Guignard, Helen Mo,† Jessica Radin, Barbara Wade Rose, T. Nick Schonhoffer,‡ Noam Sienna, Youcef Soufi, Eric Steinschneider, Edith Szanto, and David Walsh. Damian Tarnipolski, Florence Pasche-Guignard, Susannah Heschel, Marie Griffith, Graham Harvey, and Jordan Rosenblum all gave generous feedback on portions of this work at crucial moments in its development; I hope I have honored it in these pages. David Walsh and Rachel Brown ran the race alongside and helped more than they know. Adrienne Krone came to Bela Farm’s grand opening and became a colleague, interlocutor, and friend. Funding from the Department for the Study of Religion, Massey College, the Jackman Humanities Institute, the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, the Religion and Diversity Project, and the Religion in the Public Sphere Initiative made this project possible. J.M. gifted a computer and transcription system when I needed them most. For sacred space and time to write, I thank Leticia Mansur and Sandra Aluisio at Universidade São Paolo and Universidade São Paulo at São Carlos, Germaine Chandler in Shediac, New Brunswick, Sarah Kleeb and her partner Dez and family, my colleagues and carrel-mates at Massey College, and Jake Hogan, Paula Karger, Janelle Joseph, and Bonnie Jane Maracle of the dissertation writing groups at the School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto. † Sept 20, 1983 - April 11, 2017. ‡ October 11, 1982 - January 24, 2012. v Most of all, I thank my dissertation committee. Pamela Klassen’s anthropological sensibility has been a trustworthy guide as I sought my own ethnographic voice. Thank you for guiding me back to my data again and again, and for helping me see the value of a short sentence. Amira Mittermaier shared with me her critical questions and her extraordinary perceptive skill. Her discursive grace quickly untangled some of my more cramped thoughts and intractable clauses. Thank you for your insight, your incisiveness, and your encouragement. Anna Shternshis always knows what needs fixing so that stories will be heard, and has taught me to keep my intellectual centre. Thank you for your expertise, your practicality, and your vision. Andrea Most supported me with intellectual honesty in many ways: as teacher, advisor, co- author, interlocutor, and food-sharer. Thank you for your example, your commitment, and your authenticity, from the classroom to the farm and at the many tables in between. Examiners Vanessa Ochs and Simon Coleman generously gave their time and critical attention to my project, and to the next stages of its life. Thank you both, so much, for your engagement and insight. From first to last, this dissertation was conceived, researched, and written in Toronto. I would like to acknowledge the sacred land on which the University of Toronto and the Council of Ontario Universities operates. vi Land Acknowledgement This land has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory. Many nations were invited in friendship to share the territory and protect the land: Mississauga (Anishinaabeg), Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, and other nations, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. As settlers and newcomers to this land we have been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship and respect. The “Dish,” sometimes called the “Bowl,” represents what is now southern Ontario, from the Great Lake to Quebec and from Lake Simcoe into the U.S. We all eat out of the Dish—all of us unique peoples—but it only has one spoon. That means we must share, and that we have responsibilities to make sure the dish is never empty: to take care of the land and the creatures we share it with. Importantly, there are no knives at the table: we must keep the peace. As many of us are settlers on this land, it is our collective responsibility to pay respect and recognize that this land is the traditional territory of the Mississauga of the New Credit First Nations and we are here because this land was occupied. In recognizing that this space occupies colonized First Nations territories, and out of respect for the rights of Indigenous people, it is our collective responsibility to recognize our colonial histories and their present-day implications, and to honour, protect and sustain this land. As settlers and newcomers, we are bound by the treaty of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum in friendship and solidarity. –adapted from an Acknowledgement by the Elders Circle (Council of Aboriginal Initiatives) November 6, 2014, from the Bunz Network of Toronto, and from CUPE3903 at York University. Like the dissertation it marks, it is also a trace of my own searching and learning in this place. Aldea Mulhern, spring 2017. vii Table of Contents Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................v