At the Arts Lunch on Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021, Dr. Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus presented "A Theopoetics of Thanksgiving Food Rituals: The Myth-making Power of Meals as Midrash.”
Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus is Professor of Religion and Henrietta Jennings Faculty Chair for Outstanding Teaching at Wheaton College (MA). He is the author of Gastronomic Judaism as Culinary Midrash (Lexington Press, Dec., 2018) and has published numerous articles on food rituals and Jewish food in the Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, Studies in Jewish Civilization, and other journals, and has translated Rabbenu Bahya ben Asher’s fourteenth-century Hebrew mystical manual on food, Shulhan Shel Arba (Table of Four) into English which is available online. He has regularly taught “The Rituals of Dinner” First Year Seminar at Wheaton for over twenty years, as well as courses such as Gender and Violence in the Bible, Intro. to Comparison of Religions, Smells and Bells: The Sensual Dimension of Religions, and Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Well-Being from a Comparative Religious Perspective. He regularly stages meal rituals at home and at Wheaton and other places, even virtually. He’s currently working on a book on the myths and meal rituals of American Thanksgiving. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies (New Testament) from Vanderbilt, and is ordained as Reconstructionist Rabbi. He lives, cooks, eats, and gardens with his wife Maia, an elementary school teacher in Providence, RI. You may know him best as Max Brumberg-Kraus’ dad.