Foreigners and their food
Subtitle: constructing otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic law
By: David M. Freidenreich
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780520253216
Subjects: Comparative studies; Jews; Food; Identification (Religion); Relations; Christianity; Religions; Muslims; Dietary laws
Description: Foreigners and Their Food explores how Jews, Christians, and Muslims conceptualize "us" and "them" through rules about the preparation of food by adherents of other religions and the act of eating with such outsiders. David M. Freidenreich analyzes the significance of food to religious formation, elucidating the ways ancient and medieval scholars use food restrictions to think about the "other." Freidenreich illuminates the subtly different ways Jews, Christians, and Muslims perceive themselves, and he demonstrates how these distinctive self-conceptions shape ideas about religious foreigners and communal boundaries. This work, the first to analyze change over time across the legal literatures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, makes pathbreaking contributions to the history of interreligious intolerance and to the comparative study of religion.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p.         ) and index.