Texts You Can Taste: Sephardic Culinary Heritage
Mar 6 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
AN IN PLAIN SIGHT: JEWISH ARTS AND LIVES IN THE MUSLIM WORLD PROGRAM
Join the Magnes for Texts You Can Taste: Sephardic Culinary Heritage with culinary historian and cookbook author Dr. Hélène Jawhara Piñer as she reflects on ways food can tell stories about the Jewish Diaspora. The evening will feature a lecture and cooking demo followed by tasting and book signing. Dr Jawhara Piner will share her research collecting recipes from historical sources including medieval cookbooks, Inquisition trials, and medical treatises. She will demonstrate the preparation of traditional Sephardic foods including “Maimonides Charoset.”
Thursday, March 6, 2025 | 5:30-7:00 pm
In person at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA
Ticket will go on sale soon.
Ticket prices:
- GENERAL ADMISSION: $20.00
- MUSEUMS FOR ALL MEMBERS: $5.00
- UC STUDENTS: Free (Current student ID will be required for entry.)
If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at magnes@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 643-2526 with as much advance notice as possible.
Books will be available for sale courtesy of Afikomen Books. They can be purchased ahead of time through Afikomen’s online bookshop at the following links: Sephardi: Cooking the History, Jews, Food and Spain, and Matzah and Flour. Recipes from the History of the Sephardic Jews.
About the speaker
Hélène Jawhara Piñer has a PhD in Medieval History and the History of Food. Her research includes the medieval culinary history of Spain through inter and multiculturalism with a special focus on the Jewish culinary heritage written in Arabic. Dr. Jawhara Piñer teaches medieval history at Bordeaux-Montaigne University and University de Tours. She has been awarded the Broome & Allen Fellowship from the American Sephardi Federation in 2018, the David Gitlitz Emerging Scholar Prize from the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies in 2021, and a Visiting Research Fellowship by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS) at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries in 2024.
Dr. Jawhara-Piñer is the author of three books: Sephardi: Cooking the History. Recipes of the Jews of Spain and the Diaspora from the 13th Century to Today (2021), Jews, Food and Spain: The Oldest Medieval Spanish Cookbook and the Sephardic Culinary Heritage [2022], and Matzah and Flour. Recipes from the History of the Sephardic Jews [2024]. She hosts the live culinary show Sephardic Culinary History with chef Hélène Jawhara Piñer and is a member of Foodish Advisory Board of ANU Museum (Tel Aviv).
About the exhibition
Co-curated by Magnes Curator Dr. Francesco Spagnolo and scholar of Islamic art Dr. Qamar Adamjee, In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World shares a selection of artworks and objects from the Magnes’s permanent collection that challenge common views about historical dualities and creative engagement among Muslim and Jewish artists and patrons. The exhibition highlights rootedness in diaspora, shared graphic forms and visual landscapes, attitudes towards sacred texts and human bodies, and networks of trade and knowledge exchange, all centering around the fundamental role of light in Jewish and Muslim prayer space.
