The first mention of the Jewish population eating Chinese food was in 1899 in The American Hebrew journal. There were nearly a million Eastern European Jews living in New York in 1910 and Jews constituted over "one quarter of the city’s population." The majority of the Chinese immigrated to the Lower East Side from California after the 1880s and many of them went into the restaurant business. The origin of Jews eating Chinese food dates to the end of the 19th century on the Lower East Side, Manhattan, because Jews and the Chinese lived close together. in the third chapter entitled "We Eat Chinese Food on Christmas." The definitive scholarly and popular treatment of this subject appears in the book A Kosher Christmas: 'Tis the Season to Be Jewish by Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, Ph.D. The relationship Jewish people have with Chinese restaurants during Christmas is well documented. The American Jewish habit of eating at Chinese restaurants on Christmas is a common stereotype portrayed in film and television, but has a factual basis as the tradition may have arisen from the lack of other open restaurants on Christmas Day. It has received attention as a paradoxical form of assimilation by embracing an unfamiliar cuisine that eased the consumption of non- kosher foods.įactors include the relative absence of dairy products compared to European cuisines, concern over German and Italian antisemitic regimes in the 1930s and the proximity of Jewish and Chinese immigrants to each other in New York City. The Jewish-American patronage of Chinese restaurants became prominent in the 20th century, especially among Jewish New Yorkers. American Jews' amity for Chinese food as part of their culture
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