Free Online Event

Chop Suey on Shabbat: How American Jews Embraced Chinese Food 

Wednesday, December 17, 6-7 p.m. (ET)

American Ancestors - 97 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

From their earliest encounters with Chinese food at the beginning of the 20th century, American Jews have embraced, adapted, and sometimes appropriated the cuisine. Sharing her research into this fascinating culinary and social history, the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center’s Curhan Scholar Shiyong Lu will explore the interactions between American Jews and Chinese food purveyors, and how adaptations arose in restaurants and home cooking in response to the cuisine’s tremendous popularity among Jews and its violation of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws). She will look at the similarities and differences between how this cross-cultural relationship played out in New York and Boston, and trace how American Chinese food became a bridge that linked two communities together.

Shiyong Lu is a joint PhD Candidate in the History/Hebrew & Judaic Studies Departments at New York University. Her research explores the diverse interactions between Jews and Chinese in America, with a focus on food and business. She is currently a Mellon Predoctoral Fellow in Women’s and Public History at the New York Historical. She is also the 2025-26 Sid and Ruth Lapidus Fellow at the Center for Jewish History. Shiyong will be using the JHC’s collections for research toward her dissertation, “‘We Offer Chicken Chop Suey on Sundays’: How Chinese Food Purveyors Encountered Jews in Twentieth-Century America.”