I just returned from my first time participating in the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery – an annual conference of food historians and other professionals and non-professionals who are engaged in food inquiry. It was an extraordinary experience to be in the company of so many like-minded individuals from all over the globe, in … Read More »
galilee
When the scales will tip
These are grim times here, where a disproportionate number of innocent people are enduring great suffering because of the actions of a few. Nothing new about that, and yet it is heartrending every time. In the pastoral Palestinian town of Arrabe in the Galilee near the Bet Netufa Valley, they are mourning a 14 year … Read More »
Tipping the Seasonal Scale
In the Galilee the year is divided about equally into two seasons. The first, which starts in the fall, can be called the rainy season, although it is more accurately described as the period during which rain may or may not come. In the second season, quite surely it will not. As one would expect … Read More »
Wheat, and Zaatar, to the Mill
I’ve started to research in earnest for the paper I’m going to present at the Oxford Symposium this summer. The subject of the symposium is markets, and I will talk about the market in Nazareth as a site of pilgrimage, not just for Christians visiting the site(s) where the Annunciation is believed to have taken … Read More »
Relating to Wheat
These spring days, the roaring of combines rumbles in the background – rending thick fields of wheat into neat rows of shorn stalks. In the pre-industrial order of local agriculture, not only would this method of harvesting be unfathomable to a farmer watching from the side, but also the timing. Why would anyone cut down their good wheat … Read More »