A Nice Piece of Cake and a Kibitz

Reinventing Sabbath Hospitality in an Institutional Home

Bibliographic Data

ID12877871
AuthorsJillian Gould (Memorial University of Newfoundland, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume10
Issue2
Pages189-206
Publication date2013-06-13
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHome Cultures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1740-6315 • E-ISSN: 1751-7427
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2752/175174213x13589680718652
OpenAlexW2312912868
LanguageEN
References cited18

This article examines a weekly Sabbath tea that takes place at a Jewish retirement home in Toronto, Canada. Unable to comfortably entertain more than one person in their apartment, women in the complex reconstruct earlier patterns of home visiting in the communal “Fireside Lounge.” Through their performance, the women take ownership of the public home-space while they act out what it means to be a Jewish woman at “home.” At the same time, they must adapt their own notions of tea and hospitality to suit the institutional ideal, thus attempting to create a heimish (“homey,” unpretentious) “private” gathering in an otherwise institutionalized “public” environment. Certain compromises must be made, such as using disposable table settings (kosher) instead of the patterned china they have in their apartments. While paper plates and Styrofoam cups appear to be drastically different from the cups and saucers they have upstairs, in fact, the material objects are secondary; instead, what counts is the notion of home and the spirit of hospitality with which the offerings are made

Advertising · Aesthetics · Apartment · Art · Business · Hospitality · Ideal (ethics · Judaism · Political science · Sociology · Tourism · Computer Science · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Law

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