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Michael Twitty:

A Kosher Soul

on a journey to connect his
African and Jewish roots.

Vivian Henoch | Special to the Jewish News

ON HIS JEWISH JOURNEY
“Did you know? Black-eyed peas are a tra-
ditional Rosh Hashanah food included in
the ancient Talmudic menu?” he asks.
Long before he was a celebrated chef,
Twitty was a Hebrew teacher. Some of his
students are in graduate school now, he
tells us, but when he first started 14 years
ago, he faced all kinds of “questions of
validation.”
“I was the Yid of a different color — not
the old Israeli lady, not the former rabbi
from the X-congregation from a thou-

34 November 10 • 2016

Photos by John Hardwick

C

hef Michael Twitty may not be a
Jewish household name … yet. But
mark these words (or Google):
• Kosher/Soul — his brand
• Afroculinaria — his blog
• The Cooking Gene — his book, soon to
be published by HarperCollins
An inspired food writer, independent
scholar, culinary historian and TED
speaker — named in Southern Living as
one of 50 People Who Are Changing the
South in 2015 and a headline speaker at
last August’s Jewish Food Festival, which
drew nearly 5,000 people to Detroit’s
Eastern Market — Michael Twitty, 39,
makes no bones about the complexity of
his identity. Black, devoutly Jewish and
openly gay, Twitty is a man with a mission
on a journey to bring diversity to the table
and demonstrate how our food connects
us.
With his creative hybrid specialties like
black-eyed pea hummus, mac ’n’ cheese
kugel and matzah ball gumbo, Twitty
continues to carve a unique culinary
niche that merges the elements of African
American, Southern Antebellum and
Jewish cuisine.
Why black-eyed pea hummus?
Twitty explains: “Today, hummus is
emblematic of the Middle East. And
black-eyed peas are emblematic of soul
food. But the first things you should know
about black-eyed peas is that it’s a food we
share. By their roots in antiquity, Jewish
food and African American diaspora food
have a lot in common, and those similari-
ties are based on the fact that we are both
migratory people who had often been at
the same places at the same times.”

“I don’t believe in ‘race,’ except for the human one.”

— Michael Twitty

sand miles away — I was young, male,
African American and of Jewish descent
by conversion. They learned quickly not
to put their seventh-grade stuff over on
me, and I loved the challenge of teaching
students across all streams of Orthodox,
Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal
and Reform Judaism.”
Twitty describes growing up just out-
side Washington, D.C. — not far from the
Jewish community. “We were neighbors;
there were no surprises,” he says. “It was
nothing for me to go and build and play in
a sukkah when I was little.”
In his mother’s kitchen, challah was a
weekend staple, as the only bakeries open
in the neighborhood on Sunday were
Jewish.

Twitty was 7 when he saw the film
adaptation of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen
on TV. “I was fascinated by the movie and
thought, wow, I can relate to this spiritual
thing. So I told my mother I was Jewish.
She said, fine, and let me be Jewish for
one week. I made a baseball cap into my
pseudo kippah and wore it for a week;
I refused to eat bacon for breakfast; I
refused to read the New Testament.
“After my week as a Jew, my mother
said she was very impressed, and I sat
there very smugly, until she mentioned
the thing that doctors do to all baby
boys, and I said, ‘Yes?’ And my mother
slammed her hand down on the table as
hard as she could and, with a smile, she
said, ‘Well, they’ll have to do it to you all

over again!’ … And that’s how I immedi-
ately stopped being Jewish after a success-
ful week of being Jewish as a child.”
Twitty’s immersion into Judaism would
come again after college. Working as an
intern at the Smithsonian, developing
programming for “Jewish Foodways” for
the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, he met
Jewish cookbook author Joan Nathan.
In search of a recipe, she sent him to
Magen David Sephardic Congregation
in Rockville, Md., where the first person
he met was this 6-foot-4 young African
American man about his age. He took it as
a sign and became part of the congrega-
tion.
“I remember the second or third week,
when someone threw a tallit (prayer

