From the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden to the golden ponds of the chicken soup, this course will explore food images and eating traditions in selected texts and will investigate the way they establish Jewish identity. This identity is based on comprehensive taboo laws concerning food, intricate familial, social and national eating rituals, and traumatic historic conditions interlinked with hunger, malnutrition and starvation. On the one hand, this course offers a culinary journey from biblical times to the present. It begins with discussing major biblical symbols such as the forbidden fruit, the land of milk and honey and the flesh pot in Egypt; follows with portraying Jewish food shaped under intricate dietary laws and harsh socioeconomic conditions; and concludes by demonstrating the role of food in the formation of Jewish history and identity. On the other hand, and on a more abstract level, the course offers a conceptual analysis of the interconnection between language and food, nutrition and subjectivity, dietary health and citizenship. We will examine how food, which is considered the essence of nature, is actually an ideological construction and a linguistic phenomenon.