"In Judaism meat holds unparalleled significance for it constitutes the very focal point of
the dietary laws. With an intricate set of codified regulations concerning forbidden and
permissible meats highly prescribed methods of killing and elaborate rules governing
consumption meat is the most visible not to mention gustatory marker of Jewish difference and
social separation between Jews and non-Jews. It is an object of tangible touchable and
tastable difference like no other. All Consuming considers the moral ethical religious
ritualistic aesthetic communicative artistic and linguistic network of ideas practices
and attitudes surrounding meat and Jewishness from the Middle Ages through today. In this book
historian John M. Efron focuses on Germany as a particularly rich backdrop against which to
view the contested culture of meat and its role in the formation of ethnic identities. To an
extent not seen elsewhere in Europe in sculpture art text law scholarship commerce and
popular culture Germans have identified thought about studied decried and gladly eaten
meat understood to be "Jewish." Likewise Jews also vigorously defended their meats and the
culture and rituals surrounding them by educating Germans and Jews alike about their meaning
and relevance. Exploring a cultural history that extends for some seven hundred years Efron
goes beyond a discussion of dietary laws and ritual slaughter to take a broad view of what meat
can tell us about German-Jewish identity and culinary culture Jewish and Christian religious
sensibilities antisemitic stereotypes Nazi persecution Jewish acculturation and religious
freedom for minorities in Germany providing a singular window into the rich fraught and
ultimately tragic history of German Jewry"--
