Lokshen (aka jewish egg noodles) is a stereotypical jewish food that unlike other ‘jewish foods’ that jews invariably falsely claim they ‘invented’ – such as Bagels, (1) Gefilte Fish, (2) Lox (3) and the Reuben sandwich – (4) actually has a fairly ancient jewish pedigree with its first alledged mention being in Tractate Beitzah of the Jerusalem Talmud.
It refers to ‘noodle dough’ in the following passage:
‘Rebbi Naḥum said, Rebbi Samuel bar Abba asked about noodle dough. To let it dry is forbidden, for the pot it is permitted, part and part is questionable.’ (5)
Heinrich Guggenheimer’s commentary on this passage states:
‘Making noodle dough for use after the holiday clearly is a biblical violation and forbidden. Making soup noodles for immediate use clearly is permitted. Making both cannot be biblically forbidden; whether it is rabbinically forbidden is left undecided.’ (6)
The problem is here is that while this seems… well… kosher and as such would date the jewish consumption of what Guggenheimer terms ‘soup noodles’ (aka Lokshen but ‘Itrita’ in the Jerusalem Talmud) to sometime before 350 A.D. when the Jerusalem Talmud was first compiled and published.
The problem with this claim is twofold.
Firstly, is the fact that the term the Jerusalem Talmud actually uses is ‘Itrita’ and while it is clear whatever Itrita were they were cooked in a pot with some kind of liquid – Guggenheimer assumes water but in truth Tractate Beitzah 1:9 is largely referring to the creation of spiced wine and thus it would make far more sense if the Itrita referred to were being cooked in wine not water – and may have required pounding. However, what Itrita were; is far from as certain as jews like to claim, because you see Lokshen come from the thirteenth century in what we would now call Germany and Poland. (7)
The link to the Itrita of the Jerusalem Talmud is tenuous as best, because we don’t actually know from whence ‘Itrita’ derives nor that it is in fact a noodle at all. Since if we don’t know the meaning of ‘Itrita’ then we can’t be sure it is referring to a noodle at all just it is something cooked in a pot with water/wine and that has probably been pounded.
The likeliest and the generally accepted origin of ‘Itrita’ is:
‘That it comes from the Greek word itrion, meaning a thin cake of sesame and honey.’ (8)
And as Yvette Alt Miller also explains:
‘According to food historian Gil Marks, some historians speculate that this word comes from the Greek word itrion, meaning a sesame and honey wafer used in religious rituals; others contend it might come from the Farsi word itriyah, a Persian dish of boiled dough. It’s similar to Itriyot, the word for noodles in Hebrew today.’ (9)
Both of these derivations are possible and work, but both also clearly require that the origin of ‘Itrita’ is either Greek or Persian with either ‘Itrita’ being a kind of sweet cake probably served in a (spiced?) wine sauce or a boiled dough dish rather like a dumpling served in either a water-based soup or (spiced?) wine.
This brings us nicely onto the second problem which is that the earliest known noodle is actually from China which is referred to in a third century (i.e., the 200s A.D.) Chinese dictionary (10) and while jews naturally try to claim that they ‘invented’ the noodle rather than the Chinese. (11) The problem is that the first mention of a Chinese noodle occurs more than a century before the mention of ‘Itrita’ in the Palestinian Talmud in circa 350 A.D. and there is also an obvious route of transmission between Persia/Palestine and China: the Silk Road.
Jews were using the Silk Road between the Near East and China at least as early as the eighth century A.D. – it is partially how we know about the large-scale jewish involvement in slavery as it happens – (12) and were known as the ‘Radhanites’, but in the truth jewish involvement with – and travel along – the Silk Road almost certainly long predates this with some placing jewish involvement – and travel along – the Silk Road as early as the sixth century B.C. (i.e., the 500s B.C.) (13)
This is entirely plausible and explains the potential Persian origin of the Palestinian Talmud’s reference to ‘Itrita’ – although I will state that the Greek origin in ‘Itrion’ is equally as strong and has its own supporting contextual evidence – but it would also better explain the Babylonian Talmud’s (c. 500 A.D.) far less ambiguous reference to ‘Rihata’ which is likely from the Persian word ‘Reshteh’. (14)
So put simply: the first noodle came from China to Persia via the Silk Road likely sometime in the 200s/300s A.D. which then certainly became the jewish food ‘Rihata’ (c. 500 A.D.) but is unlikely to be the jewish food ‘Itrita’ (c. 350 A.D.) which in turn is a jewish word for either a Greek or Persian dish, while Lokshen are in fact derived from ‘Rihata’ circa seven centuries after ‘Rihata’ was first mentioned (i.e., c. 500 A.D. to 1200 A.D. in the best case scenario) .
Thus, we can see that the origin of the jewish dish Lokshen (or jewish egg noodles) (and the noodle in general) is in fact likely Chinese and most certainly not their own creation.
References
(1) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-bagel
(2) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-gefilte-fish
(3) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-lox
(4) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-reuben
(5) Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Beitzah 1:9 (Guggenheimer Translation)
(6) Idem.
(7) https://flavorsofdiaspora.com/2017/04/21/five-myths-about-medieval-cuisines-and-jewish-foods-and-books-to-unlearn-them/
(8) https://www.balashon.com/2006/03/itriya.html?m=1
(9) https://aish.com/jewish-facts-about-pasta-plus-3-recipes/
(10) Idem.
(11) Idem.
(12) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-the-early-white-slave-trade
(13) https://hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp003_silkroute.htm
(14) https://aish.com/jewish-facts-about-pasta-plus-3-recipes/
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