Another jewish food that is often cited – or believed – (1) to be a ‘jewish invention’ is the Blintz which is effectively a thin pancake (2) or crepe which surrounds a filling – often cheese – that is widely eaten in traditional Ashkenazi jewish communities.
Despite this the blintz is not jewish at all but rather a food that jews appropriated from their Slavic neighbours and then called something else resulting in the widespread jewish belief that because they associate it with themselves: they ‘invented it’.
However, as Steven Loewenstein explains this is completely and utter false since he writes:
‘Eastern European Jewish cuisine included not only foods borrowed from Slavic cookery, like blintzes or knishes, but also foods they had imported from Germany or Austria, like strudel, kreplach, and farfel.’ (3)
He also states that:
‘Blintzes and knishes, two popular foods now considered characteristically Jewish, are examples of Jewish modifications of foods eaten by their Christian neighbours.’ (4)
So put another way: the Blintz is not jewish at all but is in fact just a renamed version of the similar Polish, Russian and Ukrainian foods (such as the Russian ‘Blinchiki’ which is also eaten with soft cheese just like a cheese blintz).
References
(1) For example: https://chompies.com/the-history-of-the-blintz/
(2) On the myth that jews created the pancake please see: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-pancake
(3) Steven Loewenstein, 2000, ’The Jewish Cultural Tapestry: International Jewish Folk Traditions’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, p. 123
(4) Ibid., p. 141
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