c. 2003 Religion News Service

LOS ANGELES _ As Gunther Katz surveyed the Skirball Cultural Center’s photo exhibit about Jewish merchants, contrasting portraits of Greek happiness and black market meat in Uzbekistan caught the squinting eyes of the 73-year-old child Holocaust survivor.

“The meat is not refrigerated, and yet with hunger, you gotta get something to eat, compared to the one down here with the sunglasses and the pretty ladies,” said Katz, examining the Uzbek photo and one showing a kosher meat shop in Greece with a middle-aged man flanked by two women, all of them smiling and wearing large sunglasses.

The Skirball exhibit, “Spice of Life: Markets and Jewish Merchants the World Over,” strikes different chords in museum patrons lingering before its bright pictures of radishes and strawberries and dark copper metalworks.

Unlike exhibits traditionally displayed in sterile, airy rooms, the “Spice” photos are in a breezy, wide museum hallway next to its cafe, so the photos face people eating or buying food.

“Every culture has unique food ways, and food ways contain historical narratives,” said Reform Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, a Balkan Jewish expert whose “Spice” photos were shot over 20 years of globe-trotting. They’re on display at the Skirball through April 27.

“Matzos tells the story of the emergence from slavery to freedom. The parsley is reminiscent of springtime,” he said. “These foods, in the Jewish worldview, fit into the rhythm of the Sabbath. One aspect of the Jews and the marketplace is that the marketplace reflects the spirit of the Jewish calendar. Each food item tells you a story that has to do with Jewish history. It has to do with the calendar and the seasons, and for the holiday right now it’s Passover products.”

Of the 40 photos selected, 11 depict Greek or Turkish Jews, one shows a Jewish-run department store in New Zealand, four reflect Jewish American life and 16 portray Israeli merchants. A postcard/ice cream kiosk at the Israeli-Lebanon border _ photographed in 1994, that hopeful year following the Oslo peace accords _ displays a T-shirt with the words “Better a close neighbor than a distant brother” and crossed with Israeli and Lebanese flags.

“For almost 20 years that kiosk stood at the gate in which workers from southern Lebanon went into Israel every day to work,” said Plaut, who is also executive director of the Center for Jewish History in New York.

Tourists Steve and Darlene Walker, visiting the Skirball from Sebastopol, Calif., said they knew very little about Judaism but the exhibit’s rich food images connected to their own farming lives.

“When you look at the picture, a smell comes to your brain,” said Darlene Walker. “We know so little about other countries that I like to know what’s grown in other countries.”

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a New York University performance studies professor specializing in East European Jewish life, said open-air markets abroad are appealing because “there are some people for whom markets are one of the top items on their list; when traveling, markets are an attraction.”

The stories behind some exhibit photos have stayed with Plaut, who was dumbfounded after he photographed a Paris pastry shop with a French window name which, translated into English, meant “Yiddish specialties.”

“That was an outrageous name for the store,” Plaut said. “There is no such thing as `Yiddish specialties.’ Yiddish is language, it’s not a food.”

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A photo of a Jewish bicycle shop in Turkey is striking because people normally do not associate Jewish merchants and ten-speeds. “Jews, among themselves, would never imagine that Jews would be bicycle merchants,” Plaut said. “I dare say that outside the state of Israel, that’s the only Jewish bicycle merchant I’ve ever encountered.”

In another photo of a large pile of pastries at an Israeli market, an Orthodox Jewish man in a dark, traditional suit is standing right next to Plaut’s wife, a woman of more modern fashion. Despite theological differences, Plaut said a conservative man and a Reform rabbi’s wife instantly can be “unified around the sweetness of Shabbat delicacies.”

A Jewish icon seller photographed in Athens is surrounded by his wares _ Orthodox Christian portraits of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and saints. “Jewish merchants have always made a living selling items that are in demand,” Plaut said. “So you have people selling icons or my brother who sells Christmas tree ornaments.”

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A favorite “Spice” photo is of a Yemenite Jewish raddish seller in Israel, his dirty shirt and dentally challenged grin a contrast to the raddish’s rich red tones.

“It’s the same food but they cook it differently,” said Marta Perez, an El Salvadoran immigrant working at the Skirball’s cafe.

“The marketplace is about the freshness of food that has once been part of all of our lives and has been gobbled up by fast-food culture,” said Plaut. “I’d much rather go to an outdoor market than a Costco or a super mega-store.”

Open-air markets remain important because, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett said, “the market stands between where the stuff came from and what’s going to happen to it. They’re about potential because they’re all about what you’re going to do with what you’re going to get.”

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