CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/15/2022

Food, art and exile in Michael Rakowitz's 'A House with a Date Palm Will Never Starve'

Art and food meet social activism in Michael Rakowitz’s inspiring cookbook, A House with a Date Palm Will Never Starve: Cooking with Date Syrup, in which forty-one noted international chefs, restauranteurs and food writers contribute recipes featuring the traditional Middle Eastern ingredient that also plays a key role in Rakowitz’s artwork. “Food becomes very important in exile,” Claudia Roden writes. “Families hold on to their dishes for generations, long after they have cast off their traditional clothes, dropped their native language and stopped listening to their own forms of music. Michael’s family fled Iraq for the United States in 1947 as a result of riots and reprisals against Jews. He has used cooking as a way of celebrating the family’s origin and the harmony that once reigned between Jews and Muslims.”