“Eat ye, O people”: The role of food, religion and hospitality
in intercultural relations
Marie Gervais, PhD
Introduction
Multiculturalism has been criticized for what has commonly been called the 3D trivializations of diet, dance, and dress, considered to externalize culture to the “other” while upholding the dominant culture’s perception of reality (Gabriel, 2005; Bissoondath, 1994). It is important not to gloss over the obvious problems of trivializing culture through superficial and dismissive methods. At the same time, from my own complex experiences with accepting, offering, eating and cooking food in different cultural contexts, I contend that we have simply not explored the potential of food and hospitality in intercultural relationships. Food, eating, food behaviors, food social norms, and the act of hospitality, inherent in the offering and accepting of food are intimately connected to cultural identity and deeper cultural concepts (Scholliers, 2001; Lentz, 1999; Kanafani-Zahar, 1997; Fischler, 1988). Understanding the multiple roles of food and hospitality from both cultural and religious perspectives (Fieldhouse, 2005; Walbridge, 1996) can provide inroads into building shared cultural experience.
The topics of food, hospitality and intercultural relations tend to lend themselves to this kind of multiple realities approach as Lynn Harbottle (2004:15) in her study of Iranian settlers in Britain also states:
“An understanding of the significance of food in peoples’ lived experience cannot then be adequately achieved by a rigid discipline-bound focus, such as that of nutritionists or of some social scientists. Rather this text argues for and illustrates a more holistic and critical approach to the study of food and eating, an approach which encompasses political, economic, and socio-cultural analyses…”
I would add to the Harbottle “more holistic” list, topics of hospitality, religion, spirituality and intercultural communication to better understand the interesting position of food in people’s lives.
This paper unfolds with an exploration of personal intercultural experiences and food, moves to ideas of religion and food and those Baha’i teachings related to both intercultural understanding and food. There is a foray into the spaces of private and public hospitality and a brief consideration of the social considerations of the Baha’i context for food, intercultural interactions and hospitality.
To begin, a narrative of one of my intercultural food experiences:
Intercultural food experience #1: cassava root foufou in Edmonton
She watched me intently as she explained how to properly eat foufou. “Pick it up in your fingers like this,” she showed me, taking food from a common platter in the middle of the table. “Then you roll it in your fingers, not your whole hand- that isn’t polite- and use it to scoop up the soup.” The family stood and watched me as I tried to use the foufou as a scoop and got the sauce all over my hand and the tablecloth. They laughed and said I would learn it over time. I felt intensely uncomfortable with all this scrutiny and with my clumsiness in trying to eat the way I was instructed. “You have to swallow it whole,” my hostess explained next. “We never chew foufou.” I tried to swallow it whole and proceeded to gag and choke. I was a failure!
Over the next few weeks I found out a few things that helped me better understand my foufou experience. The guest eats first and other family members eat later according to age, gender and status with the older males going first and the youngest female children last. Foufou is swallowed whole because it takes 12 hours to digest – where food is scare it is important to find ways to stave off hunger as long as possible and swallowing without chewing extends food’s capacity to do that. Eating is supposed to be felt with the body and its enjoyment is intimately connected to bringing food from hand to mouth. The green soup, was a mixture of cassava leaves and potato leaves, hence the green color. I understood that my acceptance into the family and the culture would be much more intimate if I mastered the food behaviors and showed appropriate appreciation for both the food and cultural norms surrounding eating traditional foods.
Culture and food
Although the experience of one’s own culture is largely unconscious and unexamined, to experience the culture of another is a place of heightened feeling and awareness that brings our own hidden cultural experience from the tacit to the explicit. I became acutely aware of my own cultural limitations as I attempted to eat foufou. Unfamiliarity with the food, the terms of reference and the social norms surrounding the food caused me to think about what my own food cultural behaviors are. In the intercultural experience, we actively seek to reduce uncertainty, discomfort and unfamiliarity to establish a beginning relationship between cultures; we search for common human experiences upon which to build links across difference.
Culture demands to be felt and experienced just as music demands to be heard. Culture is embodied, meaning it is felt in the body; in the way we move, how and what we eat, the cadence of our speech, the length of silence between statements, the way we touch or avoid touching each other, our relationship with clothing and objects around us. It is felt in what are considered appropriate and inappropriate behaviors easily recognized by culturally and psychologically sound members of any given culture.
Moving outside of the familiarity of one’s own culture(s) can be exciting and filled with the promise of new opportunities. But it is also uncomfortable, frustrating and disorienting. Frequently in intercultural encounters that begin positively, people are enthusiastic about meeting and greeting each other and they overlook differences they do not understand or know how to negotiate. But keep that diverse group of people together over a period of days, weeks or months and they will begin to self-segregate into groups of similar traits. Differences will become increasingly difficult to negotiate and misunderstandings will become more pronounced. As communications between people become more comprehensive, opportunities for confusion also multiply. As many diverse workplaces have found out, simply bringing people together across difference does not mean they will get along.
Intercultural Food experience #2: no rice in Japan
I experienced group self-segregating and food-limiting first hand in an intense, multicultural immersion context during a three-month stay at the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan. Our multi-national group did connect through our common experience and dedication to development, but the hunger for familiarity at the time, especially for those who had never left their country previously, must have been overwhelming. I noticed that for some, there was negative judgment towards the Japanese host culture, much alleviated after our home-stay visits with individual families. Some had suspicions about each other based on historical conflicts, gender issues, or things they had been brought up to believe.
I prided myself in being the only participant to consistently eat with chopsticks and willingly try all Japanese foods. I was not very tolerant of the other participants’ suspicion of Japanese food or their apparently ethnocentric food attitudes until I had the most unsettling experience of developing an intense aversion to rice after three weeks of eating it at every meal. It was as if my body simply went on strike and I couldn’t bear the sight or smell of rice. At that time I understood for the first time why expatriates go looking for food markets from their own countries. My mind was open, but my body was in food shock. It took several months after returning to Canada before I was able to eat and enjoy rice again.
In both the foufou and the rice stories, I was more than willing to experience food in an embodied culturally appropriate manner. But food is not so easily positioned or understood and its complexities bedevil the best of intentions. How much more so with intercultural communications. We are in a world of increasing interaction across difference and the pace and variety of human cultural differences to which we are exposed is increasing exponentially. New foods and food experiences are available to us at a dizzying speed. How do we negotiate all this diversity? Let us turn momentarily to the theme of food in religion to begin answering this question.
Religion and food
All religious teachings speak to the importance of treating the stranger with kindness and emphasize offering hospitality as a practical demonstration of spiritual principle. Even the story of Adam and Eve centered in offering and accepting to eat a fruit from the tree of knowledge. Although this story is widely considered to imply disobedience towards God, it nonetheless remains the first story of hospitality: Eve offered the apple to Adam, who accepted it and they both ate it together. Food symbolism in the sacred writings of the world religions abound, frequently drawing parallels between physical and spiritual food (Turner, 1996; Walbridge, 1996; Toomey, 1994). Below are two examples of Baha’i food symbolism invoking religious feeling and principle:
“O my Lord! Make Thy beauty to be my food, and Thy presence my drink, and Thy pleasure my hope, and praise of Thee my action, and remembrance of Thee my companion…” (Baha’u’llah in Esslemont, 1923/1980: 100.)
“The heavenly food is needed successively; be thou a server of the food and direct thou the people of the world to present themselves at that table and guide them to partake thereof.” (‘Abdu’l-Baha, 1919/1978: 423.)
John Walbridge (1996) writes that hospitality in the form of food for guests has been considered virtuous throughout history. He maintains that in the Middle East at the time of Muhammad, hospitality towards travelers mediated the lawlessness of the desert. In Christianity there is, in addition to the many parables of Christ that make mention of food, the famous image of the last supper and His statements about eating bread and drinking wine as if they were his blood and his flesh in memory of Him. It is part of many religious rites to share food or a meal or to eat special foods for certain occasions, as well as using blessed foods for physical and spiritual nourishment, cleansing, purification and healing.
Additionally throughout the history of religion, food has been sacrificed for spiritual reasons and abstention from food in the form of fasting for spiritual purposes exists in all religions in various forms. Food and religion are evidently intimately connected on a variety of levels.
Baha’i attitude towards food and intercultural relations
‘Abdu’l-Baha (Waging Peace (compilation), 1984: 
compares the teachings of Baha’u’llah, Founder of the Baha’i Faith, to a banquet table:
“As the teachings of Baha’u’llah are combined with universal peace, they are like a table provided with every kind of fresh and delicious food. Every soul can find, at that table of infinite bounty, that which he desires.”
Most religions have food prohibitions and adherents base a certain aspect of their religious identity on these prohibitions. For example in Islam and in Judaism it is forbidden to eat pork, and in Hinduism to eat beef. Many forms of Buddhism forbid any meat consumption. In contrast there are no food prohibitions in the Baha’i Faith, (other than the law to abstain from alcohol and mind-altering drugs). In Gleanings, Baha’u’llah (1976: 346) writes with regard to food:
“Eat ye, O people, of the good things which God hath allowed you, and deprive not yourselves from His wondrous bounties.”
In this respect the Baha’i food attitude differs from that of other world religions; all food is to be enjoyed without sanction or prohibition. Connected to the Baha’i food attitude of all foods for all people to enjoy, two of the foundational and inter-related principles of the Baha’i Faith are the injunctions to abolish prejudice and to promote the unity of the human race through a celebration of its diversity. Adherents of the Baha’i Faith are from all cultures, races and backgrounds. The Baha’i teachings uphold appreciation and preservation of cultural identity and celebrate the rich diversity of human experience while working towards common goals. As in other religions, the offering of hospitality to friend and stranger alike is strongly encouraged. Additionally there is a movement from basic charity to a more intimate relationship where stranger becomes family member. This attitude can be seen in the following passages:
Baha’u’llah (quoted in Esslemont, 1923/1980: 261) writes:
“It is incumbent upon everyone to show the utmost love, rectitude of conduct, straight forwardness and sincere kindliness unto all the peoples and kindreds of the world, be they friends or strangers. So intense must be the spirit of love and loving kindness, that the stranger may find himself a friend, the enemy a true brother, no difference whatsoever existing between them. For universality is of God and all limitations earthly.”
In another passage ‘Abdu’l-Baha (1978: 25) writes:
“Cleanse ye your eyes, so that ye behold no man as different from yourselves. See ye no strangers; rather see all men as friends, for love and unity come hard when ye fix your gaze on otherness…we must be at one with every people; …we must see neither harshness nor injustice, neither malevolence, nor hostility, nor hate, but rather turn our eyes toward the heaven of ancient glory. For each of the creatures is a sign of God… therefore they are not strangers, but in the family; not aliens, but friends, and to be treated as such.”
Learning to see “all men as friends” is a complex learning adventure. It involves humility and willingness to be vulnerable in our learning with and about others. And there are both histories of entrenched conflict and multiple barriers between cultures that interfere with this project. Food and hospitality however, can serve as a testing ground for intercultural relations.
Within intercultural food experience, there appears to be a particular phenomenon of seeking the universal (eating food together) while recognizing and appreciating the particular (foufou). Conversely, in the intercultural experience we live the particular (Want to try some foufou?) while understanding it in the context of the universal (Everybody has to eat).
The experience of food in culture provides this kind of particular/universal context most poignantly: eating is a similar but dis-similar experience across cultures. Everyone eats, but foods are different and everyone eats differently and has different norms, parameters and sensations that contribute to the eating experience. Partaking of food from diverse cultures together allows us to be both comfortable with the familiar process of eating and food and to stretch our ideas of what is familiar and what is comfortable within our repertoire of food experiences. It provides all those eating together with a shared sensory space, social event and moment in time that can be used to build further places of commonality or to explore further differences. Baha’u’llah (1992: 20-21) uses the metaphor of the body to remind us that humanity is one and refers to eating as a unifying principle:
“…to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land.”
Participation in the experience of a culture that is unfamiliar to us requires a posture of attraction, of learning, of humility and of desire to be united with others. Because of this, spiritual, social, cultural and technical learning are all united in the act of eating with others. This is why sharing unfamiliar foods with unfamiliar people can be both a buffer and a probe to intercultural relationship building. It can be a buffer behind which to hide when one does not want to go further in the relationship or a probe to move into a more intimate understanding with someone who is perceived of as dis-similar.
Hospitality in the ‘private’ domain
Hospitality is a concept like food, existing virtually between and within multiple realities, yet very much a part of concrete daily interpersonal relations. It involves private and public arenas, which in turn move from the religious and social to the political and within considerations of space, time and place. I may offer hospitality in the way I receive invited guests to my dinner table, but hospitality is also the place where unanticipated strangers appear in our lives with human needs for asylum, medical attention or hunger. Birth, illness, death and other human needs come uninvited into our lives impacting others. Because of this common human experience, we have a relational obligation to receive others going through these same human experiences, since at some point in our lives we will all be in the same position.
According to Jacques Derrida (in Dikec, Clark, Barnett, 2009: 3) the spirit of hospitality is associated with a host of “attentive, generous, and responsive” virtues such as “forgiveness, confession, bearing witness, gift relations, mourning, justice, friendship”. These virtues are all emphasized time and again in the teachings and principles of the world religions where admonitions to show hospitality to the stranger abound. Historically, hospitality has been a religious and ethical duty. It is a commandment to live generously, to provide aid and to show charity. In Exodus (22, 21) strangers are not to be mistreated. In Deuteronomy (10, 17-20; 24, 17-18) it is a duty to take care of widows and orphans and to ease hunger, show hospitality to strangers and grant asylum to those in distress. The ancient Greeks believed that a beggar or stranger coming in need might be a god coming to test the hospitality capacity of humans and prove their virtue. As such all strangers were to be offered the utmost hospitality since any stranger could be a manifestation of the Divine.
In the Baha’i Writings, “each of the creatures is a sign of God…therefore they are not strangers, but in the family” (‘Abdu’l-Baha, 1978: 24). In this quote, not only humans are to be received as family, but all “creatures”, since all created things manifest some aspect of the Divine, a concept that is also central to Buddhism as the idea of reverence shown to all sentient beings. Baha’u’llah writes (Baha’i Publishing Committee, 1943: 445): “it is incumbent upon everyone to show the utmost love, rectitude of conduct, straightforwardness and sincere kindliness unto all the peoples and kindreds of the world, be they friends or strangers.”
Hospitality is reciprocal and relational. It may be offered unconditionally, but when it is abused by the recipient, conditions and limits become more and more important. Across cultures the reciprocity of hospitality is stated in surprisingly similar ways. John Lyly in16th century England said, “guests and fish stink after three days”, and Bedouin Arabs are obligated to offer hospitality to a stranger for three days without even asking his name, after which certain reciprocal behaviors are expected. A Swahili saying is “Treat your guest as a guest for two days. On the third day give him a hoe.” (Dikec et al, 2009: 5), implying that one should not expect ongoing gifts and services without doing one’s share of the work. Across cultures there is the sense that although hospitality is a virtue, one should not overstay one’s welcome, and that one is only a stranger or a visitor for a time (three days appears to be the universal standard) after which one is expected to participate as a responsible citizen or leave. But what if social and political conditions and circumstances make hospitality problematic?
‘Public’ hospitality
Critical theorists and philosophers have written about whether hospitality should be unconditional or conditional, whether it is a moral duty or a human right, a religious obligation or an act of human reciprocity. Heirdrun Friese (2009: 3) traces the evolution of hospitality from the private to the public spheres to illustrate how with the modern nation state and massive international flux, hospitality has become central to political debate on territories, movement and migration of peoples:
“Historically, hospitality has been considered as a religious duty, a sacred commandment of charity and generosity to assign strangers a place – albeit ambivalent – in the community. With the development of the modern nation state, these obligations have been inscribed into the procedures of political deliberation and legislation that determine the social spaces of aliens, residents and citizens.”
The debate between whether hospitality is a right to which every human being is entitled, hence completely unconditional, or whether it is a responsibility (divine or humanitarian) to offer assistance with limitations and conditions, or both, has much to do with issues of territory and freedom of movement, as well as opportunities to live, own property, open a business, attend school and reap the benefits of citizenship. Politically and logistically, hospitality has many places of tension. If thousands of refugees enter a country, who pays for the cost of housing, feeding and providing medical assistance? And for how long? How are local people to deal with the strain on limited resources? And in another context, what about a military, business or tourism initiative that imposes unwanted social ills on local inhabitants who had no say in the initiative to begin with? Private hospitality implies a responsibility not to overstay one’s welcome and to respond with appreciation and/or reciprocity to the degree possible. But a country that has mass exodus of citizens, another that receives them voluntarily or involuntarily, transnational business development and the agency of international organizations, policies and war/peace considerations all pose tense and problematic conditions around both the offering of hospitality and reciprocity. Dikec et al (2009: 13) write:
“The figures of human finitude –the vulnerable, the destitute, those whose flesh and organs fail them—and the figures of political abjection –the exiled, the undocumented, those seeking refuge—rub shoulders…So too do the invited guests, the pleasure-seeking travelers, the traders in search of good return cross paths with others who journey furtively, under duress, or without clear destination.”
Hospitality then can be private between family and friends, religiously motivated between local people and strangers, consumer based within the norms of the hospitality industry and political in policies of immigration, citizenship and response to disaster. This is the current condition of our globalized world, where we are at the crossroads of having to make decisions about how we are to interact, and whether we are to build better or worse relationships on both micro and macro levels.
Thresholds of possibility
To find an entry point into this complexity, the concept of “threshold” may be a useful foundational concept. If hospitality stands at a threshold, it stands in a specific place, time and space with cultural norms and expectations behind it that are part of our identities and boundaries. It also opens itself at the front to the “realms of the possible”, the unknown, the gift without conditions, the desire to greet, address and name a person who has his or her own boundaries behind and possibilities in front. “It requires that the guest be welcomed as a Somebody, not as a serialized nobody” (Dikec et al, 2009: 9). Thresholds are the opening for responsiveness, hospitality and responsibility. They are not the final answer, but they are beginning places that have the possibility of satisfying resolution. In a similar manner, food between cultures serves as a threshold of both norms and limitations but also endless possibilities, a beginning point for the development of responsiveness between human beings. Levinas (1998) pinpoints the specific attitude required to step to the threshold of hospitality. There must be a desire for contact and togetherness, a critical moment where one human being feels bound to the other. This moment is the birthplace of the virtues all religious teachings associate with hospitality, a space where each sees in the other their common spiritual heritage and longs to come home. Once we feel bound to another on this spiritual realm we enter the threshold of responsiveness from which empathy can develop, and generosity, charity and openness can find room to grow. In this respect the Baha’i Writings offer some insights into intersections between the private and public spaces of hospitality.
‘Abdu’-l-Baha (1921: 397) wrote:
“Liberalism is essential in this day—justness and equity toward all nations and people. Human attitudes must not be limited; for God is unlimited, and whosoever is the servant of the threshold of God must, likewise be free from limitations.”
In this quote we see the political attitudes of “liberalism”, “justness” and the ideal of “equity toward all nations and people” required at the threshold of hospitality. We are also directed to free ourselves from limitations that stop us from establishing justice, since injustice and inequity are spaces of unequal power relations within which hospitality cannot flourish. Furthermore the nefarious effect of artificial boundaries between us and others, is presented together with those virtues required to counter limitations and develop responsiveness (‘Abdu’l-Baha, 2007: 60) :
“To keep aloof from people, to shun them, to be harsh with them, will make them shrink away, while affection and consideration, mildness and forebearance will attract their hearts toward God.”
The difference between sacred teachings and secular thought on hospitality is that within the sacred framework, humanity is compelled to obey a Divine injunction. This injunction is a requirement of behavior that carries the weight of moral and ethical responsibility born out of the ancient concept of the Covenant. In a world where people are not motivated by the religious impulse to provide hospitality, the spiritual conditions for the “threshold” of responsiveness to which Levinas referred, are not as likely to be created. If “every man for himself”, or even so-called “enlightened self-interest” prevail among the majority of human beings, relationships cease to be bound by religious norms that ensure respect of human rights, reciprocity upheld, and virtues developed; a problem we have seen in rhetoric with regard to human rights with little or no change to inhuman conditions on the ground. Certainly there are important political, social, economic and citizenship limitations that have to be considered in the macro aspect of reciprocity. But people in desperate situations are not often in a position to be able to move towards reciprocity until their basic needs have been met and they are able to negotiate on a more even playing field. The injunction to show hospitality to friend and stranger alike is a Divine call to step up to the plate, to stand and deliver practically on principle. It is a place where the ideal meets real people with names, bodies, hearts and spirits, in an act of offering and receiving.
Hospitality is absolutely critical in the development of thresholds of intercultural encounter where strangers can meet and greet each other, offer solace and bring joy. The idea then, is to show how intercultural relations can be oriented towards the “more” rather than the “less” satisfying, if they are infused by a higher, sincere sense of religious purpose and attitude of humility that are conducive to a meeting between two souls.
Religion considers hospitality a virtue, but on a practical level virtue cannot exist without a social, cultural context where it can be demonstrated and practiced. Baha’i membership almost guarantees that different cultural groups are increasingly exposed to each other’s food, food norms and ideals of hospitality, and there are a host of opportunities to practice getting comfortable with difference. On the level of Divine ordinance, Baha’is are admonished to work “ceaselessly” and “fearlessly” to bring communities to embody the diverse elements of the populations surrounding them or risk of being “judged by God” should they fail to do so.
Without wanting to sound naïve however, I hasten to add that my experiences in Baha’i communities have been fraught with the same limitations that human beings everywhere have in their relationships across difference. It is a complex and difficult task to continuously step up to the plate and show divine hospitality. To demonstrate, I will add a final food experience that contains two socio-cultural responses to food and intercultural relationship building, both occurring at the same event.
Intercultural food experience #3: the engagement party
One of the local white Baha’is organized a surprise engagement party for a Rwandan Baha’i who was traveling home to get married. The organizer invited key cultural leaders in the Rwandan community who were friends with the bride to be – an all-black group, and various Baha’i friends, a racially mixed group. Rwandan women cooked traditional food and brought it to the Baha’i Centre, Baha’is helped set up the hall and sound system. The guests arrived and festivities began.
All was going very well and conversations between people were becoming increasingly animated and interesting. Then two homeless Aboriginal people who had heard the music and smelled the food entered the hall. Most participants either looked at the uninvited guests with suspicion or pretended they did not see them. In contrast, one of the Baha’is jumped to the door and shook their hands warmly, welcoming them to the Baha’i Centre. She told them what the event was, led them to the food table, made sure they were served and sat with them to find out who they were and a little bit about their lives. Her behavior was an obvious call to action to the rest of the crowd, however neither the Baha’i group, nor the Rwandan group followed her example. After the couple had finished their meal, they thanked the single welcoming Baha’i and left.
The event was successful with regard to bringing two very different groups of people together at a threshold of hospitality, but less successful in it’s collective capacity to respond to an unexpected encounter with human need and extreme divisions of social class. Within the Baha’i framework, guidance on intercultural relations and abolition of prejudice, admonitions to develop hospitality, and regular opportunities to practice intercultural relations within a multi-ethnic food-sharing context, do provide a unique setting to bring people together across difference. But as can be seen by the above narrative, not everyone has the same awareness or courage to step out of their comfort zones.
In conclusion, the three intercultural food and hospitality narratives I chose to frame this discussion demonstrate the complexity of trying to find spaces of common ground between dis-similar groups of people. Each involved tentative attempts to cross barriers through food offering, sharing and the common experience of eating. The last showed how even those who feel a divinely inspired compulsion to “see no man as stranger” have difficulties negotiating social class, prejudice and unexpected human need to offer hospitality. In a gray area between private and public hospitality, it was “safe enough” to deal with the other on an invited guest basis but uninvited guests provided too great of a social obstacle for either group to overcome.
What is common to all three narratives is the spiritual threshold of hospitality. In each context food was offered and received in a spirit of mutual appreciation and humility. Cultural boundaries were keenly felt, but the desire to find common space where a conversation between souls could take place was increased through the mutual experience of eating together. To reiterate the opening intent of this paper, there is yet much to explore in the exchange of food and hospitality between diverse cultures. I offer this reflection piece as a threshold of possibility for that process.
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