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Nannies in Jewish families

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Wet nurses in Egypt
Claudia Roden Writer
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In the 19th Century and the early 20th Century, there weren't yet powdered milk and if a woman could not have milk, she had to have a wet nurse. And the Jews felt... the Muslims were used to having women from the villages to come and be a wet nurse. But the Jews felt that they weren't maybe as clean as they were. Because also those who were nannies, we had... for instance, one of our friends had a Muslim nanny and the children... the baby cried, she gave them a bit of marijuana or something. So, we felt, I think, that a European was something that we wanted to have as a nanny to bring up our children. And so, my grandmother did not breastfeed her five daughters. She would not breastfeed them. And so, she must have had a Slovene. But she breastfed her son who was the last for four years. That's telling you something.

Claudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including A Book of Middle Eastern Food, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food and The Book of Jewish Food.

Listeners: Nelly Wolman

Claudia Roden talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food.

Tags: wet nurse, breastfeeding, marijuana, nanny

Duration: 1 minute, 30 seconds

Date story recorded: September 2022

Date story went live: 04 December 2023