@Winnie
Why is food from the Far East so popular with Jews?
Let’s rephrase this as from China (and the it extended to Thailand and Viet Nam in recent years).
When Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe settled on the Lower East Side of NYC it was in proximity to Italians (Little Italy) and Chinese (Chinatown).
Those Jews first venturing to try forbidden foods in neighborhood restaurants were offput by the pictures of Jesus, Mary and Crosses adorning the walls of Italian restaurants. Jews were taunted as Christ Killers and not made welcome.
The Chinese on the other hand, were considered by American society as inferior to all whites. They respected all white customers in their establishments. Their cuisine had no mixing of milk and meat, as milk/dairy was not part of the Chinese diet. The protein (mea)t was diced so fine and mixed into dishes that were predominantly vegetable (Chop Suey, Chow Mein), noodles (Lo Mein) and rice (fried rice), Many Euro-Traditional Jews felt what they couldn’t see and identify as pork didn’t matter. The little red dyed bits of meat in Fried Rice didn’t look like pork chops, bacon rashers or slices of ham.
Next, Chinese food was extremely cheap, all that immigrants and low paid workers could afford. Into the 1940s a meal in a NYC Chinese restaurant could be had for 65 cents. As Jews left the Lower east side for the outer boroughs, Chinese followed their customers opening laundries and restaurants.
By the 1950s Jewish entrepeneurs realized they could hire Chinese cooks and produce kosher Chinese, thus the birth of restaurants suck as Bernsteins on Essex.
In the 1970s I was in the kosher deli/restaurant/catering business in CT. Our head chef Hom Keung had spent 10 years as a chef at Grossinger’s in the Catskills. By his 2nd week we had added a Chinese food section to our menu. It far outsold traditional Euro-American fare that mothers and grandmothers cooked at home.
Since the mid 1980s other East Asian food has grown in popularity. As trade with Thailand and Viet Nam expanded so too did demand for their food. Many Jews first experienced this in Israel and wanted it in the USA.
BTW>>>the Chinese influence on the Jews of NYC continues to this day in other ways. The Mah Jongg craze that swept the nation in the 1920s became a Jewish tenement game for women that eventually became a mainstay of country clubs in the suburbs. Jewish women played Mah Jongg, WASPs played bridge