Slow cookers are back. Not the clunky ones your mother used to have, but shiny, multifunction contraptions that are now a must-have in every kitchen. Over the past 15 years, sales have skyrocketed. At the same time, slow cooker cookbooks have also changed: They don’t resemble the 1970s cookbooks that taught overextended working housewives how to prepare chili con carne or a casserole flavored with canned cream-of-mushroom soup. The mission of modern slow cooker cuisine is to create chef-quality, fresh-ingredient recipes with less hassle.
Like many other great ideas, the slow cooker started with a Jewish mother. Conceived in 1936 by Chicago-based inventor Irving Nachumsohn—who later adopted the less-German-sounding surname Naxon—the appliance was inspired by stories of how his grandmother prepared cholent in Lithuania. Prohibited by the laws of kashrut from cooking on Shabbat, she—like many Jewish women in Eastern Europe—combined dried beans, potatoes and likely a cheap cut of meat in an earthenware pot, then sealed it with a little flour mixed with water. Her daughter then carried it to the village bakery, where it was placed in a large communal oven alongside the cholent pots of other Jewish families. The oven was turned off for the night but retained a steady low temperature that cooked the stew to golden-brown perfection.
Naxon, as his daughter told NPR a few years ago, wanted to recreate that long-lasting low and even heat for the modern home cook, and in 1940, he received a patent for what he called The Naxon Boston Beanery, the world’s first dedicated electric slow cooker. Decades later, Naxon sold his company to Rival, a Kansas City manufacturer, which gave the Beanery a makeover with fashionable color options and a new name: Crock-Pot. It went on the market in 1971, and millions of Americans bought it to make Sloppy Joes and chili-cheese fondue. Jews, however, adapted the Crock-Pot for its original purpose: the Sabbath stew.
That stew dates back to a modest grain and meat porridge-like dish called hareesa that was prepared during the Persian Sasanian Empire from the 3rd to 7th centuries. Wheat, lamb or chicken, and cinnamon bark were salted, beaten to a smooth paste and left to cook until dawn. The 13th-century Iraqi cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh (Book of Dishes) by Al Baghdadi recommended cooking hareesa in a tannur, a wood and charcoal fire oven, rather than over an open fire, so the heat would evenly surround the pot. When it was done, the hareesa was topped with melted tail-fat and sprinkled with ground cumin and cinnamon.
As Islam spread, so did hareesa, and it soon became a favorite dish of Jews from Iraq and Iran to Georgia, Armenia, Yemen and North Africa. Each community added its local flavor and traditions. In Spain, for example, it was known as hamin di trigo (warm dish of grain), a Mishnaic name that comes from the phrase tomnim et ha’hamin, insulating the hot things. (Today it is known simply as hamin—warm food.) But always, hamin kept to the same principle—a hearty dish that could be prepared before Shabbat, cooked overnight on low heat and served warm the next day.
Another shabbat overnight stew popular among Sephardi Jews in Medieval Spain was adafina, a stew of chickpeas, meat and a little vegetables, like cabbage.
The Sabbath stew also stirred halachic controversy, becoming a source of a heated debate between the Karaite Jews and mainstream rabbis in the early medieval period. The Karaites, who believe only in the Bible as a source of authority, interpret Exodus 35:3, Lo Teva’aru Eish as “You shall cause no fire to burn” on Shabbat, and therefore they banned all warm food during the seventh day. Rabbinic Judaism, however, interpreted the sentence as “You shall kindle no fire” on Shabbat, meaning as long as the fire was lit before Shabbat, it was permitted. In some cases, it was regarded as a mitzvah. “Our rabbis ruled we should enjoy hamin on Shabbat. He who does not eat hamin, should be checked out to see if he is not a Min (a heretic),” Rabbi Zerachiah Ha-Levi of Spain wrote in rhyming Hebrew in the 12th century. In other words, if you don’t eat hamin on Shabbat, you’re probably not a Jew. During the Spanish Inquisition, those searching for conversos who still practiced their Jewish faith in secret looked for those eating, among other dishes, the Sabbath stew. Documents from that era tell the story of Juan Sanchez Exarch, who was accused in 1484 of keeping Shabbat and eating a dish called hamin.
The Jewish expulsion from Spain led to even more hamin variations. Jews brought hareesa and adafina with them to North Africa, and both dishes are still prepared to these days by Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian Jews in Israel, the US and France. Hamin also made its way to France, and from there to Germany and Poland, where it eventually picked up the name cholent, possibly from the French word for hot, chaud, or from the Latin calentem. White beans replaced the fava; In the 19th century potatoes were thrown in the pot, creating the style of cholent usually served in America and Israel today.
In Israel, where I was born, the tradition of taking cholent to the communal oven continued until electric warming trays were introduced. My grandmother had her own pre-Crock-Pot invention—she wrapped her cholent pot overnight in newspapers and towels and placed it on the warming tray. Long before Irving Naxon revolutionized modern cooking, she and countless other Jews like her were coming up with ingenious ways of observing Shabbat and keeping food warm without feeding the fire.
*This article, with some changes, was originally published at Moment Magazine.
