Jewish culinary tradition, which colorfully reaches far beyond the proverbial chicken soup, will be the focus of a conference on Jewish food and wine that opens Sunday at the University of California, Davis.

The conference, "From Farfel to Falafel: Food, Wine and Jewish Culture," will examine the ways in which food and wine function within various Jewish traditions and serve as a bridge to other cultures.

Running from Sunday evening, May 14, until midday Tuesday, May 16, the conference will include food sampling and wine tasting, as well as gourmet dinners of Jewish cuisine with commentary and music by the Davis Klezmer Orchestra. The film "Divine Food: 100 Years in the Kosher Delicatessen Trade" also will be screened.

Keynote speakers will be Mollie Katzen, author of the "Moosewood Cookbook," and Joyce Goldstein, author of "Cucina Hebraica." Katzen will speak at 8 p.m. Sunday on "Tsimmes Reveries, a Personal History," and Goldstein will talk about "How a Nice Jewish Girl From Brooklyn Learned to Cook Sephardic Food" at 8 p.m. Monday.

The lectures will be presented by scholars from a variety of universities and seminaries ranging from UC Davis to New York University. Their topics will include:

• Wine and bread as markers of Jewish identity;
• Sephardic and Israeli cuisine as cultural icons;
• Russian Jewish foodways; and
• psychoanalysis and female nurturing.

The lecture sessions will be held at the University Club, with wine tastings, dinners and keynote presentations at the campus's Putah Creek Lodge.

A complete program for the conference, along with menus, and registration and lodging information, is available online at: http://jewishstudies.ucdavis.edu/fwjc/main.php.

The event is sponsored by the UC Davis Program in Jewish Studies and the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, along with The Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, The Sacramento Jewish Federation and The Jewish Community Foundation of the West. It is being funded by grants from the Koret Foundation and The Taube Foundation.