The last claim attached to the idea that brisket was first used as a specific cut of meat by jews (1) and/or that jews first came up with smoked brisket (2) with the implicit claim that this makes brisket/smoked brisket – as well as Texas BBQ – ‘jewish inventions’; is that jews are responsible for bringing the eating of brisket to North America.
This is claim has never been made in detail that I am aware of, but rather seems to be based on the false belief that because brisket was primarily eaten/invented by Ashkenazi jews in the 1700s in central and eastern Europe and it was believed to have taken off as a foodstuff circa 1900 – when Ashkenazi jews had begun arriving en masse in North America - then therefore the jews introduced brisket as a foodstuff to North America. (3)
The truth is the Germans had been cooking brisket since the 1500s and that the Ashkenazi jews had simply copied their recipe which cavalier Americans have simply claimed they ‘invented’ subsequently, while German immigration to the North America had been sizeable and steady since the start of the 1800s with a particularly large wave of Germans having immigrated after the violent upheavals and revolts – most famously in Silesia – during 1848.
The eating of brisket in North America – first recorded in Texas which was a major centre of German immigrant culture and not of jewish culture – was thus not a jewish-linked phenomenon but a German-linked phenomenon and claims to the contrary – rather like the silly Israeli claim that jews were responsible for Americans realizing the tomato was safe to eat – (4) are simply absurd nonsense meant to desperately find ways there has been an actual ‘jewish contribution’ to the United States.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-brisket
(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-smoked-brisket
(3) See for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20191018052858/https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/beef-brisket-video
(4) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-john-de-sequeyra-thomas