Near the end of Yael Raviv’s study of the co-evolution of Israeli foodways and Israeli identity, she remarks, “When we think of a national cuisine, our instinctive response seems to be to create a list: schnitzel, chopped vegetable salad, hummus…But lists are limited and limiting” (210). Concluding this thought, she says that what she hopes to contribute through her book is “understanding cuisine as a process, as a changing, adaptable construct” (210). Raviv attains this goal in a remarkably comprehensive and illuminating manner.
She shows, for instance, how startling the evolution of Israeli cuisine is in its trajectory from the spartan, virtually puritanical starting point of the early Zionist settlers, to a rich, complex, globalized, and even indulgent (yet mainly healthy) diet over the course of mere decades, from the early 1900s to the 1980s. As Raviv says, “In Israel everything seems to be accelerated” (211). Of course, these changes were not universal, and they reached (or didn’t reach) different sectors of Israeli society at different times.
But what is most illuminating in this study is how changes in diet expressed changes in national identity; the co-evolution of these changes is what claims Raviv’s attention, and this dynamic is a significant issue for those who study food in relationship to national and ethnic identity elsewhere as well. As Raviv often reminds the reader, food’s concreteness, its sensual qualities, are part of what makes it such a useful tool for revealing what is going on in a society at an abstract level. The broad applicability of Raviv’s methods makes Falafel Nation significant not just for those interested in Israel studies or Jewish studies, but for anyone concerned with theoretical issues of food, identity, and nation.
During the early twentieth century, a common Zionist attitude toward food consumption was that eating was like putting fuel in a vehicle’s gas tank: something necessary in order to get work done, but not a conscious source of pleasure, identity, or pride. In the kibbutzim, especially the most left-wing kibbutzim, this attitude could still be found in the early 1970s. Nevertheless, as Raviv notes, “Food can be influential even if ideologically it is presented as marginal” (6). Indeed, this attitude toward food as unworthy of serious attention was part of the identity of sacrifice and selflessness instrumental in creating the nation. In addition to willingly fulfilling one’s patriotic duty through a simple diet, one would also seek to consume agricultural products grown by pioneering Jewish farmers whenever there was the opportunity to do so.
The tiny, fairly homogeneous, European core of Zionist pioneers, for all its broad and deep cultural impact—a good example of what cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinksy called “first effective settlement”—ultimately did not monopolize or control the meaning of food in the dynamic context of late-twentieth-century Israel. The practice of agriculture was a primary ideological and economic component of early Zionism, and thus foods grown by Jewish farmers in “the Land” (ha-Aretz) gained special significance as did foods connected to the biblical past. Add to these foundational elements:
-The native Palestinian Arab cuisine.
-The distinctly different (but locally well-adapted) dietary habits of immigrants from other places in the Middle East.
-The resurgent urge for “sophisticated” western European (especially French) cuisine in hotels and restaurants in the 1950s and ’60s.
-The more recent embrace and reinterpretation of globalizing tastes, with an emphasis on Asian elements. (A popular “folk statistic” claims that, worldwide, Tel Aviv is second only to Tokyo in consumption of sushi.)
-The issue of kashrut, particularly in official public life (the army, diplomatic circles, Tourism.)
Mix all this together, and you get a rapid evolution from a culinary ethos of simplicity to the celebration of its opposite.
Raviv’s thoroughness as a researcher is exemplary. She has sought out a wide and rewarding array of sources of information, including oral interviews with chefs, army cooks, and cookbook authors; cookbooks; advertisements; hotel and restaurant menus; popular songs; novels; posters; memoirs; popular magazines; school curricula; government-sponsored and Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO); booklets; and more.
There is much to discuss in Falafel Nation, not the least, Raviv’s disquisition on the falafel, an important Israeli food and symbol (and even a cliche). For me it has been more difficult than usual to reduce this book, which tells a story with so many fascinating twists and turns, to a brief review. I can only say, go read it.
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[Review length: 729 words • Review posted on May 18, 2016]