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Narrating Modernity and Tradition: The Case of Palestinian Food in IsraelLiora Gvion a

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Narrating Modernity and Tradition: The Case of Palestinian Food in Israel

Liora GvionKibbutzim College of Education, Tel-Aviv, Israel

This article looks at Palestinian cuisine in Israel as revealing negotiations overinclusion and self-identification of Palestinians in Israel. By sustaining culinarypractices and transmitting them from one generation to the next, Palestiniansbecome active agents who construct and negotiate their cultural differentiationand entitlement to ethnic distinctiveness. This course of action is taking place intwo complementary spheres. By applying their culinary “know-how” knowledge inthe domestic sphere, Palestinian women narrate modernity and construct theirform and modes of participation in Israeli culture. Simultaneously, men, who cookin the public sphere, deliberately uphold traditional knowledge. Thus, theysustain traditional images of Palestinian cooking, establish forms of resistance tothe appropriation of their culinary assets into the Jewish culinary repertoire, andnegotiate positioning in Israeli society.

Key Words: Palestinians, “know-how” knowledge, domestic and public sphere,culinary knowledge, modernity

Introduction

Scholars look at the transformations immigrants’ food goes throughupon migrating and at the role food plays in the process of identity for-mation in their new country. Attention is also given to the connectionbetween minority status and the prestige of minority cuisines (Belasco1987; Barabas 2003; Levenstein 1985). By focusing on Palestiniancitizens of Israel, this study looks at cuisines of minorities as revealingnegotiation over social inclusion on the one hand and self-identificationon the other hand. The sustainability of culinary practices, both in thedomestic and public sphere, allows Palestinians to narrate their ownsense of modernity and pave their venues of participation in Israelisociety and culture. Simultaneously, they use food as a means toconstruct and negotiate their cultural differentiation. The domesticsphere is the arena in which new foods and cooking technologies areincorporated. These position the Palestinian family as modern and assimilar, in various respects, to Jewish Israelis. Conversely, in the

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public sphere, Palestinian men narrate tradition. By constructing atraditional image of the Palestinian community and its food, theyexpress opposition to their position in Israeli society as second-classcitizens. Moreover, through their resistance to Jewish appropriation oftraditional Palestinian dishes and selective propagation of their culi-nary knowledge, they reinforce the notion of tradition as guaranteeingthe sustainability of Palestinian culture.

Minority statues and culinary knowledge: Palestinians in Israel

In 1948, only 160,000 of 900,000 Palestinians remained in the part ofPalestine upon which Israel was established. They currently consti-tute 19 percent of Israel’s population (Ghanem 2001; Pappé 1994;Jabareen 2006). Although granted formal citizenship, they live in an“ethnic state” in which national identity is not inclusive of all of thestate’s citizens, but rather is limited to the members of one ethnicgroup. The Israeli state developed an extensive system for marginaliz-ing and controlling Palestinian people based on segmentation, collabo-ration, and dependence (Yiftachel 1999; Kemp 1999; Abu-Saad 2006;Lustick 1980; Rouhana 1998). Through massive confiscation ofPalestinian Arab lands (Gavison 1999; Lustick 1980), Palestiniansbecame economically dependent on the state’s infrastructure. Smallfamily farms no longer provided a steady source of income, andPalestinian young men started working as daily unskilled laborers forJewish employers. Consequently, the traditional extended family unit,living off its land, broke into nuclear family units (Al-Hag 1997; Sa’di2003; Rabinowitz and Abu-Baker 2002).

From 1948 to 1967 there was a period in which the Palestinianssought for security and accommodation. This resulted in Palestinians’attempts to become part of life in Israel. The 1967 war created directcontact with the Palestinian population and leadership of the WestBank. These contacts awakened the Palestinian component in theiridentity repertoire and connected with the consciousness of Palestiniansuffering. From 1973 throughout the 1990s, the Palestinian component oftheir identity has strengthened. Currently, the Palestinian communityremained largely separated from and subordinated to the Jewishmajority in almost every aspect of stratification: residential districts,educational achievement, occupation, employment participation, andlevels of earnings. More than 90 percent of the Palestinians in Israelreside in all-Arab communities located in three main areas: theGalilee, the “Triangle” area, and the Negev. Yet Israel has foiled theestablishment of separate national Palestinian institutions and has


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blocked this minority from exercising any considerable degree of con-trol of its own affairs (Ghanem 2001; Blumen and Halevi 2005; Levi2005; Abu-Saad 2006; Lewin-Epstein and Semyonov 1992; Rabinowitzand Abu-Baker 2002).

Nevertheless, Palestinians in Israel have at least three identities:Arab, Palestinian, and Israeli; none dominates over the other, andeach relates to a different content of meanings and plays a differentrole in their identity repertoire. The Palestinian identity emphasizesthe sense of national pride and solidarity on behalf of cultural heri-tage. The Israeli identity is relevant to them as a democratic systemthat assigns high priority to individual rights but also as a systemthat stresses their marginalization (Levi 2005; Hammak 2006; Jaba-reen 2006; Blumen and Halevi 2005; Amara and Schnell 2004; Bish-ara 1993; Bishara1996). To challenge their marginalization,Palestinians in Israel choose selective venues for paving their partici-pation in Israeli society while expressing their right for upholding todistinctive culture and identity.

Studies refer to the social construction of cultural distinctions alongwith selective forms of participation in the societies in which immi-grants reside. Stein (1998), for instance, looks at rural ethnic tourismin the Palestinian sector in Israel as enabling Palestinians to reinserttheir history in articulation with Jewish history. This reconfigurationis made possible by tourism’s respatialization of the nation-state inand through its rural Palestinian communities and by the market’scommodification of “authentic” Arab ethnicity. These create shifts inthe meaning of the Israeli nation, offering new maps and idiomsthrough which the notion of the state might be thought.

Stein (1998) further points to the interplay between the narrationof modernity and that of authenticity/tradition. While the Palestinianpopulation aims to present itself as modern, state agencies encouragethe theme of authenticity, commodifying the Palestinian traditionalculture and portraying the Palestinians as a group on which modern-ization has skipped. Palestinian population centers and rural localsare reevaluated as potential markets; the former is commodified assites of ethnic tourism, and the latter is reimagined as places of coun-try hospitality. The emphasis on these two themes enables Jews toexperience the Arab village as a tourist site, which offers a touch ofhistory, culture, and traditional forms of hospitality all incorporatedas a component of Israeli national narrative and culture.

Sorek (2005), too, in his study of the football team of Sakhnin, anArab town in Israel, shows how nationalism and localism maintainrelations either of opposition or of resemblance. He claims Sakhnin’ssuccess shows how heroic narratives, which underlie continuity with


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the Palestinian struggle, do not rule out attempts to achieve, via foot-ball, acceptance by the Jewish majority. Local Palestinian politicians,sport journalists, and functionaries maneuver the meanings of foot-ball, martyrdom, and local identity and ascribe nationalist meaningsto Palestinian success in football. Most Palestinian fans on theterraces, conversely, see football as an opportunity for seeking acceptanceby the Jewish majority. Therefore, they exclude potential conflictingmessages from the scene.

Stein (1998) and Sorek (2005) look at leisure activities as reveal-ing historical interpretations, along with a search for further inclu-sion in Israeli society while preserving ethnic distinctiveness. Food,too, is a medium through which minorities express simultaneouslythemes of inclusion in and exclusion from the society in which theylive. Food plays a major role in the constitution of immigrants’ andminorities’ identities because it enables them to reintegrate the pastand the present and recapture the totality of the old way of life(Sutton 2001a). In their daily preoccupation with food, women consti-tute a domain where tradition and innovation are mixed into a know-how knowledge that is preserved and transmitted from hand to handand from generation to generation and serves the needs of the hour(Inness 2001; De Certeau et al. 1998). The transmission of culinaryknowledge is at the same time a key site for the transmission ofmemories and histories, which may challenge official sources ofknowledge concerning the past. The Kalymnian immigrants inFlorida, for instance, idealize food sent from home and the femaleknowledge that produces them, even if they are variations ofKalymnian food or Greek mass-produced foods (Sutton 2001a,2001b). Palestinian refugees, who have continued visiting the sites oftheir obliterated villages, also carry out a set of practices, some ofwhich pay attention to the fruits and herbs that grow in these sites.These plants enhance a temporary recreation of the pre-1948 life(Ben-Ze’ev 2004).

Cookbooks are another way of gathering culinary knowledge andenhancing collective memories. They mean different things to differ-ent social groups and often their concept is foreign to immigrants andminorities, who transmit their culinary knowledge orally. Cookbooks,written by either immigrants or minorities, turn ethnicity intoreservoirs of practical knowledge, meant for the integration of theirculinary knowledge within the boundaries of local cooking. In otherwords, when immigrants and minorities think there is a potentialclientele for their food, they are willing to disseminate their culinaryknowledge in a form and content that is potentially appealing (Inness2001; Gvion 2002, 2006).



Memories of food among migrants and minorities further promotethe writing of “nostalgia cookbooks” (Sutton 2001a) or “cookbookmemoirs” (Bradenstein 2002), which thematize memory rather thancooking as their central raison d’etre. These books show how authen-ticity, loss, and nostalgia are conceptualized among migrants. Cook-books also host and reveal processes of commodification and massmarketing of food memories, which mediate between the past and thepresent. Bradenstein’s (2002) analysis of cookbook memoirs, writtenby exiles from the Middle East, assesses exiles beliefs that withoutexile, the transmission of food traditions would be continuous, andidentities intact, authentic, and unproblematized. In exile, food turnsinto a means through which women make up for the feeling of loss ofhomeland and into a direct, authentic, and uncomplicated channel toan original world in which men have not been engaged in cooking.

In addition to transmitting food traditions, women also introducetheir families to culinary novelties and modern cooking technologies.At times, these pose a threat to the authentic features and thenutritional value of well-balanced traditional diets. Moreover, menfrequently fear modern foods and means of cooking to affect thedomestic division of labor and lessen their power over women (Watsonand Caldwell 2005; Pilcher 2002; Mankekar 2002; Witt 2001; Parkin2001; Lind and Barham 2004). Although migrants and minoritywomen often welcome what they see as modern dishes and cookingmethods, they are not passive recipients of novelties. Rather, womenassign their own meanings and modes of consumption to novel food(Raspa 1984; Lind and Barham 2004) and use food to position them-selves in their new society and develop their own ways of interpretingthe world they live in.

Palestinian women in Israel, too, narrate their versions of moder-nity. According to Sa’ar (2005; 2007), Blumen and Halevi (2005), andKanaaneh (2002), rising levels of female education, decrease in fertil-ity rate, and the ongoing preoccupation with notions of modernityhave all contributed to more autonomy to women. They face interre-lated familial, national, and ethnic forms of oppression and navigatebetween them. In their capacity as bearers simultaneously of moder-nity and tradition, women benefit from such opportunities andexpress their own positioning in domestic and political context. Thisarticle shows how Palestinian women in Israel use food to narratemodernity and position themselves and families in modern socialcontexts.

In the public sphere, through their position as breadwinners, menuse food to narrate tradition and socially construct their publicimage. A low-capital cost makes it relatively easier for ethnic


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entrepreneurs to enter into the food business. Their restaurants arekept afloat by a labor force that is segmented by ethnicity and restson kin ties. According to Lovell-Troy (1990), Yano (2007), and Lem(2007), Greek restaurants in the United States, Japanese Americantake-out delicatessen (the okazuya), and the Franco-Chinese restau-rants heavily rely on kin ties due to immigration patterns, businessopportunities, and employment practices. These make it possible forsenior family members to uphold their status within both the com-pany and the family and to rely on family enterprises in which indi-vidual members subordinate their personal wishes for the collective.This further encourages self-exploitation, such as long workinghours, which permits competition with better-capitalized enter-prises. Moreover, the unique culinary knowledge gives immigrantsand minorities a competitive edge over better-capitalized main-stream entrepreneurs in the food market. Kin networks that allowborrowing of money on a rotating basis enable ethnic entrepreneursto raise the necessary cash for a small eatery without the normallyrequired assets.

In addition, ethnic restaurants are “traveling spaces” wherediners take in foreign cultures and face forms of “staged authenticity,”opening possibilities of experiencing the culinary other. They makeit possible for ethnic and minority groups to insinuate themselvesinto the rules of the dominant system while making up their ownrules of action. In this way, objects (e.g., restaurants and food) thatare considered ethnic gain economic and social relevance andenable those who are involved in their economic production andtransactions to state a position in a dominant social and economicenvironment. Thus, by opening their own restaurants, ethnic groupscommodify their food and contribute to its commercialization,de-authentication, and possible appropriation by entrepreneursexternal to the ethnic community (Ferrero 2002; Appandurai 1988;Lu and Fine 1995; Barabas 2003; Stein 1998; Trostler and Gvion2007; Mankekar 2002).

However, ethnic and minority groups differ in their opportunities tocommodify their culinary knowledge. Americans once dismissed Italianfood because Italians were poor and derided rather than for any objec-tive evaluation of their cuisine. When Italian Americans climbed outof the ghetto, Americans started appreciating Italian food. Similarly,only since the 1980s did Mexican dishes begin to win partial accep-tance in the United States, mostly due to the foundation of fast-foodchains and food conglomerates, which sold Mexican food in food chainsand restaurants (Belasco 1987; Lind and Barham 2004; Ray 2007;Levenstein 1985). The low esteem of Iranians in England also caused



rejection of Iranian food, which resulted in the masking of Iranianfood as Greek or Turkish (Harbottle 1997).

Moreover, eating out can mean different things for different socialgroups. Ferrero (2002), for instance, identifies areas in Los Angeleswhere different Mexican food practices prevail. In downtown andEast Los Angeles the restaurants are reminders of social and com-munal solidarities among Mexican immigrants. For Americans, eat-ing Mexican in these areas means overcoming negative conceptionsof class and ethnic discrimination. Conversely, in affluent areas ofthe city, Mexican food becomes a device to express forms of culinaryresistance and voices issues of power, class, and ethnicity. When tar-geting non-Mexican diners, restaurateurs deliberately commodifytheir food and image of culture, expressing consent to the dominantsystem. They participate in the process of constructing a mythologyof Mexican culture and invent traditions that become symbols ofMexican culture.

Food, then, is a venue for expressing attitudes toward modernity,tradition, and positioning. This article argues that through their obli-gation to cook, Palestinian women narrate modernity by forming andupdating culinary knowledge, adjusting it to the taste of their familiesand assigning their own meanings to new foods and cooking technolo-gies. Through their culinary practices, they become meaningful agentswho narrate their form of participation in Israeli culture and simulta-neously sustain the domestic reservoir of culinary knowledge and thetraditional division of labor in the household.

Conversely, in the public sphere, Palestinian men use food tonarrate resistance to their positioning as second-class citizens ofIsrael. They do so by constructing a traditional image of thePalestinian community, its food, and the social relationship embed-ded in the preoccupation with food. Their restaurants offer a limitedvariety of dishes, regardless of their targeted clientele. When cater-ing to Palestinians, the menu reveals the distinction between domes-tic and public cooking. When catering to a Jewish clientele, the menumakes it possible to preserve the Palestinian culinary culture withinthe social boundaries of the community and establish a distinctiveidentity.

The sustainability and changes in Palestinian culinary culture inIsrael make it possible for domestic and public culinary practices toturn into narratives of inclusion in and exclusion from Israeli society.By interlocking narratives of modernity with traditional themes,Palestinians do not only insert their own meanings into these con-cepts. They use food to forge new, shifting identities and constantlyredefine them vis-à-vis their position in Israeli society.


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Methodology

This article is part of a larger project on Palestinian food in Israel.Data were gathered through participant observations and detailedopen interviews with 100 Palestinian men and women, all of whichspoke Hebrew fluently. They were either Christians or Muslims, anaspect found irrelevant to their food choices. I excluded Bedouins andDruze from the study because the Israeli government required theyserved in the military and did not refer to them as Palestinians. Theinformants, two-thirds of whom were women, consisted of profession-als, political activists, homemakers, manual laborers, and unemployedindividuals. They were referred to me by key figures in their commu-nities as being either authorities on matters of food or able to explainthe nature of the relationships between Jews and Palestinians inIsrael. They lived in either mixed Jewish-Arab towns or Arab villagesand towns all over Israel.

I spent one to three days with each informant by visiting them intheir homes and joining them in their activities. It was often the casethat either a relative or a neighbor was present during the interviewand joined the conversation. Their comments were integrated into thedata. In addition, because I interviewed different members from thesame community, I often ran into my informants on several occasions.Our brief encounters also entered into my field notes. During my meet-ings with informants, I never interrupted their speech or stream ofthought. Once the conversations started, my questions referred to theirwords. This method proved to be a strong interview technique becauseit not only established trust it also indicated respect to the informants.It exposed me to information I could never have acquired if the inter-view had been structured and the questions previously prepared.

During our sessions, I asked about eating habits, modes of prepara-tion, reasons for integrating new foods into the active culinary reper-toire, the possibilities for making a living of food, and the rational thatgoverned the composition of the menu. After I gathered culinaryinformation, I asked questions about informants’ status in Israelisociety. Data were coded according to major themes provided by theinformants. The themes were compared to those mentioned by peers.Moreover, unique comments made by informants also were analyzedto evaluate the extent to which they were consistent with the rest ofthe data. All informants but one mentioned spontaneously a suspiciontoward Palestinian food on the one hand and the appropriation ofcertain dishes into the Israeli culinary reservoir on the other hand.They have linked it to the marginal status of Palestinians in Israelisociety and provided their explanations on the matter.



The narration of modernity

Societies often make use of food to “modernize” themselves. Through theintegration of new foods and cooking technologies into their dailypractices they adopt, what they come to see as modern (Cwiertka 2006).“Modern” is a key concept in Palestinians’ kitchen culture in Israel, andwomen are those who narrate their version of modernity to their families.Being modern, in Palestinian kitchen culture, implies upholding tradi-tional dishes along with a controlled departure from old practices in favorof new ones. The traditional and the novel coexist because the “modern”allows complementing existing cultural practices with new ones that arebelieved to improve the quality and the nature of the culinary repertoire.Via culinary practices, women learn, apply, and modify new culinaryknowledge and provide a means, which present their family as “modern”in and out of the Palestinian community.

The social construction of the Palestinian family as modern ini-tiates patterns of imitation, application, and transformation of newculinary knowledge and technologies. Simultaneously, these facilitatethe preservation of traditional dishes by easing their preparation.Abir, for instance, is a 39-year-old schoolteacher. She invited me toher house to watch her prepare mugrabiah, the Palestinian version ofcouscous. It consists of chicken meat and chickpeas served over a bedof couscous, made of semolina and burgul, steamed over a boilingchicken soup. Although she has asked me to arrive at 9 A.M., it was notuntil 1 P.M. that she started cooking:

I cooked the soup and the chickpeas in my pressure cookers this morn-ing. Now we can boil the couscouson. I no longer make it myself, the waymy mom used to. I use industrialized noodles that look alike. They makeit possible for us to eat mugrabiah. Otherwise, we wouldn’t eat it.

Abir cooks the noodles for five minutes, serves equal portions to indi-vidual plates, tops them with chickpeas and pieces of chicken meatand pours chicken soup on top. Her “recipe” illustrates the narrationof modernity for various reasons. First, she applies technologies thatchange the taste of the dish. Yet she disregards these changes becausethe dish resembles in shape the traditional mugrabiah. Second, theturning of the laborious dish into a homemade fast food allows her topresent herself as a modern homemaker who uses her time for variousactivities, such as talking to me. Third, the application of moderningredients and technologies makes it possible for her to preservetraditional laborious dishes, expose them to the younger generation,and form via culinary knowledge links between her generation and


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the next. By introducing and applying modern food items, Abir andher peers reinforce their positions as homemakers by neither challeng-ing nor neglecting their obligations and commitment to the Palestinianfamily and community. On the contrary, the application of moderndevices enables them to save time on their domestic duties and pre-serve the Palestinian culinary tradition.

Nevertheless, to penetrate the boundaries of Palestinian cookery,new foods and technologies must conform to Palestinians’ thinkingabout food, cooking, and eating. Indeed, many of the dishes thatPalestinians incorporate into their culinary repertoire either intro-duce new categories into Palestinian kitchens, broaden the repertoireof traditional dishes, or add a touch of elegance to traditional meals.These seeming contradictions are actually complementing each other.

The popularity of both lasagna and cannelloni shows how “moderndishes” are perceived as upgraded versions of traditional dishes suchas kubbe senia1 or sfiha,2 respectively. Samira first tasted lasagna ather Jewish employer’s house. Her version of it consists of stir-friedlamb meat seasoned with Bahart,3 salt, and cinnamon, which shealternates with layers of whatever noodles she has in the house. Shetops it with tomato paste and yellow cheese. By following the principleof alteration of a meat mixture and noodles and seasoning it in amanner characteristic of Arabic cookery, Samira introduces the lasa-gna as a possible variation of the kubbe senia. Munira, a secretary at ahardware store, interprets cannelloni in a similar manner:

It is my modern version of the sfiha. The dough is easier to make, I stuffit with the same meat mixture and serve it with a salad on the side. It isvery elegant.

Munira and Samira, then, do not give up traditional dishes but sug-gest new foods that resemble traditional dishes in form and function.This way they express commitment to their traditional roles as bothhomemakers and as modernizers of their families.

The same principle governs the rejection of certain food items thatoffend assumptions that underlie Palestinian thinking about food. Theaversion toward frozen meat is a good example. Meat, for Palestinians,must be fresh and clean, and the relationship between the homemakerand her butcher is based on trust that the meat is fresh and clean.Industrially frozen meat, according to Alham, a social worker in herlate forties from the triangle area, does not meet these qualities:

My Jewish friend says it doesn’t make sense to buy a chicken, have itslaughtered and clean it by myself. However, I need to see the chicken



with my own eyes. Once, I decided to buy a frozen chicken. I had no ideahow to choose a chicken packed in a plastic bag. At home, I waited for it todefrost. When I realized what it looked like I thought I was going to die.

Two small feathers on the chicken’s skin symbolized, for Alham, filthand death. Hundreds of feathers, personally removed upon bringing afreshly slaughtered chicken home, indicated cleanness:

When I choose a living chicken, I know exactly what I buy and I makesure it is clean. It is different with a chicken that has been lying dead ina plastic bag in the supermarket. I was afraid of cooking it.

Alham distinguishes between “dead meat” as opposed to “live meat,”pending the span of time from animal slaughter to domestic consump-tion. The slaughtered animal must obtain a relation of familiarity tothe consumer to the extent that it is clearly recognized and identifiedas edible by the domestic cook. All attributes that stand for cleannessin fresh meat are missing from frozen meat.

Maria, a graduate student in behavioral sciences, and 25 yearsyounger than Alaham, agrees. I joined her family in their visit to thebutcher to buy meat for her sister’s wedding reception. On the mainstreet of the village, there were two butcher shops. The first one wasspotless. The second was full of huge meat chunks, and its floor wascovered with bloodstains. It was obvious to all, but me, that the “dirty”shop was the one in which to buy meat:

This store is always full of people so the butcher has no time to clean.Why do you think the other store is so clean? Because no one visits theshop and the butcher has time to clean it. It means the meat isn’t fresh.

Maria and Alham interpret the dirt that is part of the setting in whichfresh meat is sold, as a guarantee that the meat is clean. Frozen meat,conversely, although sold in sterile supermarkets, cannot meet thiscriterion. However, there is another reason, as explained by Manar,an economist in her mid-forties and a highly respectable banker, whyPalestinians reject frozen meat:

Cooking frozen meat humiliates one’s husband. It is as if I declare publiclyhow lazy I am. Even young and very educated women wouldn’t dare to do.

Palestinian women, then, frame the incorporation of modern itemswithin cultural codes, which govern Palestinians’ thinking about food.Because meat, unlike couscouson or sha’aria, has a high social value


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in Palestinian culinary culture, its preparation rests on gender-basednorms, which homemakers ought to respect. The use of frozen meat,therefore, does not mark women as modern but rather as rebels, whochallenge traditional modes of thoughts and behaviors that have sus-tained the Palestinian people over years.

Modern modes of conduct are attributed to ongoing encounters andinteractions with Jews, whom Palestinians meet as neighbors, col-leagues, or on various other occasions. Women often report havingtasted a dish at one’s neighbor and ask for general instructions as tohow to prepare it at home. This is how homemade cakes, quiches, anddifferent kinds of salads have entered the Palestinian daily culinaryrepertoire. Sonia, a beautician from Acre, first tasted instant coffee ather Jewish neighbor’s apartment:

She used to ask: ‘Sonia, how do you like your coffee?’ When we firstmoved here, I didn’t know what to say. Then, I realized that all myJewish neighbors said: ‘with sweet and low and a little bit of milk’ soI started saying it too. That’s how I started drinking instant coffee. Myhusband liked it too. Every evening, as we watch t.v, I serve him instantcoffee with Sweet’N Low and a little bit of milk.

When men, who have eaten at the cafeteria at their workplace or onoccasional visits to restaurants with their colleagues, encounter a dishthey liked, they often encourage their wives to prepare the dish athome. This is how women started preparing schnitzels, meatballs, andvarious quiches and pastas. Men who studied abroad, for instance,often introduced their families and friends to dishes they have come tolike during this period. Men who studied in Hungary, for instance,have come to like the Hungarian goulash and guided their wivesthrough its preparation. Dina, whose brother married a Hungarianwoman he had met while studying in Budapest, explains:

It was in my brother’s house that I first tasted goulash. My sister-in-lawtold me that in Hungary people added cream to the dish but my brotherdidn’t like it with cream. Now, when I want to impress my guests I pre-pare goulash at home and serve it with rice and salad.

Children introduce their families to precooked or industrial foods.Hanin, a grandmother of eight, who lives in a mixed Jewish-Arabtown, admits learning from her grandchildren:

I realized they were drinking chocolate milk and eating sweet yogurts ona daily basis. I liked it too. My husband and I started drinking chocolatemilk for breakfast and eating yogurt as a snack. By the time we are old,



we’ll have enough calcium to keep our back straight not like the oldpeople you see in Arab villages.

Both Sonia and Hanin attribute the incorporation of new foods andmodes of consumption to their interactions with role models. Othersclaim modern foods and means of consumption facilitate futureencounters with Jews and make it possible for Palestinians to mingleand come across as modern. However, misreading of people and situa-tions is common. For instance, in my first meeting with Mona, a socialactivist from Jaffa, she served me instant coffee with Sweet’N Lowand a little bit of milk without asking me how I drank my coffee. WhenI told her, I did not drink instant coffee she said:

I should have figured it out by the way you look. You probably drink onlycappuccino and latte. No. You drink only herb tea. Some of our mendrink espresso but it is not common yet.

Mona’s serving of instant coffee rested on the cultural assumptionthat people drank instant coffee at home and other kinds of coffeewhen out of home. Realizing she was wrong about me, she immedi-ately informed me not only that she was familiar with different kindsof beverages but also that she was able to position me in a particularsocial context. She further hinted she was familiar with what sheidentified as trends, which were popular among people “of my kind.”

Attempts to adopt eating habits common among Jews to appearmodern exceeds the kitchen and applies to dieting patterns as well.Young Palestinian women, regardless of their level of education, liketheir Jewish peers, long to have a slim figure on their wedding recep-tion. Their understanding as to how to meet their goal is, at times, out-dated. Lubna, who studies speech therapy, is hoping to lose 12 kilosbefore she gets married:

I eat at the university cafeteria. They bake fish with margarine, whichisn’t fattening, and serve salads dressed with mayonnaise unlike mymom who uses olive oil. I can eat everything here and still lose weight.

Neither Nadia nor other women I have spoken to could tell me wheretheir knowledge on dieting came from. Some referred to neighbors,who have successfully lost weight, some to a word of mouth, and oth-ers interpreted medical instructions such as eating a low-fat diet as areplacement of olive oil by margarine. They all viewed certain foodsone should eat when on a diet and claimed dieting turned them intomodern women.


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Swidler (1986) and De Certeau et al. (1998) see culture as providingforms of practical “know-how,” knowledge which shapes and limits therange of strategies of action. Palestinian domestic cooking rests onwomen’s domestic “know-how,” which governs not only the range ofculinary novelties they incorporate into their kitchens but also strate-gies for incorporating them without challenging either traditionalassumptions about food or domestic divisions of labor. This makes itpossible for Palestinian women to narrate modernity, set their ownterms of participation in Israeli culture, and equip the communitywith a means to be able to present it as modern.

The narration of tradition

Migrants and minorities often commodify their food with the aim ofmaking a living. Simultaneously, by commodifying their culinaryknowledge, they actively participate in the social construction oftheir public image. Their restaurants are social arenas that allowthem to introduce their culture and food to the people among whomthey live. Consequently, restaurateurs organize their menu accord-ing to their targeted clientele. It is interesting that the case of thePalestinian restaurants is different. Restaurateurs, by providing analmost identical menu, regardless of the location of the restaurantsand their targeted clientele, narrate Palestinian tradition. From aPalestinian point of view, the menu reinforces gender-based divi-sions of labor and the distinction between domestic and public eatingso prominent in Palestinian culture. Simultaneously, the menudeliberately promotes stereotypical images of Palestinians cuisine aslimited. This image turns into a means of protesting against theirpositioning in Israeli society and attempts to appropriate their culi-nary knowledge.

Restaurants fulfill different functions for Jews and for Palestinians.For Jews, eating out can be at the same time a functional solution forlunch or a hectic day at work when one does not have time for cook-ing as well as a form of entertainment and leisure. Moreover, Jewsdo not consider grabbing a slice of pizza at a counter or starting theday at a local café as a visit to a restaurant. For Palestinians,conversely, eating at the cafeteria at work or a short visit to theespresso bar is regarded as a visit to a restaurant. They also viewrestaurants as locations for celebration in which men reinforce domi-nation over women by treating them by eating out and allowing thefamily to enjoy special dishes. Because Palestinian families seldomeat out, male chefs limit their menus to dishes, regularly consumedout of home.



A functional attitude toward food and eating, which dominatesPalestinians’ thinking about food, prevents the development of ahedonistic approach to food and a culture of sophisticated dining.Lavish meals, limited for special occasions, mostly consist of manytraditional dishes most of which include meat. Because eating alsoconnotes celebration, customers never order a dish in a restaurantthat is commonly prepared by homemakers, as said by Lubna, a seniorat a teachers’ college:

We never order that which we eat at home because it’s a time for cele-bration. If someone ordered that which he eats at home, people wouldassume his wife neglects her domestic duties. It’s an insult to the manand to his wife.

By avoiding dishes eaten on a regular basis at home, Palestiniansreinforce the role of the restaurant as providing an opportunity to dineon special dishes, which are neither part of the daily repertoire norpart of women’s culinary knowledge. Thus, restaurateurs and custom-ers challenge neither the quality of domestic dishes nor the dedicationof women to their domestic duties and as guardians of Palestinianculinary culture. Rather, they strengthen the distinction betweendomestic and public culinary knowledge. Nabi, for instance, wasconsidering opening a restaurant that would serve mostly domesticPalestinian dishes but decided against it:

There is no point in opening such a restaurant here in the village. If aman asked for magadra or hubeze what would people think? Besides,one needs a woman to cook these dishes but no man, who respects hisfamily, would let his wife, daughter or sister cook in public, at least notin the village.

When I mentioned domestic Jewish tourism to the Galilee and thesearch for authentic Galilee food, Husam, his assistant, doubts thegenuine interest in Palestinian food:

Palestinian food is actually organic food. We cook herbs, which grow inour backyard; we hike and pick up plants. Yet you do not recognize ourfood as organic and do not try it. For you, organic food is the packed foodin the health store. I doubt our authentic food will attract Jews.

Both Nabi and Husam refer to dishes that women cook regularly fortheir families and that restaurateurs refrain from serving in the res-taurant. Women, according to my informants, are not supposed to cookin restaurants because it offends their virtue. Because Jews do not


406 L. Gvion

share this view, cooking in a restaurant whose customers are mostlyJews is a certain compromise. Nevertheless, the qualifications requiredfrom a female cook are more than good culinary skills, as said by AbuEl-Abed, from Jaffa, who serves dishes his mother prepares:

She must be old, preferably a widow. No way can she be young andsingle. It is cheap. In case she is married, she must fully cover herself sono one sees her for what she is. Yet, no men who respects his wife orsister would let her cook for strangers and in public.

The gender-based division of labor is sustained through the distinctionbetween domestic and public eating and the absence of women fromthe public culinary scene. Both prevent the dissemination of domesticculinary knowledge to the public and consequently limit the opportu-nities of commodifying Palestinian food. This makes Palestiniansdifferent from other minority restaurateurs who heavily rely onfemale labor. Restaurateurs concern themselves with the reception ofauthentic Palestinian domestic dishes by Jewish customers. Authen-ticity, according to Stein (1998), and Lu and Fine (1995) results out ofnegotiations between ethnic entrepreneurs, who wish to commodifytheir culture, state agencies, and an audience that wishes for a differ-ent experience, yet not too different from what they perceive as ethnicfood. Unlike other ethnic entrepreneurs who negotiate the extent towhich they can sell authentic food to customers and stage theirrestaurants as reflecting their tradition, Palestinians realize thattheir chances of selling authentic dishes are limited, if at all. Nasser,who currently owns a restaurant in Nazareth, talks about his badexperience:

I had a restaurant in Tel-Aviv a couple of years ago. It was on a busystreet surrounded by many successful restaurants. It used to be a suc-cessful Chinese place. I closed the place after 6 months because peopledidn’t come although we were clean. I didn’t serve domestic dishes andthe food was as good as the food you ate here. Now you tell me it hasnothing to do with me being Palestinian.

Nasser intertwines Palestinians’ social marginality with his limitedopportunity to commodify Palestinian food in Israel because it meetssuspicion and lack of curiosity. He assesses that it is neither a badlocation nor a low quality of food that prevents potential customersfrom frequenting Palestinian restaurants. His peer, Salim, an ownerof a restaurant amidst an area of multinational high-tech cooperation,agrees:



I get them for a quick and cheap lunch, never for dinner. I get mostly lowranked engineers and some of the secretaries. I rarely get the executivesunless they have a visitor from abroad to whom they want to show Israelas multicultural and democratic. Ya’ani,4 I am their local Indian.

The interconnectedness between social marginality and limited com-modification of food, according to Salim, further points to the con-sumption of Palestinian food as class and status related. Low rankprofessionals frequent Salim’s restaurant regularly because it is cheapand provides substantial meals. Salim also addresses the social andpolitical context in which commodities are marketed. Using a restau-rant as a setting for staging a multicultural appearance of the state ofIsrael is, according to Salim, part of the executives’ habitus, and theytake his cooperation in playing the role of the local Palestinian forgranted.

Palestinian restaurateurs claim that the less authentic the dishesthey serve are, and the more limited the menu, the less is the resent-ment they face and the potential appropriation of their dishes by Jewishculinary agents. Ali, a restaurateur from Jaffa, for example, has beentrying for years to convince a regular customer to try some authenticdishes he occasionally serves as the day’s specials:

He brings his mistress for lunch and his wife for dinner and trustsI won’t say anything. For years, he keeps ordering the same threedishes. I beg him to try some of our specials, on the house of course. Helooks at me disgusted and says: ‘you don’t expect me to eat it do you?’

Hassan, from the triangle area, who deliberately decorates his restau-rant with items Jews associate as typical of Palestinian culture,includes in the menu two dishes, traditionally eaten at home:

You were the first customer who ordered Maklube and Fatosh.5 For sixmonths, no one even asked what it was. I kept bringing samples to thetable but in vein. After six months, in which I kept throwing food awayevery day, I gave up. Now, you tell me why the menu is “ordinary.”

Both Hassan and Ali claim that the possibilities to commodifyPalestinian food are limited. They argue social marginality to narrowcuriosity toward Palestinian food lead to feelings of resentment if notdisgust from it. Paradoxically, the lack of interest in authenticPalestinian dishes works in their favor because only a small numberof Palestinian dishes have been appropriated by Israeli culinary agen-cies. However, the few dishes that Jews have monopolized, such ashummus, tahini, labane, shislik, or tabule, have been appropriated to


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the extent that they have come to be identified with Israeli cuisine,and their origin is no longer acknowledged. Rasan, a chef who cur-rently cooks in Jaffa, argues that disrespect toward Palestinian foodnurtures resentment to propagate culinary knowledge among Jews:

Tourists come to our restaurants and ask for hummus, tahini and egg-plants. They talk about the wonderful Israeli food. When we tell them itis Palestinian food they eat, they think we’re lying. If you asked anyonewhat Israeli food was, he’d list our dishes without feeling guilty about it.This is why I’ll never expand the menu.

In his refusal to expand his menu to include authentic Palestiniandishes, Rasan protests against what he interprets as disrespecttoward his culinary heritage and his people’s possession of culinaryknowledge. Warda, who has recently formed a women’s self-helpgroup, feels the same way:

Personally, I don’t have a problem giving out recipes. I would have lovedto see a Palestinian cookbook published and become a best seller or res-taurants in which you and your friend can dine on dishes I eat at homeregularly. However, you are not interested either in us or in our food.You appropriate that which suits you and change it according to yourneeds, regardless of the way we eat it.

Warda’s notion of disrespect toward Palestinian culture revolvesaround two themes. First, is the lack of curiosity; second is the libertyto adjust food items to particular needs even if it offends the Palestinianway of eating. Ali, the first Palestinian to serve as an Israeli diplomat,relates the above issues to the difficulties Palestinians have to presentthemselves differently from their stereotypical image. Previous expe-rience has taught them, he assesses, that although Palestinians winacceptance among Jews on an individual basis, they still fail to winsocial acceptance as a distinctive group:

You want us as your “Arabs” but not as equal partners. We can be greatprofessionals, wonderful lovers, nice and considering neighbors, yet wewill always be first of all Arabs. You are willing to try every food onearth with the exception of our food although available within a 10 minutesdrive from your homes. He/she who wants us as Arabs and has strictideas about what Arabs are like should live with the consequences.

Ali hints to the position Palestinians occupy as “others,” which entitlesthem to resist potential appropriation of their culinary knowledge andengage in self-commodification of Palestinian food and its sustainability



within their community. His observation is seconded by others, suchas Taufic, a school inspector:

Palestinian women preserve our culinary knowledge very well. This iswhy we will never fully resemble you. Why should we give it to you forcustody? We all remember what has happened to our lands once youhave taken over.

To conclude, in their restaurants Palestinian men narrate traditionand participate in the social construction of the public image ofPalestinian cuisine and culture. In their deliberate abstention fromoffering a diverse menu, which encompasses a great variety ofPalestinian food or dishes, regularly eaten in the domestic sphere, res-taurateurs pay tribute to female culinary knowledge and sustain thegender-based division of labor. Moreover, both restaurateurs and cus-tomers sustain the distinction between domestic and public eating andexpress their respect to Palestinian women as guardians of culinaryknowledge in Palestinian homes. Finally, by restricting the menu todishes Palestinians identify as proper for eating in a restaurant andJews see as typical of Palestinian food, Palestinians protest position-ing in Israeli society and limited opportunity to commodify their food.

Conclusion

Questions surrounding the role food plays in the lives of Palestinians inIsrael dwell upon the relationship between the discourses of domesticityand tradition and the positioning of Palestinians in Israeli society. In thedomestic sphere, Palestinian women choose their own means to narratemodernity and assign it meanings, which neither offends assumptionsthat underlie Palestinians’ thinking about food nor challenges traditionaldivisions of labor in the household. Conversely, by incorporating newfoods and applying modern cooking technologies, women navigatebetween traditional expectations to sustain Palestinian culture and aneed to prepare their families to cope with challenges encountered intheir interactions with Jewish peers. Thus, they become active agentswho pave their ways of participation in Israeli society.

Just as culinary practices make it possible for women to present thePalestinian family as modern, Palestinians restaurateurs narratetradition as a means of protesting against their marginalization inIsraeli society. They deliberately construct, through the menu, a vision ofPalestinian food as limited, which rests both on traditional distinc-tions between domestic and public cooking as well as stereotypicalimages of Palestinian food among Jews.


410 L. Gvion

I believe this study contributes, in various ways, to the understand-ing of the ways in which ethnic groups develop oppositionalconsciousness by holding to culture. First, it points to the role of foodin the process of constructing and sustaining cultural distinctiveness,claiming entitlement to be different and preventing the disseminationof distinctive cultural features to those who fail to respect them. Sec-ond, like other studies (Wilk 2002) it claims global and local forceswork in partnership in different terrains and are exercised by differ-ent social agents who work in cooperation. Finally, this study assesseslimited opportunities to commodify food that make it possible forminorities to express discontent with their social marginalization andcontrol how their culinary knowledge is propagated. All of the abovepoint to the extent to which the formation of ethnic cuisine is reflectiveof the political and cultural context in which it is practiced.

Notes

Received 19 September 2007; accepted 17 September 2008.

I express my deep gratitude to Jonathan Hill and Thomas Wilson, two very dedicatedand supportive editors, and to three anonymous reviewers for their time and thoughtsinvested. All your comments were highly appreciated and improved the manuscriptsignificantly. I also thank Yolande Gottdienner and Rottem Rosenberg for their willing-ness to read two older versions of the manuscripts and provid great feedback.

Address correspondence to Liora Gvion, The Kibbutzim College of Education, 149 Namirroad, Tel-Aviv, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]

1. Kubbe senia is a dish made of alterations of dough made of burgul and semolinaand a lamb-meat mixture seasoned with spices such as pepper, cinnamon, andbaharat.

2. Sfiah is made of dough similar in texture to filo dough either covered with or stuffedwith the same meat mixture used for kubbe senia.

3. Bharat is a local version of allspice.4. The slang word for “as if” or “like.”5. A salad made of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, parsley, and toasted pita bread

broken into pieces. Nowadays, certain yuppie restaurants have incorporated thesalad in their menus.

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