BALAGAN in the BUBBLE the Gourmetization Foodscape As a Means for Constructing a National Identity

BALAGAN IN THE BUBBLE The Gourmetization Foodscape as a Means for Constructing a National Identity

Yaël van der Schelde 10242988 [email protected]

Amsterdam - 15th June 2018 MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology Department GSSS University of Amsterdam

Word count: 27.719 Supervisor: Dr. Y. van Ede Second and third readers: Dr. B. Kalir and Dr. R. Ibáñez Martín Plagiarism Declaration

I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper.

Yaël van der Schelde 15/06/2018

Acknowledgements

Yolanda - Your immense passion has been contagious. I could not wish for a wiser, more inspiring supervisor. Because of you I will now confidently call myself an anthropologist.

My family - You have always taught me to stay true to what I want and who I am. I am intensely grateful for the strong connection we have. Without you, and our best family dinners, I would never be where I am right now.

Daan - You have lifted me up when I was feeling down, gave me back confidence when I had lost it again. You are my force for stability. Thank you for being weird, it keeps me sane.

Marie and Charlotte - Our hours in the library, countless meals and many insightful conversations have given me strength on a day to day basis to get out of bed and get behind my laptop again.

And last, but certainly not least... Everyone I met and worked with in my time in Israel: my friends, roommates and interlocutors - My welcome was warmer than I could ever have hoped for. I am so thankful for you allowing me to sit at your bar for hours, ask you annoying questions, letting me into your kitchens and following you around with notebook and camera. You taught (and fed) me lessons that I will certainly cherish for the rest of my life.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 5

CHAPTER 1 20

CHAPTER 2 37

CHAPTER 3 61

CONCLUSION 82

BIBLIOGRAPHY 84

FIGURES

Figure 1. Casablanca on a Friday 9

Figure 2. Map of Tel Aviv 17

Figure 3. Modern and old buildings in Tel Aviv 20

Figure 4. A spice shop on Levinsky Market 37

Figure 5. A coffee spot on Rothschild 37

Figure 6. Shabbat dinner at Nir’s grandparents 41

Figure 7. Pita with Nutella and banana 47

Figure 8. Map of Misada 52

Figure 9. Open kitchen, bar and food display in one 52

Figure 10. Free shots at the bar 59

Figure 11. Burning sage 61

Figure 12. Money on the wall 65

Figure 13. Hierarchy in the restaurant 69

Figure 14. ‘We were all once refugees’ on a wall in Tel Aviv 71

Figure 15. Young girls in army clothing 74

INTRODUCTION

In the heat of the day Tel Aviv seems like any normal city, garish, noisy, dirty. But before the glamour of the day begins and after it has died down, the city seems to open up and has, like the light, a surprising gentle quality. This miracle occurs every day, and yet it never loses its sensational, sensuous effect. Even those who dislike Tel Aviv admit that this city has a special way of engaging all the senses: it heightens our seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling and touching, and also our imagination. In dramatic fashion it stages a riot of perception which can seem greater than the city itself. It arouses curiosity. Its impact on the senses makes one strongly suspect that the streets of this city have more to tell. (Schlör 1999: 9)

The basis for this research is to be found in my childhood. As my name might suggest, I have a Jewish background - my father’s family. I have always felt a certain connection to Judaism and to Israel, although I could never really pinpoint what gave me a sense of belonging when I would visit Israel or talk about the subject. During my last visit, prior to this research, I suddenly realized that it mostly had to do with something else that was particular about my childhood. Food! My father is a passionate home cook who has never cooked anything ‘Dutch’. We never had stamppot; instead we would have a table full of small dishes; lamb kebab with yoghurt, carrots with cumin and coriander, hummus with some extra tehina and chickpeas on top, grilled eggplant, and so on. His preference for this kind of food originated from his time in a kibbutz when he was only twenty-one. During that time, he went to visit a Jewish Moroccan family for a Shabbat weekend in the desert town of Dimona. His cooking, which has been developing ever since, resulted in our house being filled with all sorts of cookbooks, and my parents being beloved hosts of dinner parties. Besides the food itself, I also recognized the way it was being consumed. Sharing tables and dishes, eating with one's hands, talking loudly and having short heated discussions - after which both parties would passionately embrace -, it would all seem foreign to my schoolmates when they would have dinner at my home. To me, however, that was exactly what gave me a sense of belonging when I visited Israel.

Thinking about food has much to reveal about how we understand our personal and collective identities. Seemingly simple acts of eating are flavored with complicated and sometimes contradictory cultural meanings. Philosopher Uma Narayan cited by Ilan Zvi Baron (2016: 270)

As the quote of Narayan suggests, much can be said about a certain culture and personal identification when researching food and food habits. This thesis attempts to understand the restaurant scene of the center of Tel Aviv, and its actors, through the concept of a foodscape. Tel Aviv knows a particular food culture that I will define as the gourmetization foodscape, which finds its basis in the attempt to create a ‘New Israeli Cuisine’. Gourmetization is essentially defined as food that before was not classified as high culture, but now is. This term is mostly used for home cooked food and street food (Johnston and Baumann 2014). Although one could argue gourmetization in Israel also relates to burgers, pasta and sushi, I will not go into those foods, because they are not part of what is currently defined as the national cuisine - which is what I aim to analyze. Before I went to Tel Aviv this January, I already had a vivid idea in mind of what the foodscape would involve. When I got there, however, I was constantly overwhelmed by the chaos and unexpected turns. This ‘balagan’ I encountered was very characterizing for my time in Tel Aviv.

It is Friday one o’clock, when I arrive at the restaurant Casablanca, where I meet my friends. The place is located on a square right across from the Great Synagogue. Since it is immensely popular and they do not take any reservations, there are people waiting for a seat everywhere on the square; even the stairs of the Synagogue are being used as waiting spot. The fact that Casablanca is so close to the synagogue strikes me as funny, because if anything, Casablanca is the opposite of religious. The owner, the famous TV chef, Ido Levy, who is well known for his outspoken style, made sure this place is very non-religious, like most of Tel Aviv. The non-kosher restaurant is also hard to be just called a restaurant, since there is always a DJ, playing records, and the high valued food is often served in paper bags or

6 cardboard plates. The high status of the chef does not make this place fancy as I know it: bread is ripped, the masabacha is wiped, everything is shared and waiters give away shots of arak, reserving one for themselves, knocking them over together with their customers. The influences of various cuisines and nationalities are very apparent at this place. On the menu there is gefilte fish, a classic Ashkenazi dish, along with many different Middle Eastern dishes, in a place with a Moroccan name, and finally, the chef himself proclaims that he makes food that can be called ‘new Israeli’. We order a dish that is especially striking to me when it comes to gourmetization. It says on the menu: ‘two slices of bread, with half an onion, tomato salsa and olive oil’, and it turns out to be just that. Two slices of bread are being served in a paper bag, together with a plate of tomato salsa and oil and on that there is crème fraîche turned over. When the waiter serves it, he takes off the container, leaving us with the whole content of the crème fraîche. It is a performance on its own. Around four o’clock ‘the party is over’ and Casablanca, like the other restaurants on the square, is closing. From this hour, the streets are emptying, the endless honking by taxis stops, public transportation takes a near 24 hour break and it is no longer possible to do grocery shopping, except for at the AMPM, a supermarket chain true to its name. By the time the clock strikes seven, and the sun is already down, every Tel Avivian seems to be inside, with family; having Shabbat dinner. The extremely secular city seems to have turned into its big traditional brother. While people are often celebrating Shabbat for traditional reasons and less so for religious ones, suddenly the Jewish character becomes clear and like so many things in Tel Aviv the situations I come across are confusing and contradicting, and often hard to categorize. However, the phenomenon that I am interested in, gourmetization, seems to fit this paradoxical quality very well. Field notes 24-02-2018

As becomes clear in the text above, the restaurant scene was exciting and confusing at the same time. I became interested in what this foodscape means to its participants, and how it becomes part of their identity. During the many conversations I had and the long days I spent with my interlocutors, I came to two understandings about the way they value not only the food they make, but more importantly the place they work at and the city it represents. Firstly, the foodscape they were in showed to be a reflection of their life experiences, ideas and often political views. And secondly, the world views they carried out formed the basis of their sense of belonging. In all my reading, I did not find other researchers who conceived any foodscape to be a means for the construction of a national cuisine in Israel. With this thesis I aim to contribute to the understanding of this construction, as well as to a broader understanding of the ways in which a national cuisine can be constructed. The exciting process of establishing a national cuisine is now taking place, and interestingly enough it is not homogeneous, but rather characterized by its fusion. They are in search of a new Israeli cuisine, one identity, but on the other side of the same coin, this new identity exists of a pattern of heterogeneous tastes. Also, you will find some restaurants in other cities that show similarities to what is happening in Tel Aviv, but the latter is undoubtedly the epicenter of the foodscape. Interestingly enough, Tel Aviv is seen as a ‘Bubble’; particularly different from the rest of Israel. However, this is the place where a national cuisine is constructed. This research aims to understand this tension by analyzing how the participants of this foodscape construct a cultural identity and an idea of Israeliness that might not be consistent with a general national identity, but fits their own life world, and relates to a certain kind of national identity. The question answered in this research is: How does the gourmetization foodscape of Tel Aviv reflect its participants’ relationship to a national identity as well as being a place where they create a sense of belonging?

Figure 1. Casablanca on a Friday

The formation of a national identity

Smith argues that national identity is socially constructed, and at the same time a historic core counts as its basis; a sense of “the homeland” (Smith 1991: 9). The notion of a national identity arising from a sense of continuity, collective memory and a shared destiny, derives from the logical idea that “people survive in some form because they are rooted in their homelands and enjoy a large measure of independent statehood” (ibid.). For the Jewish community and in the case of Israel, however, this explanation does not simply apply: there was no state, and the Jews know a long history of exile. Still, this case can be understood through Smith’s theory, since for this community these two important factors were “more […] a symbol than a living memory” (Smith 1991: 33). Zionism, the national ideology that aimed to rebuild the Jewish homeland in the historic land of Israel, long was the manifestation of that symbol. For the Jewish community the absence of a homeland did not mean they could not form a collective identity, which can be understood through the concept of “victim diaspora” (Cohen 1999: 31). This term explains “people who have survived and been displaced by catastrophe, the memories of which continue to bind them together on some level” (Levy and Weingrod 2005: 53). A physical homeland only came into being in 1948 - less than a lifetime ago - when Israel was founded. Since then a national identity could be formed, which replaced the earlier collective identity that was based on the imagining of a nation.

Apart from its historic basis, Smith argues, nationalism is fundamentally secular, but at the same time religious nationalism should not be excluded. For the Jews in particular, the idea of a nation had always been closely connected to their religion (Smith 1991: 49). According to Kalir, “an analysis of Israeli public opinion cannot disregard the underlying national sentiment of most Jewish Israelis, who see themselves not only as members of the state of Israel but also crucially as belonging to a Jewish nation” (Kalir 2010: 54). For Jewish Israelis - which most of my interlocutors identified as - Israel is inherently Jewish, and religion is an important aspect of their sense of belonging and of their imagining the state as a community. Anderson understands a nation as an ‘imagined community’. It is imagined “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 1983 [2006]: 6). And he calls it a community, because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (ibid.: 7). For Anderson, a common language is the most significant factor in imagining a community. He gives the example of reading the newspaper, which he calls a mass ceremony. When a person reads the newspaper, s/he knows that this is simultaneously done by thousand (or million) others. Anderson poses the following questions: “What more vivid figure of the secular, historically clocked, imagined community can be envisioned?” (ibid.: 35). Sutton argues, however, that food is a better example, for it is less based on cognitivity and is “one of the mundane reminders that keep national identity “near the surface of daily life” so that people do not forget their nationality” (Sutton 2001: 127). Consuming food, because of it being a basic human need, is thus one of the most direct ways of identifying with one’s nation. I argue that food and nationality are inextricably linked; by imagining a cuisine, a community is imagined. The formation of a national identity is mostly based on cultural production (Vinitzky- Seroussi 1998: 187). For instance, through festivals, rituals, commemorations, food and language. In the case of Israel, the Zionist movement chose the historic language Hebrew, which at the time was only used for religious purposes and which referred to their ancient claim to the land. Since the language was not used for everyday life by almost anyone, it could function as a way to construct a national identity. The aim to create a general cuisine in Israel, by mixing a variety of cuisines, like Anderson understands the introduction of one single language, creates the feeling of community. In Israel, a country defined by its fusion of

ethnic groups, the formation of a general national identity was attempted in the fifties by the dominant melting-pot ideology.

This ideology proclaims the relinquishment of particular ethnic identities and the formation of an overall Israeli common character, thus converting a heterogeneous conglomerate of separate immigrant subgroups into a homogeneous nation with mutually shared goals and aspirations. (Shapira and Navon 1991: 110)

In contemporary Israel, this still applies - mainly maintained by the obligatory military service, which Anderson also points out as an important factor of the imagined community. The community is so well imagined that people are colossally willing to die for one’s country (Anderson 1983: 155). I agree with Vinitzky-Seroussi, however, that one main distinction between two general national identities in Israel can be made (Vinitzky-Seroussi 1998). One is referred to as manifested most significantly in (the center of) Tel Aviv and the other one in Jerusalem. Although my research was not located in Jerusalem, the rift was often mentioned in my conversations with interlocutors. By theoretically comparing Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the national identity mostly linked to Tel Aviv, and most relevant to my research, can be contextualized. This way, Tel Aviv - although seen as a Bubble; different from the rest of Israel - can be the place where a national cuisine is in construction.

National cuisine and foodscapes

Food is an important factor in the process of constructing a national identity. According to Appadurai, a national cuisine is mostly constructed by cookbooks. He notes that:

[Cookbooks] combine the sturdy pragmatic virtues of all manuals with the vicarious pleasures of the literature of the senses. They reflect shifts in the boundaries of edibility, the proprieties of the culinary process, the logic of meals, the exigencies of the household budget, the vagaries of the market, and the structure of domestic ideologies. (Appadurai 1988: 3)

The construction of a national cuisine demonstrates the historical and cultural context in which it appears (Appadurai 1988: 22). Like all cultural phenomena, a national

cuisine is not fixed. In this manner, Appadurai rejects the notion of a center-periphery model, when it comes to the phenomenon of globalization; according to him “the new global cultural economy has to be understood as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order” (Appadurai 1990: 296). Through his notion of the formation of nations and communities, the blurred lines of the Israeli cuisine too can be understood. He uses Anderson’s ideas on imagined communities to explain how flows of scapes (ethno-, techno-, media-, finan-, and ideoscapes) constantly influence the “imagined world” of people. These scapes all influence each other and are not fixed; they are highly subjective and informed by “the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sorts of actors” (ibid.: 297). And so, the Israeli cuisine can become a flexible scape where imagination is constantly influenced by other scapes. In regard to Israeli cuisine, it is important to acknowledge the binary categorization often made between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews. Sephardic Jews, who descend from Spain and Portugal, share a lot of history with Mizrahi Jews, so to my interlocutors they would often fall under the category of Mizrahi. This binary categorization, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, was first formulated by the Israeli CBS indicating the perception of cultural and social differences between the two. Mizrahi means ‘east’ in Hebrew, which indicates that these Jews have their roots east - in Middle Eastern and Arab countries. Ashkenazi Jews descend from Europe. Their complicated relationship starts with Zionism. The mainly traditional Mizrahi Jews were initially less involved in this secular political ideology that originated in Eastern Europe. Ashkenazi Jews were the founders of the state of Israel, and Mizrahi Jews, who overwhelmingly arrived after the state came into being, were often seen or felt treated as second class citizens. To this day there are still traces to be found from this status classification, although it becomes less significant and there are increasingly more Mizrahi Jews in high functions. For food, this division has meant that it is part of the discourse, but it has not necessarily led to the same status hierarchy. Often Ashkenazi food is seen as “coming straight out of the washing machine”, since it is considered to be tasteless and pale, while Mizrahi food is seen as exotic and exciting. Instead of only considering internal tensions in Israeli society, there are much more factors that influence a cuisine. Drawing on Appadurai’s notion of scapes, Johnston and Baumann offer the concept foodscape as “a dynamic social construction that relates food to places, people, meanings, and material processes” (Johnston and Baumann 2014: 3). Instead of the material form of food, the political-economic structures of the food industry and the places that produce food being disconnected, they see those aspects as holistically connected.

It functions as a way to connect food culture to food materiality, and, in the case of my research, as a frame to understand the Tel Avivian food culture. Like Ariel points out, “[as] foods become increasingly global and foodways are gradually homogenized, national groups affirm their distinctiveness through assertions of food authenticity” (Ariel 2012: 34). In chapter two, I will explain how the gourmetization foodscape sets itself apart and how, in doing so, the ambiguous term authenticity is part of the discourse that is used. This thesis demonstrates how people construct a national cuisine, by bringing together traditions in food, and inventing new ones. This bottom-up approach shows how people in the small space - that is a restaurant - contribute to the construction of a national cuisine and thereby demonstrate their national identity.

Place-belongingness

I argue that a national identity is appropriated by people not on abstract macro levels, but rather through a small manageable space. This is similar to the way in which I earlier argued how an imagined community is built; not through a distant concept of nationalism, but through banal daily practices or reminders. A sense of belonging made it possible for my interlocutors to create their own culture, in which these daily practices are carried out. By creating their own culture, they were able to get a sense of belonging in the restaurants, which made it possible to get a sense of a national identity. In his overview on belongingness, Antonsich divides this notion into two concepts: ‘politics of belonging’ and ‘place-belongingness’. The former has to do with socio-spatial inclusion and exclusion, and the latter, on which I will focus, with a personal sense of being ‘at home’ in a place (Antonsich 2001: 645). Belonging on a national level, reinforces the construction of a national identity; a sense of the homeland, as explained by Smith. A sense of home, and of belonging, however, can also be felt in a smaller space, like a restaurant for instance. As I will explain in chapter three, my interlocutors often characterized the restaurants they worked at as a place that felt like home, often calling their colleagues brothers and sisters. According to Antonsich, “‘home’ stands for a symbolic space of familiarity, comfort, security, and emotional attachment” (ibid.: 646). He shows how feelings of belonging to a place are linked to identity construction. This is how I could understand the actions of my interlocutors as performances of identity. The place where people feel they belong is undeniably connected to how they want to identify. Furthermore, he mentions five

factors that can contribute to generate a feeling of belonging: auto-biographical, relational, cultural, economic and legal. For my research I will mostly concentrate on the auto- biographical, relational and cultural factors. I will shortly explain the other two, because they are less, but still of some importance to my research. Economic factors “contribute to create a safe and stable material condition for the individual and her/his family” (Antonsich 2010: 648). Antonsich uses the example of refugees who are financially secured by a job; they are significantly more successful in creating a sense of belonging in their new homeland (ibid.). The restaurant is an interesting place considering economic factors, since it is a business that provides jobs for people. Also, it is eminently a place where food and the performance of a certain identity become a commodity. This research, however, shows how these factors actually contribute to the desire to be included. Legal factors involve issues of citizenship and resident permits. The “formal structure of belonging [allows an individual to] participate in and actively shape one’s environment, which is deemed important in generating feelings of belonging” (Antonsich 2010: 648). Some of my interlocutors were refugees and this status sometimes influenced their connection to Israel negatively, but the restaurant often functioned as their second home. Auto-biographical factors involve attachment through one’s personal history; experiences, relationships, and memories to a certain place. In the case of my interlocutors, they would often refer to childhood memories and Shabbat dinners at their parents or grandparents. Although they would think of another place, they would find a part of that in the restaurant, similar to how Antonsich explains that “memories of one’s ancestors also contribute to feelings of place-belongingness” (Antonsich 2001: 647). The auto-biographical factors turned out to be very important in my research, which is why they are a significant part of the third chapter. In the life histories of the people I interviewed I found countless reasons for why they felt a connection to the place; in stories about their army time, the fusion of food when they grew up and their political encounters. Antonsich divides relational factors into two categories: dense and weak ties. The latter, interactions with strangers, would not be sufficient to provide a sense of belongingness. Dense ties, on the other hand, are relationships with friends and family. If those are “long- lasting, positive, stable and significant, [and] ‘take place’ through frequent physical interaction”, they can lead to a sense of (group) belonging (Antonsich 2010: 647). This I found often in the restaurants, many of my interlocutors would refer to one another as close friends, and sometimes as family members even.

Lastly, for cultural factors, language is valued as the most important one, for a “particular language stands for a particular way of constructing and conveying meaning” (Antonsich 2001: 648). In politics of belonging, language is often used to create a ‘we’ and ‘them’ dichotomy, but in place-belongingness, language is used to create a sense of community, which can generate feelings of intimacy and a sense of feeling ‘at home’. Antonsich mentions how other forms of cultural expressions can lead to a similar feeling, of which food production and consumption are a part of (ibid.). People were creators of their own culture, which involves habits, rituals, obviously food production and consumption and even the creation and practice of a communal language. In my research, the restaurants function as a place where a sense of belonging is generated by my interlocutors, which reflects their relationship to a national identity.

Researching restaurants

My research took place in the center of Tel Aviv, where the gourmetization foodscape is most apparent. Before I started this research, I already had an idea of what kind of restaurants there are in Tel Aviv and the local discourse that categorizes them. After I had read about gourmetization I started doing research online on which restaurants fit my concept of the term; by contacting a number of locals that are interested in food, as well as reading blogs and review websites. The search for representative restaurants turned out to be easier than I anticipated. I chose three restaurants with which I worked closest. The ones I selected all communicated having a new outtake on traditional foods, and two of them specifically claim to reinvent Israeli cuisine. My options, however, went far beyond the three I chose; I discovered that a lot of restaurants actively communicate having the same premise - articles on various Israeli websites also indicate that many Tel Avivian chefs are in search of a national cuisine. Therefore, I believe it is safe to say that the restaurants I chose were representative for the center of Tel Aviv. I emphasize on the center, because most of the restaurants that are part of the gourmetization foodscape are situated in the center or in the, just now gentrified, neighborhood Florentin (Figure 1.). Together with my interlocutors I simplistically categorized the different restaurants of the city for the purpose of understanding the position of the gourmetization foodscape. According to them, their restaurants fit the category of modern Israeli. Other categories were, among others, ‘traditional’ - which came

in many different forms; like Yemenite, Ethiopian or Polish, ‘Italian’, ‘hummusiya’ (hummus restaurant), ‘burgers’, ‘Japanese’, ‘haute cuisine’ and ‘street food’; mostly falafel and kebab. I visited the three restaurants I chose on a regular basis, I conducted all of my interviews there and worked in their kitchens. However, I did include other restaurants, some of them fell under another category, and other under the same, like Casablanca - the one I mentioned in the earlier vignette, but at those I only observed and had short conversations. Misada, which translates into ‘restaurant’, is what initially got me thinking about street food that retrieved a new higher status. This restaurant is from Ido Levy, who is also the owner of Casablanca. At Misada, the cooks put all kinds of dishes in a pita, which is according to them ‘essentially Israeli’; because it is new, done in Israel and the products are local. The atmosphere is very informal; the cooks shout whenever a dish is ready, for the customers to come and get it, the food is served in paper bags and it feels like an updated snack bar. Furthermore, like in many restaurants in Tel Aviv, drinking is an important part of the day, at this restaurant it is even ritualized and done daily at one o’clock. Apart from this particular Misada, which is situated right in the center of Tel Aviv, there are two other establishments of the restaurant in the city. Mishpacha, meaning ‘family’, is a restaurant founded by two brothers. It is situated a little north from the center, in the high tech area. When they initially opened their restaurant, it was not very well received by the public. The owners wanted to have a restaurant which was a lot like the traditional shipudia, an Israeli grill place, like they knew from their childhood. When their first attempt failed, they realized that they should modernize the idea of a shipudia and experiment with an interpretation of the traditional one. Now, the chef is an important figure in establishing a New Israeli Cuisine. Their menu consists of local ingredients, creative coal grill dishes, (‘Israeli’) burgers, mainly Mizrahi dishes, and some Ashkenazi influences (like challe). The restaurant is open every day from twelve till twelve. During lunch it is mostly filled with people who work in the area, and at night, when the restaurant turns more into a bar, the place attracts mostly young people (25-40 years old). On Fridays and Saturdays they serve a lunch buffet, which is enjoyed by a mixed audience. With their big terrace, the place has a lot of variety to offer. Shawia & Sons is a (mainly) Yemenite restaurant in Florentin. The father of one of the owners has a Yemenite bakery in Tel Aviv, and this restaurant is a modernized version of that bakery. They serve mainly Yemenite food, but also hummus and shakshuka. The fusion of cuisines is very notable here. The place is especially very busy on Friday afternoons, when there is a big line in front of the restaurant and people are handed free beers until they can be

16 seated. As with the two previous places, here there are a lot of sharing tables, which again makes this place very informal. In the following chapters, I will elaborate more on the restaurants, since they are both setting as well as subject of this research.

Figure 2. Map of Tel Aviv

Exploring the field

During my fieldwork my approach was relatively informal and loose. Pretty soon into my fieldwork I realized that the people I was working with, and the environment we were in, did not fit a strict approach. The gourmetization foodscape is pre-eminently one where one

should ‘go with the flow’, not only because the ‘balagan’ will not allow convention, but even more so because otherwise I would have missed out on a lot of knowledge. As I mentioned in the previous section, I conducted most of my research at three restaurants; there I built close relationships with employees and restaurateurs. I participated in as many daily practices as possible. I spent hours sitting at their bars - talking to them about their lives, food and Israel. A number of times I helped out in the kitchens, where I cut vegetables, composed salads, and kept a close eye on how all of the dishes were made. I served food to customers, and had brief conversations with them. I talked to dishwashers, hosts, owners, managers, bartenders, cashiers, cleaners, deliverers, and to some of their friends and family members; the whole spectrum. Among them were mostly Jewish people and two Arab Israelis, but also some Sudanese and Eritrean refugees, some of them Christian and others Muslim. The age range was between eighteen and 39 years old. The number of employees in the restaurants went from twenty at Shawia & Sons, to 110 at Mishpacha. Most of the interviews were conducted at the restaurant the interviewee worked at. This place was chosen both out of practical considerations (these people had little time off), but also because it often seemed the most natural setting. They always seemed very relaxed at this setting. I would often set up an interview after or before working hours, and I would pick out the area that was most quiet. It should be taken into account that it was actually always very loud in the restaurant, but this would often help the interview go more smoothly. Before I would set up an interview with someone, I would have spoken to that person for many times already. This would make them trust me, and at the same time give me access to topics in a later interview. According to Driessen and Janssen,

[...] small talk gives access to information that is difficult to get otherwise but that could be central to understanding culture: rituals that are not on the official program, activities not in line with formal ideologies, double meanings, unspoken antagonisms, muted criticism, cartoons, jokes, or secrets. (Driessen and Janssen 2017: 260)

Furthermore, to make my interlocutors at ease during the interview - which they often still found somewhat intimidating - I would first talk about topics that would not ask to much from them. We would talk about food, and I would focus on getting a sense of what they felt was important and particular about the food culture in Tel Aviv. When those topics would be

thoroughly discussed and they would be comfortable with the interview, I would turn to their personal life histories, desires and political views. For all of my interlocutors I have used pseudonyms, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I told them I would do so before every interview - that way they felt more secured to open up about personal stories. Secondly, because my research revolved mainly about the profession they were in, some of their stories could potentially harm their relationship with their employees, colleagues or employers. And lastly, the restaurants I have worked with, all have made a good name for themselves, and although I do not think I write anything that will endanger that name, I want to be precautious. Thus, for all the above reasons I have tried to ensure the anonymity of my interlocutors and restaurants. Besides writing down my encounters and interviews, I also collected visual data. During my fieldwork, I would always carry my camera and my phone with me, to capture the look and feel of my surroundings: the atmosphere, the colors, the screaming and the high or low speed of it all. In the discipline dominated by words, visual anthropology has not gained the status of general anthropology (yet), but there is no doubt that film can function as a legitimate research method (Hockings 2003). The camera can function both as a catalyst of meaning and knowledge, and as a transmitter of knowledge where text falls short. My field was, at times, a lot to take in at once. I found that filming helped me remember small sensuous details, when I would review the recordings I had made. Furthermore, a selection of the photos is included in this thesis for demonstration purposes. A short film is still worked on, but the text - with visual hints - is ready to be read!

CHAPTER 1

REPUTATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF TEL AVIV

Figure 3. The brown and white city: modern and old buildings in Tel Aviv

Hill of Spring: Imagining a city

In a certain sense, the imagining and construction of Tel Aviv was an attempt to secularize space, to make what had been the biblical Land of Israel - dreamt and written about for thousands of years, and which God’s presence abided - into an actual space - a place with the attributes of home. (Mann 2006: 5)

Today, walking the long boulevard, with the Mediterranean shore line on your one side and the impressive, ostensibly eternally in construction skyline on your other, who would ever believe that this city only exists little over a hundred years? In 1909 Tel Aviv was initially founded as a garden suburb of the (biblical) port city of Jaffa. Its founding and further development was governed by Zionist, Garden City and Modern Movements (Schlör 1999: 11). Within only two decades the city had already surpassed Jaffa in population and it grew out to be the cultural and economic center of Israel and its main gate to the outside world (Kipnis 2014: 186). To understand how this rapid development came to be, first needs to be explained which cultural and political grounds made the city into a unique space in time. Before the city even existed, there was already the conception - the fantasy - of Tel Aviv as a space. The name of the city is a translation of the book Altneuland by Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. In this book he envisions a Jewish state as a utopian model society with a liberal and modern social character. The title of the book functioned as inspiration to the founders of Tel Aviv; they translated it into Tel Aviv (‘Hill of Spring’). Here, tel meaning ‘heap of ancient ruins’, refers to an archeological site built on previous settlements, and aviv, meaning ‘spring’, refers to newness and rebirth (Israel Yearbook and Almanac 1999: 11-12). This literary name represents both the contradiction of recognizing history as its basis together with emphasizing its modernity through its rebirth, which is as the hopeful ideological character of the newborn city. The city as imagined by Herzl was the ultimate utopia; Jewish, European and modern, with white buildings and many green gardens, “[without] prehistory - and therefore indisputably and authentically Zionist” (Nitzan-Shiftan 2009: 58). At the same time, however, this premise of a city arising from “nothingness” conflicts with the establishment of Tel Aviv “[as] part of a fundamental revolution in modern Jewish culture regarding notions of space and place’ (Mann 2006: xii). Political Zionism was critiquing the normative notion

of Jews as “rootless” and “people of time”, and so Tel Aviv as “the first Hebrew City” could be seen as the best example of fulfilling the desire to give Jews a place in history and make them a “people of space” (ibid.).

The population: rifts inside the community

Mann claims that there were many different Jews with different motives, so their approach toward Tel Aviv as their new home varied fundamentally. According to her, “one of the ways these disparities were ostensibly dissolved was through the conception of Tel Aviv as a ‘Jewish’ city” (Mann 2006: xii). But still, now that there was a place where Jews of all kinds belonged, did not mean there were no difficulties. Besides complicated attitudes toward the apparent “other”, the Arab population, there were also internal Jewish differences, mainly between Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews. To fully understand Israeli society today, and that of Tel Aviv, this internal rift must be taken into consideration, because it still counts as the basis for many current frustrations. Much has been written about the so-called Ashkenazi-Zionist hegemony. In her article on hegemonic ethnicity Sasson-Levy draws the ethnic hierarchy within Israeli-Jewish society, which is mainly based on this rift. She explains how Ashkenazi Jews represent the upper and middle classes, both in regard to class and social status and how Mizrahi Jews on their turn mostly represent the lower classes (Sasson-Levy 2013: 28). I do not want to suggest that these are the only Jewish communities that exist in current Israeli-Jewish society, because, as Sasson-Levy also explains, “the massive immigration from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and the arrival of the Ethiopian Jewish community, both starting in the early 1990s, complicated the ethnic map of Israel; nonetheless, Ashkenazim still represent the dominant group” (ibid.). How complicated the ethnic map of Israel is, becomes clear in the CBS statistics of the country. The majority of the population is Jewish, which originated from over forty countries. Twenty percent of the population is Arab, who also do not fall not under the same category; there are, among many other groups, Arab Christians and Druze. Furthermore, Israel is also home to Syriac Christians, as well as African refugees. And still, I have not named all of the different ethnic groups that live in Israel, but this short summary functions to show the complexity of the many national influences. For my research I will only focus on the Mizrahi and Ashkenazi differences, for those are the main forces that are shaping Israeli cuisine. Also, during my fieldwork I have

22 experienced comments on people’s ‘Ashkenaziness’ or ‘Mizrahiness’, and even sometimes of that of my own. For instance, one day, around one o’clock in the afternoon, when the staff at Misada would usually have their first toast with shots. When Aviv, a Mizrahi Jew, asked me what kind of shot I would prefer, holding up a bottle of Campari and Arak, I chose Campari, because of its less alcoholic taste and with my eye on the clock. He then told me that that was ‘so Ashkenazi’ of me, jokingly. Arak is an alcoholic spirit originating from the Levant and Campari is from Italy. Also, Campari is seen as worldly, classy and luxurious, while Arak is old school and traditional. He thus linked Arak to Mizrahi and Campari to Ashkenazi and by asking me this question he put me up for a test. Since Aviv was the most outspoken and joking interlocutor I have had and since I never came across such a remark again I did not take it as a general perspective, but it did point out that there certainly still exists the idea of the differences being distinct. Furthermore, these comments were not limited to people’s ethnic descent only, but also to that of foods. However, in regard to food, there was generally a different status ascribed (often the opposite) to its ethnic descent, than to people’s ethnic descent. On this topic I will elaborate more in the next chapter. The two groups, Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, were also divided in the city of Tel Aviv. This translated into the wealthier North of the city being mostly inhabited by Ashkenazi middle and upper classes, and the South (-east), which is more in decay, by Mizrahi lower classes (Schipper 2016: 256). This socio spatial polarization was reinforced by the process of globalization the city is now in, the South now also being populated by African refugees; mostly around the Hatachana Station (ibid.).

Globalization and independency

Globalization has resulted in an increase of wealth, which has made the city into the most expensive city in the country and thus housing became generally highly unaffordable (Schipper 2016: 522). I distinctly remember my visit in the summer of 2011, my family and I were walking past one of Tel Aviv’s main streets Rothschild, and it was very different than we knew it. Usually this street breaths serenity; its many symbolic Sycamore trees carry their leaves gently, so that their shadows make the big boulevard the ultimate sun release in the summer. This summer, however, the street was marked by something totally different than ease. Rothschild had now made place to house “the largest socio economic protest movement in Israeli history, directed against decades of neoliberalization” (ibid.). Initially, there were

some protest tents blocking the way in the street, but soon enough the protest grew out to be a mass movement with rallies “up to 400 000 people weekly” (ibid.: 523). During my fieldwork all of my interlocutors, without exception, told me how expensive Tel Aviv is to live in. One evening at a Shabbat dinner I talked to the wife of one of the owners of a restaurant (a math teacher at a private school), and I was surprised when she told me that they would not be able to afford a house in Tel Aviv. Together they form a middle class couple, both working full time and making a good salary. Since most Israeli banks ask for 25-30% down payment, Tel Aviv has become unaffordable. She was upset that even they had to turn to suburbs. Another interlocutor gave me his views on the expensiveness of life in Tel Aviv, and in doing so he summarized the general perspective of all Tel Avivians I met:

Eli: Tel Avivians don’t care about the future, because the economic situation here is that you cannot live in Tel Aviv and at the same time safe money. Everybody here spends everything they have every month, and go in debt even. You have to understand that it is like that, if you want to live here, that is your life. I think it is starting to be a big metropolitan city in the world.

The housing crisis in Tel Aviv has mainly derived from its “high degree of relative autonomy in relation to the national state” (Schipper 2016: 526). In their article, Alfasi and Fenster show how different the municipalities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv work in order to compare the two cities in an age of globalization and how their “cultural, political and economic differences continue to grow” (Alfasi and Fenster 2005: 351). The capital city of Jerusalem is bigger than Tel Aviv, although the latter is in the country’s biggest metropolitan area. Furthermore, Jerusalem is the sacred place to the three main monotheistic religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The city is ascribed a very different status than secular Tel Aviv. Where Jerusalem’s holiness is symbolized by its buildings, Tel Aviv’s sandy beaches symbolizes “the city’s secularity and stands for its dynamic, open mood” (Alfasi and Fenster 2015: 352). This resembles how I described Tel Aviv in my field notes in my third week there: “The city is an oasis at sea. It stands for the good life”. Since the very beginning Tel Aviv has maintained a very independent identity, trying to run its municipality and financial affairs independent from the national government. The self-governing city emphasized international contacts, and this enforced the influences of

24 globalization more so than in other parts of Israel, without the exception of the capital Jerusalem. The gained affluence of the city was based on, among other things, the city’s owned property and land, but more importantly the independent financial resources the city has; not being “financially supported by the Ministry of the Interior” (Schipper 2016: 526). Its independency is enforced by the influences of globalization (Alfasi and Fenster 2015: 352).

Contemporary globalization is the increasing flow of trade, finance, culture, ideas, and people brought about by the sophisticated technology of communications and travel and by the worldwide spread of neoliberal capitalism, and it is the local and regional adaptations to and resistances against these flows. (Lewellen 2002: 7)

The quote above shows the general anthropological approach to globalization. The global process has been influencing the local and regional levels, which can lead to different affects: resistance or adaptation. Many anthropologists use center-periphery models like these (Ram 2004; Lewellen 2004; Eriksen 2014). This idea, however, implies approaching researching globalization as a binary opposition. Much has been written about how globalization has had a very different impact on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (Alfasi and Fenster 2015; Schipper 2016; Ram 2013). This again implies a binary opposition. Ram proposes a helpful “unitary contradictory complementation” to understand these differences, without seeing them as being separated. In his book The Globalization of Israel: McWorld in Tel Aviv, Jihad in Jerusalem he describes McWorld as being “the world of universal commercial brands” and Jihad as “the world of communitarian holy wars” (Ram 2013: 12). By understanding globalization in Israel, through this concept, one can see how Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have had a very different reaction to the phenomenon, and how they relate to one another. In his book, Ram quotes Ben Ami, historian and former minister in a Labor government, just after current prime-minister Benyamin Netanyahu was elected in 1996 (after the former one Yizhak Rabin had been assassinated) where he explains how this election is a metaphor for the rift in Israel. It reflects the identities of both cities very well and at the same time marks a turning point when the differences between them grew and became even more apparent:

This schism [between the cities] today converges inside it all the schisms in Israel. ‘Tel Aviv’ is the manifestation of an updated ‘Israeliness’, one that does not hold the Uzi [shotgun] anymore, and does not follow the plough, but believes in the state of Israel as a judicial entity and central axis of secular national identity. This is no more a mobilized society. It substituted the pioneering ethos with an urge to ‘[economic] growth’, a belief in all sorts of ‘information highways’, [a global city] in which there is a room for Madonna and McDonald’s. This is Israel who is eager for peace and ready to pay high price for it… This yearning of ‘Tel Avivian’ Israeliness for ‘normalcy’ at all cost, is regarded by the other Israel, the ‘Jerusalemite’ Israel, as a shallow yearning, devoid of historical depth and liberated from the burden of Jewish memory and history… The ‘Jerusalemite’ Israeliness is the yearning for Jewish roots, is the manifestation of almost perennial fear from the Arab and a deeply rooted distrust in non-Jews. The peace that the labor party reached for, held within it not only the threat of returning of the [Palestinian] territories, but also the threat of the ‘returning’ of history itself, the forgetfulness of Jewish memory and the decline of Jewish identity. The ‘Tel Avivian’ peace was considered as an attack on the Jewish tradition and roots, and in fact on the Jewishness of the state… (Ram 2013: 121)

While globalization influences Jerusalem in becoming more religious and “still influenced traditional norms of governance based on the homogeneous Jewish nationality”, Tel Aviv is becoming more secular and “internalizes such values of citizenship as a global city” (Alfasi and Fenster 2005). The last decades a lot of religious people have left Tel Aviv and secular people have left Jerusalem for those reasons. Also, the autonomous municipality of Tel Aviv functions as an important agent in this process, in a way that it is actively framing Tel Aviv as a global city. Since 2010, the municipality has made positioning Tel Aviv as a global city a political goal. On the official website of the city this goal is described as: “[ensuring Tel Aviv as] a leading international business center that specializes in innovation”. The pillars the municipality is focusing on are attracting international tourists, creating economic development and enforcing global communications. According to Alfasi and Fenster, Tel Aviv-Jaffa should be seen as a local globality, opposed to Jerusalem, which

is in their terms a global locality. The term local globality indicates that it is the “focal point for a local cluster of globalized economic activities” (Alfasi and Fenster 2009: 553). Still, looking at Tel Aviv only through its relationship with Jerusalem and their “unitary contradictory complementation”, as Ram proposes, is downplaying the complexity of the globalized city. Since culture is not static, Tel Aviv too cannot be understood as having a static identity. The ostensible arbitrary contradictions I have found during my research make more sense in light of Appadurai’s theory of flows and scapes. Tel Aviv’s high tech industry is where these flows of scapes are best notable, and this too is very specific for the city’s particular global attitude. Israel is often dubbed the ‘Start- Up Nation’ and a big part of the coastal area ‘Silicon Wadi’, referring to Silicon Valley, where Valley is replaced by Wadi - which means ‘canyon’ and is commonly used in both Hebrew and Arabic. At the very center of this high tech industry is Tel Aviv: “Tel Aviv metropolitan area is the central hub of commercial and high-tech activity as well as the dominant international gateway to Israel for people, capital and trade” (Roper and Grimes 2005: 303). This means that the city attracts a lot of young internationals, mainly European and American Jews. This industry is an easy entrance for these people to live and work in Israel, so I have noticed during my fieldwork. Some of my friends were working in this business and they told me that it is significantly easy to get a job there, which pays relatively well. In order to be eligible, an academic diploma is a big advantage, but there is often no need to have prior knowledge of high-tech. As a result of the developed high tech industry, many people on the street speak English, and there seems to be a general desire to improve and develop. Ram claims that the state is not the most important force in regard to the Israeli economy anymore. He notices how the high tech industry has mainly taken over this function and how that has created a new kind of elite group (Ram 2013: 112). Alfasi and Fenster recognize a same kind of category in Tel Aviv and use Florida’s (2002) concept of the “emergence of a “creative class” that is currently transforming the urban lifestyle. The creative class encompasses scientists, high-technology workers, and R&D personnel, as well as artists, designers, architects, and the like” (Florida 2002: 547). This new class has the tendency to be tolerant towards diversity, which means that “[the barriers are low for] the entry of human capital” (ibid.), leading to a more social openness. Tel Aviv is, for example, known for its vibrant gay community (which the autonomous municipality encourages (Schipper 2015: 527)), but also presents itself as being open minded towards ethnic origin, religion, and so on. I found this to be the case in my fieldwork too. Ibrahim, a 27 year old

Muslim refugee from Sudan, had been living in Israel for six years and had been working as a cook at Misada for three years. He spoke English very well (not all of the refugees I interviewed did). In an interview I asked him what to him felt like the biggest difference living in Tel Aviv opposed to living in Darfur - one should keep in mind that he was a political refugee and could not practice Islam.

Ibrahim Nobody asks you: “What is your religion?” That is better. Better than in my country. Because if Jewish people went to Sudan, they would probably be asked: “What is your religion? What are your beliefs?” And maybe it would be dangerous for them, just as it was for me. But here I feel free. Nobody asks me: “Who are you?” And: “What is your religion?”

The Tel Avivian restaurant scene, which is part of this open creative class, proved to be very diverse and open to different kind of people. As one of my interlocutors called the staff at the restaurant he works at a “troubled kids class”. According to him, these were all people that did not fit in other parts of Israeli society - for instance because they would not be able to get a job in another profession, or restaurant even, or because of their political views. Also, relatively many of my interlocutors were part of the gay community, and the ones that did not grow up in Tel Aviv desperately wanted to go there, because of its good name in this community. One of them, who grew up in a kibbutz, was sure that he had never met a gay person until he was twenty and lived in Tel Aviv. This tolerance, however, applies to the people within this class; it might be easier to access - more flexible - but it still is a class, so intrinsically limited, and within that class there still are distinctions. Thus, there are boundaries to the “cultural capital for all” too (Marom and Yacobi 2013: 61). ‘The globalized Tel Avivian’ becomes an identity of its own, one that sees itself different from other Israelis. But how is this identity constructed, by the people themselves and by the people that do not belong to this group? And what are the boundaries of this identification?

‘The Bubble’

During my research I have come across the identity that is linked to the globalized secular Tel Avivian many times; not only during conversations with the people who identified themselves as such, but also in conversations with people who did not (often non-Tel Avivians) or when I visited other cities I often did recognize a different atmosphere. ‘The Bubble’ is a term often used when talked about what distinguishes Tel Aviv and her people from the rest of Israel - and especially from Jerusalem (Abourahme 2009: 503). Both people from outside of Tel Aviv as well as Tel Avivians themselves use this word. Often its connotation is more positive when used by the latter than when used by the former. Although it is an arbitrary concept, and is ascribed different meanings in different contexts, I have identified the most important aspects of the Bubble, which are all connected and influence each other. I will elaborate on how Tel Aviv, as the major global city of Israel, shapes the idea of the Bubble - together with its independent position. From this will follow how that leads to disagreement with the government; which gives (the center of) the city a different position. Furthermore, I will show how most of my interlocutors deal with the war leads to a certain escapism, characterized by its hedonistic character. Globalization often leads to a decrease of faith in the state and an increase of autonomy among citizens (Alfasi and Fenster 2005: 353). Itay, the manager of Misada told me that he had stopped believing the government and its claims. Furthermore, many of my interlocutors mentioned their rejection of the current prime-minister and his political choices. Some were more outspoken than others, with restaurant owner Nir taking the biscuit, calling the government “shit” and “a bunch of clowns”. Also, the previously mentioned independent character of Tel Aviv’s municipality also reinforces the weakening of the state. Yahav, the owner and chef of Mishpacha, emphasized the power of Tel Aviv municipality to make own decisions, while he addressed the secular character of the city.

Yahav: I am not religious. Most of Tel Aviv is not religious. I don’t know many people that are religious. We have an issue with the forcing of religion in this country by the government. [Like working] on Saturday is being made more difficult. So lately, we have become even more against religion, because of the politics. But that’s politics. It is a law that they are trying to pass. And it will probably pass. It will be a national law, but in

the end every municipal city-hall can decide how to enforce that law, so in Tel Aviv it won’t happen. It won’t touch us. It makes us more aggressive against religious people.

Many of the frustrations came from how the government is currently dealing with the refugees that came from Eritrea and Sudan. These people - of whom many work in the restaurant business - are probably being sent away to Rwanda and some other countries. Nir’s business partner Jacob made an extreme comparison that I once heard Yahav make as well.

Jacob: The Israeli government is doing what - this might be harsh to say - but they are doing what other governments did to us when we were all over the world, the diaspora.

Although the liberal center of Tel Aviv mostly welcomes them, 70% of all Israelis want the asylum seekers to leave. Most of the Israelis that are against those refugees staying in Israel, are either religious Zionists, or live in the Southeast of Tel Aviv. Only one of my interlocutors who grew up in the Southeast, in the poor Hatikva neighborhood, was not fully welcoming of the asylum seekers, but even he was very mild in his opinion.

Shahal: Hatikva was a nice place to grow up. I liked that neighborhood back then, now not so much. Now there are a lot of Eritrean and Sudanese. They came to Israel and all of them live there. I don’t like it because it is too much. I don’t hate them, not at all. […] There are just too many in one place. And now it is too late to send them back. That is not okay. We took them now, so we have to keep them. We need to make them Israeli. Send them to better schools, better kindergartens, give them better houses. Now that they are here, they should get better lives too. But just not let all of them in.

Thus, I did not come across anyone who was very supportive of the idea to make them leave (which probably had a lot to do with not speaking with a lot of people from the South of Tel Aviv or with religious Zionists). So, this last example was not representative for the general political worldview I encountered with my population. The overall response I got was very socialist and very enraged with the government.

During some of my trips - I went to Jerusalem twice, to a Kibbutz near Haifa twice and to some other villages and cities - I spoke to non-Tel Avivians about the notion of the Bubble. One of them told me: “In Israel we don’t say: the city of Tel Aviv, but we say the country of Tel Aviv”. The city is accused of being self-absorbed. I have experienced both non-Tel Avivians as well as Tel Avivians distancing themselves from the other. For instance, besides the liberal, often socialist political views of my Tel Avivian interlocutors, many of them were at the same time expressing being intentionally not involved in national politics.

Yahav: We protest sometimes, last Saturday for instance. But that is against a lot of stuff. Not only this. But yeah, I try not to get involved too much. I try to live in my small world and carry out my values, without really giving a damn about politics. My values are just to be a human being to your surroundings, be nice. I don’t want to take sides; I don’t want to be involved, because everything is so corrupt, so it doesn’t even mean anything. Everyone in the government is corrupt. So these are not people I want to represent me. Tel Aviv is like that. We are hated in Israel because we live in our own bubble, we don’t care, we only care about having fun, and we are not serious. That is how they perceive us.

This attitude towards politics, this sort of ‘escapism’ characterized by hedonism, was an issue that was reflected in many of my interviews. When writing about Israel and its people, one cannot exclude the conflict entirely. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been ongoing for over a hundred years, has led to many tensions, and wars, in the region. In this thesis, however, I will not go into the conflict itself, because it is too complex and it is not the premise of this thesis to contribute to knowledge on this topic. Although I did not intend to focus on this aspect of Israeli life, it did turn out to be an inevitable topic, for it is impacting Israeli daily life in many ways. Maya, a young woman who worked at Mishpacha and studied art therapy, told me that she used to check the news all the time, but she realized at a certain moment that it would break her up; reading the dispiriting news articles. She ended up deciding to delete her news apps and not to watch the news anymore. When my interlocutors would refer to Tel Aviv as ‘The Bubble’, it would become clear that escapism in regard to the war was part of the notion of the nickname. Ben, a young man working as a cashier in Misada, told me that Tel Avivians are often seen as people “who live a beautiful life, without too much worrying, and not aware of the war”. As an article in the Monitor

31 explains: “Here, residents forgo news about Hamas rocket fire for an espresso, then mosey down to the beach. While Jewish settlers spar with Palestinians in the West Bank, ‘Tel Avivis’ make merry at disco clubs”. When Israel was at war in 2006 with Hezbollah and Lebanon, Tel Avivians were accused of again hiding their heads in the sand and being their hedonistic selves. The global citizen is often more preoccupied with themselves, and in that regard Alfasi and Fenster view Tel Aviv as “[appearing] busy with the daily conflicts of work, maintenance, property, and status. Inhabitants are concerned with democracy as part of their tendency to modernity, convenience and individualism” (Alfasi and Fenster 2005: 354). This last bit I found to be often the case with my interlocutors as well. Ben, Misada’s bartender, told me that the war was not where he was most worried about. He worried more so about his financial situation. In my interviews the less serious identity of the city was often described as a playground, where people do not have to grow up and can be a kid forever. One of my roommates even said that people deliberately move to Tel Aviv for this purpose. Lior, the bartender of Shawia & Sons, said something similar by calling people in Tel Aviv Peter Pan. This also leads to exhaustion. Many of my interlocutors have told me that they go to bed late and wake up early. They feel the pressure of the city that is, next to its many other nicknames, also dubbed ‘non-stop city’. This flow of aliveness gives people a variety of options to escape. I was surprised to learn that the way Tel Aviv is perceived also goes beyond the borders of the country. The band Athens, which is, unsurprisingly, Greek, wrote a song about the city.

My hill of spring is not a place for mourning […] Two old lovers laugh away "Hedonism is our way Let's pretend, let's be hopeful" […] We could move to Tel Aviv Fly away across the sea To this place where we can breathe at last We should move to Tel Aviv Feel the Middle Eastern breeze Free alas

(Matisse, 2007)

On the last day of my stay in Tel Aviv, I took a cab that would take me to the airport together with my two heavy suitcases, my brain full of stories and my heart filled with mixed feelings about leaving. Tel Aviv had proven to be a very welcoming exciting city for me to live in; it had given me much more than anticipated, on many levels. In the three months I had lived there I was starting to identify with the city. Also, I had not left the city for trips for little over a month and so, when I got closer to the airport, and the landscape started to change again, it felt as if I got ripped out of the Bubble, without any remorse. I wrote down what happened in the time in between leaving Tel Aviv and entering the plane.

After being in the cab for around twenty minutes, only fifteen minutes away from Tel Aviv, when we get closer to the Ben Gurion airport, we come across a checkpoint where security looks inside the car and asks questions about where we come from. After a couple of questions and apparently correct answers, we can drive further. Once I am at the airport, I realize this stop was nowhere near the last security check. Before checking in my baggage I am stopped by a woman in uniform who starts asking me a lot of questions: “Where do you come from?” “How long have you been here?” “How often have you been here before?” “Do you have family living here?” “What are those friends of your parents called that live here?” “What were the purposes of your trip?” “Why did you want to learn Hebrew?” “Where did you study Hebrew?” And so on… At a certain moment I understand that I might be better off not answering all of these questions as extensively as I do. But at first, I was naive (probably because I still did not realize how the conflict is everywhere, because I just came out of the Bubble), being very open about what I have done here and how much I have learnt. In retrospect I now think that I was very eager to have a nice final conversation with someone about the time I had. But being as open as I was, gives the questioner even more input to interrogate. When we finally do finish our conversation I have to walk on to the airport customs, where I have to hand in my hand luggage. Every item is unpacked and exhaustively searched. Also, my bags are swabbed

with a stick that checks whether there are any drugs or explosives in there. At other airports it usually takes me a minute or two, to get passed this stop. Here it cost me at least fifteen minutes. After that I too am carefully searched, with the swab stick as well. After gathering my stuff again, just when I think I had finally proved that I was ‘a good citizen’, I have to show my passport at a next desk. At this desk a photo is taken and I am given a little card is, which allows me to open the last gate, that leads to the duty free area, where I am finally not bothered anymore by security stops. Although I know that there is a conflict, I rarely realized that during my time in Tel Aviv. Now that I have gone through four security checks, it becomes painfully clear how real the situation is. I almost feel bad that I might not have been able to fully grasp the gravity of it, but maybe that is part of the Bubble too; maybe I too have become part of the Bubble.

Because of this experience, I could better understand how people could think of Tel Avivians as hiding their heads in the sand, by partying, eating and drinking all the time. At the same time, however, I realized that Tel Avivians of course have got a good understanding of what is happening, because all of them have been in contact with the war, and almost all of them have served in the army. On the latter I will elaborate more in the last chapter.

Conclusion

Tel Aviv is a very interesting place to study, starting with its existence being imagined long before it came into reality. The city ultimately was the fulfillment of a (Zionist) dream. The varieties and contradictions in the city are very characteristic. The city is modern and traditional; full of white skyscrapers and of brown low-rise buildings; it is home to Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews; to young and old; secularism and empty streets on Shabbat; global and local; Jewish Tel Aviv and (partly) Arab Jaffa. These contradictions are also reflected in its initial premise.

On the one hand, Tel Aviv’s public sphere reflected the ostensibly revolutionary aspirations of citizenry. On the other hand, public and private space inevitably bore traces of its founders’ diaspora origins. Although the promise of newness implied a future-oriented enterprise with no past to remember, this new home also came to be seen as a form of exile for many of its citizens. These inner tensions between public and private, history and the present, home and exile, manifested themselves repeatedly in literary and artistic depictions of the city. [Its] relatively shallow roots - its ostensible lack of memory - has shaped both imagined versions of the city and its physical plane. Memory is Tel Aviv’s constitutive principle as well as its nemesis. (Mann 2006: xiv)

The contradictions the city entails are in my view very characteristic to the city, as well as the omnipresence of the past. Whenever I felt that I had truly understood what Tel Aviv was really about, another contradiction took me off guard. When in 2002 the mayor of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Ron Huldai, spoke about the city’s identity - his speech endorses the idea of Mann:

The development of Tel Aviv-Jaffa is a direct expression of its Israeli identity. The city shifts between religion and secularity, western and oriental influences, and is torn with the desire of being original while at the same time belonging to the global world. (Amit-Cohen 2005: 295)

In this chapter I have explained that although Tel Aviv is very much like any other global city, there is a uniqueness to it. This stems from various sociocultural and historic factors, its independent municipality and its fast growth. Its unique reputation makes it that it is seen as very different from the rest of Israel, whether it is true or not, that is how people in and outside of Tel Aviv talk about it: the Bubble. Escaping the reality of the war, and other personal troubles, like financial ones, were often mentioned by my interlocutors in relation to eating and drinking. I will elaborate on how the gourmetization foodscape is a part of the Bubble in Tel Aviv in the next chapter. Tel Aviv is an overwhelming city with many contradictions, which is reflected in its own name: newness in a place of history. It is a city full of surprise and ambiguity, and that

35 partly set the stage for gourmetization to arise, which at the same time represents these qualities of the city.

CHAPTER 2

THE GOURMETIZATION FOODSCAPE OF TEL AVIV

Figure 4. A spice shop on Levinsky Market

Figure 5. A coffee spot on Rothschild: living and eating outside

Introducing gourmetization

In his article on national cuisine, Appadurai makes the distinction between ‘low’ and ‘high’ cuisine, linking it respectively to rural cuisines which rely heavily on local practices and products, and urban cuisines which purposely ignore those. An example of the latter is ‘haute cuisine’ in France (Appadurai 1988: 4). Johnston and Baumann argue that the line between high and low culture is now blurrier than ever. In regard to the validation of food, cultural snobbery has made way for an ‘omnivorous’ era (Johnston and Baumann 2014: 3). They argue that the French cuisine as culinary superior has fallen, and the way we think of food as ‘good’ has changed. Gourmetization is the result of this shift in appreciation; foods that were first categorized as low cuisine, are now highly valued. This can be recognized by how cookbooks and journalistic articles write about food, how it is portrayed on Instagram and embraced by famous chefs. Most academics that use the concept of gourmetization relate it to Israel (Ram 2013; Hirsch 2010; Avieli 2017). They, however, do not specify their definition any further than the upgrade of street or home cooked food. Johnston and Baumann use the concept of “gourmet foodscape”, which they define as “the foodscape occupied by foodies” (Johnston and Baumann 2010: 3). Both concepts are applicable to what I found during my fieldwork, but to comprehend the totality, I will use a combination of the two and explain my case by using the term ‘gourmetization foodscape’ (from now on mostly referred to as ‘the foodscape’). I found this combination to be more specific to the phenomenon in Tel Aviv. I prefer the word gourmetization over gourmet, since the former implicates a foodscape in process, while the latter is already established. Israel did not have a pronounced national cuisine, and is, mostly through gourmetization, establishing one now. This term is an overarching one since that is what a foodscape indicates; more flows are influencing the scape. The foodscape is affected by both re-Arabization and Israelization, and defined by many more aspects, which I will lay out in this chapter. Also, Johnston and Baumann’s concept of the foodie refers to a person who loves to “prepare, discuss, think and learn about food” (ibid.: 53). And although they are a part of the foodscape I focus on - especially important for making the particular restaurants popular to the public, mainly by using Instagram - the foodscape is by my interpretation not exclusively accessible to foodies. The research of Johnston and Baumann is based on contemporary America. This is important to keep in mind since this foodscape is partly a global trend, but at the same time,

38 the foodscape has very particular local characteristics that are not written about by Johnston and Baumann. Some Israeli academics discuss gourmetization, but most of them relate it to political issues regarding Israel and its neighbors (Ram 2013; Hirsch 2010; Avieli 2017). They do not specify their ideas on Tel Aviv as the origin and current epicenter, and they also fail to take into account how the foodscape in Tel Aviv reflects the lives, desires, and perspectives of the people who associate with it. Furthermore, there is one side note that is important to add to the definition of the foodscape I am talking about. Other than the clarification of boundaries and dimensions in this chapter, it is necessary to understand that a gourmetized food does not necessarily mean the food is much adjusted. It does, however, indicate that the food is valued in a certain way. My argument focuses more on the way this foodscape establishes a national cuisine (dubbed ‘New Israeli Cuisine’ by several media and chefs) and how it fits around the people that are involved in it, for whom it functions as a lifestyle, almost.

Israeli cuisine: a (con-)fusion

Every cuisine tells a story. Jewish food tells the story of an uprooted, migrating people and their vanished worlds. It lives in people’s minds and has been kept alive because of what it evokes and represents. Cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist Claudia Roden, cited in Horowitz (2014: 57)

To understand how the foodscape came to be in Tel Aviv, one should first understand what Israeli cuisine is. Much has been written about the definition of the cuisine and often it has been contested by anthropologists of food. What I find interesting about contemporary Israeli cuisine, is that because the state is still very young, it is still in the process of becoming a cuisine; the boundaries and aspects are unfolding before our eyes. It is a place that houses so many different cultures that it inevitably results in a fusion of cuisines. Israel’s formative years were marked by austerity: due to the enormous growth of its population, and food was no exception (Rozin 2006: 52). Only in the last twenty years, a national cuisine has begun to develop itself (Raviv 2015). As Appadurai understands this construction to find its basis in cookbooks, this is also very telling in regard to Israel. We can see how the popularity of chefs like Mike Solomonov

and Yotam Ottolenghi, with their respective cookbooks Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking and Jerusalem, is defining the boundaries of contemporary Israeli cuisine. However, in this contemporary global world, the roles of both social media - mostly Instagram - and TV, where cooking shows are very popular, are at least as significant. Some academics even go so far as to say that it is “possible that cookbook authors without television shows may be unable to find major publishers in a few years” (Johnston and Baumann 2010: 48). During my interviews, people often referred to famous TV-chefs who are paving the way for Israeli cuisine. Misada was originally founded by Ido Levy. This chef, in particular, is very aware of his influence and has claimed that he was one of the initiators of what many call ‘new Israeli cuisine’. So, what then is Israeli cuisine? And what is new about it? The adjective ‘new’ implies that there is also such thing as an ‘old Israeli cuisine’. It should rather be understood, however, as a cuisine recently in progress which is made up of different traditions. At an academic conference on Israeli cuisine last year, Israeli food anthropologist Avieli spoke about how Israeli cuisine today “[is] seen as an exceptionally complex cultural phenomenon, in both its academic and culinary aspects”. The mere fact that there is a conference devoted to the understanding of Israeli cuisine is already very telling of how contested the term is. It was held in the United States, which shows that it is not only a hot topic within Israeli borders. There is one aspect of the cuisine where experts generally agree upon, which Avieli puts as “an amalgam of diasporic Jewish cuisine, local produce, and local Palestinian cuisine” (Avieli 2017: 21). Many of my interlocutors agreed with this notion of Israeli cuisine as a fusion of different cultural influences.

Jacob: I think it is fusion. We don’t really have traditional food in Israel. Everyone has traditional food at home. Where your parents come from, they bring their food with them, the traditional food.

Nir: Israel is a melting pot, and we grew up as kids who went to friends’ houses and experienced Iraqi, Moroccan, Ashkenazi, Polish, German, Yemen, Libyan and Egyptian kitchen. [...] So if you would go to Shabbat dinner at my grandparents’ house, you would see many different things on the table. Such as rice, pasta, salads, tahini, eggplant, schnitzel, meatballs, cabbage salad, Arabic salad.

Figure 6. Shabbat dinner at Nir’s grandparents: a table full of fusion

Here, Jacob and Nir explain how they understand Israeli food from their childhood; a fusion of people, which resulted in a fusion of foods. Jonathan, who did not grow up in Israel, but in the United States, had been living in Israel for almost half a year when I spoke to him. His Israeli father being sick was why he came to Israel. Because of his double heritage, he had an interesting outsiders’ point, as well as sometimes embodying local knowledge. When we talked about the restaurant he worked at, one that calls itself Yemenite, but serves other foods too, he came to an interesting realization.

Jonathan: There is a culinary confusion. There is a cultural... There is a cultural fundamentalism. It is like: We are Yemen. But then what does that mean? Yemen in what context? And then you see that that confusion there manifests itself in the music that is performed by performers and some of their songs have a Western song structure, or instrumentation, things like that. You have multicultural food, like Hareira, which is Moroccan. And hummus, and shakshuka, all of these things. That is where it becomes authentically Israeli, ha ha. It is where the restaurant stops and Israel begins. It is like.

Yaël: Do you mean fusion? Do you mean that fusion is authentically Israeli?

Jonathan: I think… yeah… I think things in Israel can’t help but overlap, that’s when you get Israeli.

The uniqueness of the construction of a national cuisine in the case of Israel is for a considerable part a result of the country’s “small geographical space and its relatively homogeneous social structure” (Raviv 2015: 5). The austerity of the formative years has now made way for a wealthy state, in which Tel Aviv is the secular cultural center. The big variety of influences are being used by contemporary chefs, so that a national cuisine is perhaps finally going to be formed; the Israelization of food. As Yahav, restaurant owner and chef, explains:

Yahav: After 70 years of Israel we can now slowly start defining what Israeli cuisine is. [It] is a melting pot; it is a mixture of what people brought with them and what was indigenously already here. There is the Arab culture that has been here for many years, the ancient Jewish cuisine that is even older, and the new Israelis from Europe, North Africa, and Asia. So all of those components together describe who we are today. It is a melting pot; some of them are connected to Judaism and some of them to this land.

Both the (con-)fusion and the newness of the cuisine make for the possibility for chefs to be more creative, which is reflected in the foodscape (see next paragraph). This possibility is endorsed by Michelin. Not because of its motivating presence, but precisely because of its liberating absence. Israel seems to be punished for its political reputation by Michelin. The guide that awards restaurants and hotels, that are exceptional to their standards, has never included Israel. They did have a guide for Syria, among others, but since recently they do not have any guide for a country in the Middle East anymore. The guide is often criticized for contributing to pressure upon chefs and, because of the strict rules a restaurant has to follow in order to be recognized by the guide, perhaps to a more homogeneous restaurant landscape. For this reason, many chefs have rejected their Michelin

42 stars. What looks like a disadvantage and a lack of recognition, actually makes for an interesting foodscape where, if there are any, the rules are meant to be broken. I have talked about how the fusion of food is being Israelized - by constructing a national cuisine and emphasizing New Israeli Cuisine - but at the same time, there is another phenomenon arising that is especially characteristic to the liberal foodscape; re-Arabization of food. Ranta investigates the current appreciation of Arab food in Israeli culture. This new appreciation is mostly apparent in cookbooks, where Arab-Palestinian dishes and traditions are discussed as part of Israeli cuisine and some books are even solely dedicated to Arab food in Israel. Furthermore, recent cookbook collaborations between Israeli chefs and Palestinian, Arab and/or Muslim chefs, like Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, endorse this appreciation (Ranta 2016: 618). As I have shown in the previous chapter, globalization in Israel has got two main impacts. On the one hand, as Ranta describes:

[...] a renewed nationalist drive fueled by xenophobia and religion, which can be termed neo-Zionism. While, on the other hand, a gradual process of seeing Israel as a state of all its people and shifting away from the ethnocentric view that has historically dominated, which can be termed post-Zionism. (Ranta 2016: 622)

Ranta proposes seeing these outcomes not as autonomous but rather as complementary developments. The re-Arabization fitting the liberal foodscape and the conservatism of the government are two sides of the same coin. In my research I have come across restaurants of Jewish owners that were given an Arabic name, or a name of an Arabic city; a salad of chopped cucumbers and tomatoes, onion, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil was often called ‘Israeli salad’, but also sometimes referred to as ‘Arab salad’; and one of the restaurants I worked with deliberately tried to make their restaurant into a mix of an Arab coffeehouse and a restaurant. Globalization in Tel Aviv results in two main foodscapes; the global metropolitan foodscape and the gourmetization foodscape. Burger bars, sushi places, and Italian restaurants, of which Tel Aviv is overflowing from, are part of the former. Besides the global character of the city, makes the particular absence of Michelin, the re-Arabization an Israelization that this foodscape is very specific to Tel Aviv. This foodscape is characterized by contradiction; the food is highly valued, but not in the way we know it. Now, what are

the consequences for contemporary daily life? What does this foodscape look like in the center of Tel Aviv and what kind of people does it attract?

The manifestation and identification of gourmetization in Tel Aviv

To fully grasp what is interesting and particular about the gourmetization foodscape in Tel Aviv, one should approach it holistically. Not only the food is very important in those restaurants, but the atmosphere (music, customers, interior design) is often what distinguishes them even more from other restaurants.

Sensory experience

Jacob: And so here, they hear, they see, they smell and they taste. All the senses are working.

The foodscape is characterized by its extremeness in every sense; all senses are constantly triggered. The food is being torn apart, often served on simple or cardboard plates, sometimes even in paper bags. The cooks are giving away a show, running around and smashing the food on the counter, after which they - depending on which restaurant - either scream for the person who ordered the dish or simply shout ‘ochel!’ (food in Hebrew). The music is always loud; from traditional Yemenite music to modern pop music and old school hip hop. Customers are often sharing tables and sauces, and talking loudly.

Itay: You use your whole body when you are in Misada, all of your senses. It is a strong feeling. Some people like it, others don’t, but everyone feels it. There is no one who ever said that they don’t feel anything. It is a place that does something different than all of the other restaurants.

Kitchen manager Itay, explains how they use the bombastic atmosphere as trademark. The people I spoke to at the restaurants, that I considered to be part of the foodscape, often emphasized their uniqueness in one way or another; they stress that what they are doing is something new; which either has to do with atmosphere or food.

Distancing from others: emphasizing uniqueness & newness

In their discourse, my interlocutors would often distinguish their restaurant from other, non- gourmetized restaurants, by claiming that those are not fresh and simple. To them these restaurants belong to the past, are boring and plagued by old fashioned rules, and all come from French cuisine. Itay compared a kitchen he previously worked in, with the one he is working in now. In doing so, he is distancing Misada from old fashioned and ‘unsexy’ restaurants.

Itay: [I worked at another restaurant before] at some place close to my village, and I did not like it so much, because everything was in the fridge and it was all by the book and everything was preserved with numbers and dates on it. It was very boring. Just a regular place. But nothing was fresh. My mom always told me everything should be fresh and sexy! Fresh tomatoes and fresh meat, yes that is sexy too. Just like there is a beautiful sexy car and a beautiful sexy bike, a beautiful sexy lady, and a beautiful sexy tomato!

Eli, a bartender that has been working at Mishpacha for five years, adds how the atmosphere is what is distinctly different:

Eli: At the traditional places it is like BAM, on the table, fast fast fast! So, essentially we have kind of the same food here, but then in another environment.

Sous chef Haim, who works at the same restaurant as Eli, tells me that, to him, the willingness to create something new, is part of the Israeli identity, and thus of Israeli cuisine.

Haim: All Israelis like to do that. Like to make something new. In Hebrew ,excitement, emotion) when you do something new ;שוגיר) we call it rigush and you say: wow!

Haim uses this Israeli quality to show how they are different than other restaurants, by making use of that quality. Adi, the manager at Misada, gives the following answer when I ask about the other Misadas they opened, in Tel Aviv, and in other countries.

Adi: Since the beginning, we have never called it a ‘chain’, or a ‘net’ in Hebrew. We call it units, we don’t copy, every single Misada has a different menu, different things; a different touch. So it is very important for the people that open a Misada to see, also for the workers and the customers, that we do not copy.

With this answer, she emphasizes how they always want to reflect coincidence and fluidity. They want to reflect the street it is on, the city it is in, rather than it being the exact same experience. All of the restaurants I included seemed very eager to break existing rules and to be special. At the same time they perceived themselves as being part of a current trend, in which Israeli chefs are experimenting with different cuisines, products, and cooking styles.

History reflected and negotiating authenticity

Not only newness and uniqueness were emphasized, but referencing the past, or slight changes to ‘traditional’ dishes and mentioning authenticity were very common. This reminds us of the premise and contradictions of the city of Tel Aviv I laid out in the first chapter. Interestingly enough, I did not come across strong rejections of certain foods. Twenty-four year old Tanya from Belarus worked as a cook at Misada. When she came to Israel several years ago, she was happy she had left Belarus that was in her opinion too uptight. In this passage she explains how slightly changing food that is known, is the trademark of Misada.

Tanya: [A regular restaurant is] where you can eat potatoes, regular potatoes, salad without any of the chef stuff. So, that’s why I like Misada. Because it is a chef’s place, but the food here is simpler. You don’t have to explain to every person what kebab is, because he already knows. They know pita is good and kebab is good, so.

Many restaurants I have been to, explicitly played with the contrast of tradition and innovation. One day at Misada, I got offered their only dessert: a pita with Nutella and spicy banana (Figure 7.). Being open to everything that comes my way is a quality I had imposed upon myself in my role as researcher, so that I was not very excited to try this dish did not hold me back to accept the offer. As Tanya explained in the previous quote, part of the food is recognizable to the customers, but another part feels foreign, different. Or, in this case, maybe all four aspects - pita, banana, pepper and Nutella in this case - are familiar to the population, but it is the combination that is new. This uniqueness my interlocutors emphasize is part of the appreciation of authenticity Johnston and Baumann underline.

Being authentic is commonly linked with the existential idea of being “true” to one’s self, and is thought to be based on modern ideals like individualism, uniqueness, sincerity, self-determination and personal choice. (Johnston and Baumann 2010: 70)

Figure 7. Pita with Nutella and banana

They argue that authenticity is always socially constructed, and thus never inherent to a particular food (Johnston and Baumann 2010: 69). Furthermore, they claim authenticity is relational (ibid.: 70). The latter aspect we have seen in how my interlocutors describe their restaurant in relation to other restaurants that are

47 for instance ‘old fashioned’ or ‘unsexy’. In the foodscape the former aspect, authenticity as social construct, is mostly constructed by ideas on simplicity and tradition. Authenticity based on tradition is a very interesting quality in a country that has only existed yet for a relative short time, without an age-old national cuisine. The tradition my interlocutors referred to were either new traditions, that belong to the new Israeli cuisine they were attempting to build, or traditions that find their origin in their grandmothers’ kitchen. Jacob, the owner of Shawia & Sons, which mostly serve Yemenite food, explains how he perceives food being authentic, and how they slightly change it, in order to make the food ‘theirs’ - which is arguably understood as more authentic.

Jacob: The food is very authentic, all the recipes are very authentic. The Yemen soup is from a friend’s grandmother and we made some small changes. The beans soup from Nir’s father. Kubahne from a book we found on Yemenite recipes from way back. So all the recipes are very authentic. That is the first thing we are looking for: the food is authentic, very tasty and consistent in its quality.

While Jacob explains how authentic their food is, he makes great hand gestures, which get bigger and bigger during his argument, as if he wants to make the authenticity physically recognizable to me. Or, the owner of another restaurant, which is an interpretation of a traditional shipudia (an Israel grill place), explains how they try to take something familiar to create something new.

Or: We thought we could do [a shipudia] our way. Our way is making it a bit more creative and fun. And the original shipudia is a workers restaurant. Usually you go for lunch. No one ever goes for dinner there. It is a place to go and eat, it is not a place to go and celebrate something - it is not that kind of restaurant. They don’t play music, they have neon lights, the tables are really simple, and everything is really really simple. And we wanted to make it into a place where we would like to come, to eat, but also to celebrate. Also in the evening. When we opened this restaurant it

used to be more like a shipudia, it used to work well during lunch, but in the evening: nothing. So we had to solve that problem.

Yaël: So how did you solve it? What did people like better when you adjusted it?

Or: It is a combination of the drinks, that we sell very cheap and the music, we did a lot of research and trying to find Israeli music, traditional but unknown. For me it was really important to play Israeli music. Because it is an Israeli restaurant. The thing we love about shipudia is that it is something emotional, from childhood memories, and it is a very Israeli symbol. Really Israeli. And as an Israeli restaurant, we try to make it an Israeli experience, so Israeli aspects that is not only food, so the culture. So how can you make something that you feel really connected to, but you cannot really explain why? It is not the way the place looks, it is not similar to what you’ve seen before. Some of it is traditional. Also in regard to the food, some of it you know from earlier, but it is really well prepared, and some of the food is creative and new. The whole thing feels familiar on one side and creative and new on the other. And that is what makes the Israelis feel comfortable.

Or emphasizes how their restaurant is both different from traditional shipudiot, as well as strongly referencing to it. He goes on to explain how, at their first try with this restaurant, they did not succeed. Essentially, they gourmetized the food and the restaurant; by making slight changes combining tradition and newness, creativity. Now it is part of the foodscape and it is popular with both Tel Avivians and tourists. Besides the music they purposely chose for its old Israeliness (a strategy other restaurants used to), they also hung old LPs on the wall, and, perhaps more interestingly, paintings of important Israeli figures. These paintings, of David Ben Gurion for instance, were probably based on photo portraits, but adjusted and made into a ‘hipster’ version. For Mister Ben Gurion this meant that he was now dressed in a Hawaii shirt, got a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses on, and stood in front of a colorful backdrop. I found this to be an accurate translation of gourmetization in art. Lastly, in regard to notions of authenticity, I anticipated on finding a strict rift between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi cuisine, due to the history between these groups. Apart from

the stigma about Ashkenazi food being tasteless and colorless, I found this foodscape proved to be rather democratic when it came to different foods - democracy is even one of its most important premises. The food did have to fulfill one requirement, and that is that it has to have the ability to be perceived as Israeli. Since there did not exist any fixed rules for what Israeli cuisine, the requirement was not very excluding.

Transparency

While tradition was interpreted in different ways by various restaurants, the perception of simplicity, as part of authenticity, was more widely agreed upon in my field. High quality, value for money, honesty and freshness were often mentioned by my interlocutors as substantial elements to the foodscape. Going into my field and gaining people’s trust proved to be easier than anticipated, because in their approach towards me, they often showed openness and warmth. Right in the second week, Noam, a cashier at Misada, asked me to come to the back of the restaurant with him; he wanted to show me something. When we sat down on some beer crates, he immediately lighted a joint. I asked him whether it was okay to smoke during work hours. He inhaled deeply and in the same breath went on to tell me that he suffered from Gilles de la Tourette and weed helps him. This openness about people’s lives I encountered constantly. He had taken me to the back of the restaurant to show me a book that was written by the owner of Misada, the famous chef. The book, Noam told me, was like a Bible to all of his restaurants; partly ironic, partly serious. The book was full of commands (rather perceived as suggestions), mostly focused on sociality and cooking. He took the time to patiently go through every page with me.

Noam: So, give people good service is the first thing that is important to us, it should come from a good heart, almost like a social activity. We want to make people happy, even if we don’t know them. It is kind of like a Bible for Ido Levy employees. In this part he is talking about ‘material’, ingredients, they must be the very best, if they are not the best, then it will be not good enough. Here they speak about the person who makes the food, he is called the magician. You need to look at the world as a big opportunity of development, searching for good things, doing something

good in the world. We need to be truthful. When we do something and it goes wrong, we cannot say that it is fine. We must say: even though it took me two hours, I did something wrong and it is not the best. We have to be honest. We need to believe in what we are doing.

Although this restaurant was the only one with a book like that, I found many restaurants to provide a story like that for their employees. Honesty, openness and sociality seem to be the most important things they want to carry out. For the food they make this means that working with few ingredients and making simple combinations. According to Johnston and Baumann, “the implied counterpoint of [such a simple dish] is the overwrought, complicated [version] that would represent a dishonest corruption of the original, authentic version” (Johnston and Baumann 2010: 77). In my field this meant that difficult techniques, and often French cuisine, were spoken of as being a reflection of arrogance. Remember the container of crème fraîche from the introduction? Simplicity at its finest, right? Few ingredients and not even processed in any way, let alone unpacked. When I spoke to Jacob, the owner of Shawia & Sons about their cooking style, he proudly explained why they were not a ‘chef’s place’. When he says the word ‘plating’ he makes great hand gestures, imitating an important, but cocky chef.

Jacob: And our cooking is not like they are chef cooks, it’s not like they are plating. It is just simple food. And it is value for money. That is something that is important to us.

Not only the food, and its price, was appreciated for its honesty, the restaurant setting would, without exception, put an emphasis on being straight forward. The kitchens were always open; at many places I could sit at the bar and look straight into the cook’s hands preparing a dish. Of my three main restaurants I made floor maps, so that I could demonstrate not only how much space the kitchen takes up, but also how central its position was. An example is shown in Figure 8. Furthermore, vegetables and herbs were often an important part of the restaurants’ settings. Instead of being stalled in a backroom, cauliflowers were draped on the bar, coriander and mint standing lofty next to those, and many more products lying straggly in cabinets, all in the customer’s sight. In Figure 9. there is an example of such a bar.

Figure 8. Map of Misada - the kitchen is shown in the left section, the eating area in the right

Figure 9. Open kitchen, bar and food display in one

What people eat and how they eat it should be understood in its social and cultural context. Simplicity does not mean the same everywhere. According to Johnston and

Baumann, simple food production and preparation are linked to simple ways of life (Johnston and Baumann 2010: 79). People’s food preferences, like all their cultural preferences, have implications for the way they are seen in social settings, as well as for their self-conception - their identity (Mintz 1996). In the following quote, Itay explains the way in which the food is made represents the person making it. He relates personal qualities to cooking qualities, and shows how these two are complementary to him.

Itay: The food is very simple, and we make it from very high quality and fresh material. When we are talking about the material we are not only talking about the food, we also talk about the tomato, the salt, the olive oil, and the hands that make it. Because the hands have to be of good quality too. And it doesn’t matter how it looks, of course it should be clean. We talk about the mind, the person who makes it, because he too is a piece of the material. The iron, the fire, the oven; everything should be of high quality, and it is all part of our product. We believe that when you have all of this good quality, it is very easy to make good food. We believe that we can teach everyone to make it. I can teach you. You saw it yesterday, it is not so difficult.

The reference he makes to the staff’s beliefs derives from their communal ideals, which are mostly written down in the book I mentioned previously. While Itay is actively underlining the exceptionality of the restaurant, at the same time he shows how democratic this foodscape is. According to him, no one is excluded; anyone can cook the right way, as long as you have the right products. Johnston and Baumann argue that authenticity is generally valued, because it helps to settle a tension present in contemporary culture: democracy vs distinction (Johnston and Baumann 2010: 93). According to them, solidarity towards authenticity is a way to be freed from snobbish constraints. As I demonstrated with Itay’s quote, when the focus shifts from snobbery to authenticity, distinction is not gone; it is only replaced by another distinction (ibid.: 94).

Snobbery is out of fashion, but hierarchy may never be out of style, and the contemporary method for meeting the demands of both democracy and

distinction is omnivorousness, which defines quality in culture not by genre but by a focus on authenticity. (Johnston and Baumann 2010: 95)

I argue this is true for Tel Aviv too, although it is expressed in a very particular way. Also, as I have shown, there is not only a focus on authenticity, but also on Israeliness and, inherent to that, fusion. The rejection of snobbery is something my interlocutors often mentioned as being part of the Israeli identity. For outsiders this might come across as lack of respect, but they rather see it as homogeneity.

Chutzpah and balagan

“This is the country with chutzpah, and chutzpah is life!” said the man in the telephone shop. I was looking for a phone case and had just walked in, when he immediately started talking to me. It soon became clear that he was eager to talk and proud to speak about his Israeliness. He told me he is Ethiopian, his parents moved here and he was born here. While he took me with him to an attic in another store next door, searching for the case I was looking for, he told me he feels like Israel has got a bad name. He went on to say that to him it is the most amazing place on earth. Just because of the chutzpah (often defined as shameless audacity) many non-Israelis do not like. This chutzpah is also reflected in restaurants. Another word that was often used by my interlocutors was balagan when referencing to the identity of the restaurant (or at times to Tel Aviv itself). Balagan translates into ‘chaos’ and chutzpah was often explained as being part of that.

Itay: We work with a language and not with a book. So we can do whatever we want. That is very Israeli.

Yaël: Why is that very Israeli? No rules?

Itay: I think I don’t know why because there is no book. I just do it. It is about to do what you feel. We are simple people. Also, the classic fashion if you have an important date, or going to a high class restaurant, you will wear simple clothes.

The informality and lack of rules Itay describes, were often mentioned as qualities that are ‘very Israeli’. These characteristics were not seen as specifically Tel Avivian, but as Israeli. My interlocutors distanced themselves from other Israelis when it came to almost anything, except for when we spoke about cooking and food. In this foodscape they could find their - modern - Israeli self. In an interview with Jonathan, he referred to a Hebrew expression about cooking, which is supposed to be something in regard to: “Don’t measure it, why would you measure it? Put it in from the heart! Whatever you feel what it needs, throw it in there!” This creativity is much respected. Sometimes this identity is being taken so seriously, that even the same dish should always be different.

Adi: A salad shuk for instance; the cook will come and he puts inside the salad whatever he wants. And every time he has the same order, he makes a different one. He will use different vegetables, etcetera. So you will never get the same dish. You will always get some version of that.

As I said before, there is no presence of Michelin in Israel, and this enables chefs to reject the rules. In ordering dishes, as a customer, there is a lack of rules as well; the motto is often: just pick whatever you want and you will get it whenever it is ready. Furthermore, the informality shows in other aspects too: the way people dress, the interaction between customers and employees, the sharing of food and of tables, the giving away stuff for free and the constant switching of position in the kitchen (a fluidity in roles). These lack of boundaries make for a varied foodscape. What I found to be very significant is that employees of the restaurants did not wear uniforms; not the same color or formal clothing ever. Sometimes my interlocutors explained this as making the customers feel at home, a strategy Jacob refers to; deliberately creating a sense of belonging.

Jacob: All of our waitresses don’t have a uniform, they are very casual. And they talk on the same level, eye to eye. I always tell my staff to look in the eye of the customers you are talking to. We don’t call the customers customers, but we call them ‘orichim’; they are all our guests. I prefer to call them guests. This is home. When people eat here, I mean… you have

Polish people, the Yemenite people; it is a melting pot of people out here, and everyone wants to feel at home.

At other times, the informality in clothing was explained to be part of the Israeli identity. Hadar, a waitress at Mishpacha, is half Swedish and half Israeli. She explained the differences between how she dresses in both countries.

Hadar: I do have evening dresses and stuff. But for me it is different. If I would wear something too nice [in Israel] I would feel uncomfortable or overdressed. I would not wear my Swedish clothes [...] here. I go [to Sweden] every couple of months. And I buy many nice things there that I cannot wear here. Barely.

Although many aspects of the restaurants seem to be unorganized, the restaurants only seem to benefit from, and maybe even function just because of this balagan. After my first two visits to two restaurants in the first week, after I was still astonished by the craziness I had just noticed, I wrote the following in my fieldwork diary:

At first sight everything appears to be very chaotic; the music and the screaming. But, when taking a closer look, it looks more like a perfectly attuned team; the kitchen functions like a well-oiled machine. I am very impressed, but also comfortable. The staff is professional and happy to joke around at the same time. Field notes 12-01-18

One of my informants referred to this chaos as ‘synergy’. The balagan often seems highly functional, although this might seem paradoxical, it seems to work for these restaurants. When having a closer look however, it becomes clear that to this balagan there are rules too, and if one does not follow those implicit rules, the balagan can become a malfunctioning one. When I asked Jonathan to define the meaning of balagan (in restaurants), he said the following:

Jonathan: It is a little bit of craziness. A mess. Like a traffic jam for instance. Yeah. And if you try to go against it, sometimes you’ll go a little bit frustrated.

He went on to describe how he once had tried a different approach, which was not appreciated by his co-workers. It shows that the balagan, the chaos, in itself is a system too, which people essentially have to join. This reminded me of a personal experience I had during my fieldwork. It was the last interaction I had with an interlocutor, two days before I would leave Tel Aviv. It was the day before the Eve of Pesach (Seder Pesach): the evening before the week-long Pesach, where Jews enjoy a festive Seder dinner. I would spend this night with a friend and would do the shopping.

I talk to Jacob about Seder Pesach and I tell him that I would like to buy some bread for the supper. He replies that of course I can get some bread, some frozen ones, that I could put in the oven at home and bake them off. So, I was sitting and waiting at the bar, until someone had time to take my order, because everyone seemed very busy. After a while I carefully tried to ask Nadav the head cook (who seemed very busy), whether I could get some melawach and a kubahne to take-away. That was when Jacob understood that I was still waiting for it, so he told me: “You don’t have to be so polite, if you want to do something in Israel, or want to get stuff done, you should take it, you should be very direct about it, because otherwise you won’t be able… it won’t be given to you”. And that is a very common understanding here. People here seem to be very aware of their own agency, it seems necessary. Israelis almost appear to be educated in directness; ‘if you want to get something done, you are the one responsible’. Field notes 29-03-2018

The social norms often appeared to be very democratic, as the balagan often appeared as lacking any rules. Although this might be the case to a certain extent, failing to comply to social norms and failing to comply to the balagan system, will both (to a certain extent) exclude that person from being able to participate. .

Rejecting kashrut

Until now I have tried to show the complexity of the manifestation of the foodscape, but have not yet touched upon one very significant contextual aspect. Since Israel is a self-defined Jewish state, one would expect that its food corresponds with that identity. Kashrut is the law for Jewish foods, and kosher is the term that is used for food that meets the standards of this law. The term can be understood in many different ways: “separating meat from dairy, [...] not eating pork or seafood, and for others, it all [depends] on with whom they ate and where they were”, which points to Israeli society being the home for a plurality of identities (Piastro 2017). As I mentioned before Tel Aviv is known to be a very secular city and the foodscape is characterized by the rejection of keeping kosher. According to Piastro, it “is not challenging [to find] a non-kosher restaurant in secular Tel Aviv [...], but finding one in Jerusalem requires good knowledge of the city” (ibid.). In my field none of the rules of kashrut applied and none of my interlocutors claimed to keep kosher. Also, none of the restaurants had two separate kitchens (one for meat and one for dairy), which is the basis for a kosher restaurant. Pork was often not available in the restaurants, but this has at least as much to do with the emphasis on locality of the foodscape, and it being scarce in Israel. Secular Jews in Israel often define themselves as secular Jews, and not just as non- religious, so they do emphasize their Jewishness. (Piastro 2017). This means that the rejection of dietary laws does not indicate a rejection of Judaism, just of the religion. The best example I found of that was when I first came to Shawia & Sons, which was on a Wednesday and the bartender told me that I should really come back on Friday, in the afternoon, right before Shabbat. He said that if I felt it was hectic and surprising already on that Wednesday night, I would be overwhelmed with what I would find on Friday. So, that Friday I stopped by around one. And he could not have been more right: there was a long line of people outside, waiting to go in. They were all handed a free beer by David, the host, to make the wait more comfortable. As I stood there, with a beer in my hand, the sun on my skin, loud laughter around me and Yemenite music of the same volume coming out of the restaurant, I did not find the wait uncomfortable at all. When I got a place at the bar, my glass was constantly filled with more beer, as with some other people’s glasses was done too. And before I had eaten anything, I got my first shot from Lior, the bartender. We, and the other people at the bar, held our shot glasses in the air and screamed ‘L’chaim!’ (meaning: ‘to life!’). From that

58 day on, I understood how much the informality was part of the foodscape, and of course, how drinking was an important aspect of that.

Figure 10. Free shots at the bar

When I finished eating and went outside around four o’clock, I realized that the noise and the crowdedness of a few hours earlier had faded away. The streets were quiet, as if I had just skipped twelve hours and it was now four o’clock at night. On Shabbat evening almost every restaurant in Tel Aviv is closed (more is open on Shabbat itself - every Saturday), those evenings people celebrate Shabbat dinner at home, mostly with family. Also, as I mentioned in the part about Israeli cuisine, it is a country that consists of various Jewish heritages and identities. Jewish immigrants and refugees all brought their own dishes with them to Israel. So, although the foodscape might have the attitude of a solely secular one, its Jewish context is still determining at times - like with opening hours and food heritage.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have shown how the foodscape should be understood - with all its complexities. The establishing of an Israeli cuisine is where many cultural influences come together, is the basis of this foodscape. Except for the many Jewish influences, there is both a re-Arabization, as well as an Israelization. This makes for a (at least ostensibly) democratic and homogeneous foodscape. The rejection of snobbery and status increases this character. There still is, however, another kind of status linked to the foodscape. The distinction has shifted snobbery to authenticity. Also, the status of French cuisine and following rules, has been replaced by creativity, traditional cooking (own origin; often was referred to mothers and grandmothers) and popular TV-chefs. Furthermore, the foodscape is typified by its sensoriality; at these restaurants not only food is a substantial part of its identity, but also the way the food is presented, the setting, the music and the drinking. This sensoriness is also notable in the chutzpah and balagan of the restaurants, qualities that the employees are proud to carry out. This secular Jewish foodscape is a reflection of the ideas, perceptions and experiences of the people that are part of this foodscape, on which I will further elaborate in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 3

COLLECTIVE CULTURE AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

Figure 11. Burning sage at eleven o’clock; the day has started!

The previous two chapters have focused on the place in which the foodscape has arisen, and on how this manifests itself in that place. So, who are the actors and what are their motivations to work at, or open a restaurant? What are their political views, their desires, their ideas on food and Israel? And why are they attracted to this foodscape? What does it give them and what do they give it? They are essentially the embodiment of the foodscape and create the culture. In doing so, the restaurant (and the foodscape) becomes a place of belonging.

Opening a restaurant in Tel Aviv: a national dream

The physical space of a restaurant always starts with it being an idea in someone’s mind. Those dreams are not uncommon in Tel Aviv. According to Ynet, an Israeli news website, in 2007, 1599 restaurants were situated in Tel Aviv - of the 4400 in Israel in total. However, as many restaurants are opening their doors, there are more that throw in the towel. A recent article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz tells the story of how last year has been particularly rough on restaurant owners. The number of restaurants in Israel had declined 1.5% in comparison to 2016 - the year before. Most restaurants only survive for six to ten months. In this article, a few reasons are given for this drop, which first became visible that year. First of all, many haute cuisine restaurants closed, people became more interested in cheaper restaurants - this is directly related to the rise of the gourmetization foodscape. Secondly, the tax on foreigners working in restaurants has increased tremendously, which I will get back to in a coming section. And lastly, the banks are not as eager anymore to give out loans for such a goal. During an interview, Jacob, a restaurant owner, let me know that whenever someone asks him for advice on opening a restaurant, “[I] always tell them: Keep your money in your pocket. If you have never done it before, don’t go into it.” When I asked Haim if he knew of any restaurants that had closed their doors lately, he could point out two in the street we were at. He shook his head and said:

Haim: Everybody just opens a restaurant because they think they know how to cook, they are like: ‘I know how to make an omelet, so now I know how to open my own restaurant’. It is a mess!

When I confessed opening a restaurant was a dream of mine too, most of the restaurant owners would tell me that they hoped it was more hopeful in Holland, but that they strongly advised me not to try in Tel Aviv. So when it is that hard to survive, why would people then want it so badly? Haim thought it was because of the rise of the TV-chef which led to the idea that there is easy money to earn in the business. Mor, a cashier at Misada, told me that he used to want to become a chef, for that reason. He watched a lot of MasterChef - which is very popular in Israel - and it became his biggest dream. When he started working as a cook, however, he soon realized that the money was not good at all, and the lifestyle not as glamorous as he had hoped for. I have shortly touched upon why people would want to open their own restaurant, and the difficulties of that dream. In a later section will talk about political motivations, which are secondary, but very important for the identity formation of the restaurants.

When a workplace becomes a home

The employees often had different reasons why they were attracted by the business than the restaurant owners. Sure, some of them wanted to eventually be in charge of their own place, but most of them initially started working there because of financial reasons. As I have shown Tel Aviv is a very expensive city, and my interlocutors would often point out that they had a hard time to make ends meet. Almost all of them would have multiple jobs or study next to their job. Maya told me that being a waiter is the best way to earn money, so that is why a lot of young people work in restaurants. For the Sudanese and Eritrean refugees that would work a lot in those restaurants, often as cooks or dishwashers, the motivations were different. For them, it would often be the only place where they would be able to get a job easily, and where the money would be good enough. One remark all of my interlocutors made was how the appeal of the restaurant as a work environment made that they had been working there for such a long time and often considered it to be the best place they had ever worked at. There was often something in the liberal and chaotic atmosphere, the food or their colleagues, which would make the restaurant a place that fulfilled their desires. Itay, the manager at Misada, told me that after the trip he

63 took when he got out of the army, he felt lost, but working at Misada had made him calm again.

Itay: After one year of traveling in India I came back to Israel. I was very confused. And then, because I felt so much balagan in me, my friends told me that I should work at Misada. There is always something happening, people are coming and going, a lot of color.

The article on public and private space in Tel Avivian cafes by Shapira and Navon, considers the way in which people can feel that they are in a public space as well as in a private space at the same time.

Both the narrow limits delineating the private space and the wide boundaries differentiating the cafe from the public space are characterized by a special flexibility which allows the customers to create in its precincts the entire continuum, from isolation as individuals or intimate groups of friends, through a feeling of belonging to the community of cafe frequenters, to the feeling of belonging to the public on the street or even to the entire nation. (Shapira and Navon 1991: 122)

The restaurant can thus be a place which simultaneously creates feelings of belonging to the community of the restaurant itself, as well as to the nation. Instead of standing in the way, they enforce each other. For my interlocutors and their relationship to the restaurant, this insight is applicable too. This belonging of my interlocutors to the restaurant can be understood through Antonsich’s concept of place belongingness. Relational factors were present in the restaurants - both weak, as well as dense ties (Antonsich 2010). I recognized the weak ties in the relationship between the employees and the customers. The eighteen year old Sasha, for instance, who worked twice a week as a waitress at Misada - apart from serving in the army - told me that she was very pleased with the contact she would have with tourists. The half French Tom said something similar and highly appreciated every little bit he would learn in a new language. Besides the influences of globalization on and in the restaurants (Figure 11.), here we also see how my interlocutors appreciated contact with customers. Also, the need to make the customers feel ‘at home’, often finds its motivation in making the place appealing, because essentially the food is a

64 commodity in the first place. This results, however, in a connection between the two parties. As Itay explained: “[we do not want] the customers [to feel like] regular customers, [but] feel like they came to someone’s house. We don’t speak to them as if they are regular customers”.

Figure 12. Globalization manifested in restaurant. Money, from all over the world, on the wall of

Shawia & Sons from their international customers.

Weak ties, however, do not make for people to experience a feeling of belongingness to a place. The dense ties, which were considerably more often the topic of conversation, were the connections among the employees themselves. Many of my interlocutors, when referring to their colleagues, would use words like: ‘family’, ‘brothers’ and ‘real friends’. The restaurant they would often call their ‘home’, or ‘second home’. Aviv, who had a very rough childhood and did not speak to his parents anymore, told me he met his girlfriend there, and all of his best friends. Adi, the manager of Misada, told me that many of their employees would come to the restaurant on a daily basis, without them having to work - just for fun. On several occasions I even met people who had left their jobs at the restaurant a while ago, but would still come back to sit at the bar for hours and speak with their old colleagues. Food and family are very related, and important to Jewish culture. Jacob emphasized this by saying: “Food is life. Food is basically life. Just like how we are always busy with family. It is life”. These dense ties, and the strong connection between food and

65 family, were an important factor for these people to create a feeling of place-belongingness. And this was not only the case for the Jewish workers, the Sudanese and Eritrean refugees, although their motives were of a different origin. For them, the restaurant even functioned as their ‘new home’, since many of them had lost their families, or had to leave them behind. Antonsich also describes legal factors of belongingness, in that one’s insecure legal status contributes to a problematic relation with place-belongingness (Antonsich 2010: 648). While acknowledging these legal factors, I argue, however, that their dense ties at the restaurant were so strong, that these played a more important role.

Nostalgic dishes and childhood memories

How food is closely connected to family and a sense of home, is beautifully described by the well-known story of Proust. In this story the main character eats a madeleine cake dipped in tea, and mentally goes back in time to when he was little and would eat the exact same at his aunts’. This became known as a ‘Proustian moment’ (Holtzman 2006: 362). I even experienced moments like that myself, when I was in the field. As I explained in the introduction, when I went to Israel, the food would always remind me of home. When I was at Shawia & Sons for the second time, I ordered a stew. Soon, an uncomfortable, but at the same time comfortable feeling got to me. It was almost like a déja vu. Why did this feel so familiar? I could not really put my finger on what it was, until I tried another bite. The taste, the couscous, the smell; it all reminded me intensely of the stews my father would make. It was a strange feeling, though, because I had never had it in a restaurant before, I had always classified it as home food. In her book on memory of the senses, Seremetakis recalls a Proustian moment herself. She tells the story of how the peach she grew up with, was no longer available to her when she lived in the United States. Unlike Proust, she actively searched for that taste whenever she went back to Greece. Where in Proust’s story the individual is overcome by a feeling of recognition. When the peach also became unavailable at the place she originally consumed it, it was now “digested through memory and language” to younger generations who had never tasted it (Seremetakis 1994: 2). She uses the Greek form of nostalgia to understand it as “the personal consequences of historicizing sensory experience” (ibid.: 4). My interlocutors expressed similar desires for implementing the past in the present; with the construction of a national cuisine there is an active search for home. Not only did they imagine a collective

66 present or future, they also imagined their collective past through nostalgia. By giving Proust’s story more depth, Seremetakis shows how important food is to be able to feel ‘at home’. The frequent use of terms like ‘home food’, show how my interlocutors’ discourse connects to constructing a home in a place that might not be fully home yet. To my interlocutors, emotions in regard to food were very important. They often expressed the desire to convey emotions through food, but also how they, themselves, could be mentally touched by food. Besides the way that foodways contest memory, in the sense of exposing cultural ideas of authenticity, and telling the history of the people it concerns - as shown in chapter two - memory is also triggered by food. “Sensuality of food causes it to be a particularly intense and compelling medium for memory” (Holtzman 2006: 365). An important form of memory in regard to food, is nostalgia. Holtzman explains how in literature, food is often viewed as a vehicle “for recollections of childhood and memory” (ibid.). Lior, a bartender from Shawia & Sons, told me that one of the reasons he liked his work was because the food reminded him of his Yemenite home. Or, one of the owners of Mishpacha, explained how he remembered how his family used to go barbeque outside, or go to a shipudia.

Or: I think every Israeli has that memory. Everyone has his or her favorite shipudia. So it is something very emotional. We, like other Israelis, also love it. And we thought we could do it our way. Our way is making it a bit more creative and fun.

People emphasized how the food was more creative, but still heavily based on what they knew from their homes. The auto-biographical factors of place-belongingness are apparent here. As Antonsich shows, childhood memories play a key role (Antonsich 2010: 647). Also, this quote shows how shared memory enforces the imagining of a community, and it is also a good example of how a national identity is constructed at the roots, by emphasizing Israeliness. A symbol where the importance of family and memory became clear, was in the names of the restaurants. Often names of restaurant would end with ‘& Sons’, or, in the case of Mishpacha, would refer to family. The powerful device that is food, which is closely connected to (collective) memory and nostalgia, can create a sense of belonging. For the restaurants this means that because my interlocutors were reminded of ‘home’, they could create a feeling of belonging to the place. I should add, however, that the

67 food was also characterized by its creativity and newness. This led to an even stronger connection to the place, because together they created a new culture.

Hidden hierarchy in a democratic foodscape

The democratic character of the foodscape and the fact that people feel at home, does not mean that hierarchy does not exist at these restaurants. As I showed by Johnston and Baumann’s theory earlier, while snobbery might not be as relevant anymore, as long as people will live, hierarchy will always exist. The same goes for social structures at the workplace itself. At first, when I got to the field, I was very surprised by the informality I encountered. It was not unheard of that the employees would have pet names for their boss, something that struck me as particular. Still, I did find a distinction in status at the restaurants, when it came to people’s function. I came to the conclusion, which is demonstrated in Figure 12., based on salary, status and power. It was not difficult to understand who was higher in the ranking in regard to salary. Status and power, however, were more difficult to explore. I understood status mostly through how people would talk about the various functions. The aspect of power, I could interpret by participant observation.

Figure 13. Hierarchy in the restaurant

On top, I would find the (mythical) head chefs. With mythical I mean that sometimes the head chefs would not be physical present at the restaurant. At Shawia & Sons they would mostly refer to their grandmothers as primary inspirations, and at Misada the highest status was reserved for the Ido Levy, although he was almost never there. Furthermore, I would only like to give some thought to the lower levels of the pyramid; the cooks and the dishwasher. As I have laid out before, for many young people, some of them still studying, being a waiter or host would be a desirable job. Being a cook or a dishwasher, however, were not. Often, restaurant owners would complain to me how hard it was to find cooks or dishwashers; according to them, no Israeli wanted to do the job. Adi explained how these jobs were mostly occupied by African refugees.

Adi: The cleaning is always done by the minority population. If you go back in time… It used to be the Arabs, then it used to be the Thai, then Nigerians and the last five, seven years we have Eritreans and Sudanese,

mostly people from Africa. [...] I also work with [a] human resource company, and they do not send Eritrean people anymore. When your worker comes six days a week, and suddenly he doesn’t come anymore, it is a big problem that should be solved.

At a later point in our interview she expresses how she realizes that there is a hierarchy, however hard she tries to fight against it.

Adi: I think the job itself, washing the dishes, can be confusing sometimes. For example, Omar in the morning; it is very obvious that he is part of the group. But sometimes with the person who is now washing the dishes, Mebratu, there is a conflict, because the workers are sometimes treating him as if he is less than them. They make the mess, and they feel like he will clean it up after them. That is not nice. I don’t think it is about the color [of his skin], I think it is about the profession. People feel like: you have to clean it up. But, I really try to make my workers understand that it is not like that and that they have to respect people more. Every time I see a worker of mine come and clean the floor, I say: thank you. Or every time that I see a cook is doing a very hard thing, I try to express my gratitude. Every time, but it is complicated.

Jacob explained how the current threat of deportation of the Eritrean and Sudanese people in Israel, could mean - because of this status issue - a big loss for Tel Avivian restaurants.

Jacob: It’s… Fucked up. What can I tell you? It’s fucked up. If I’m looking for [new workers]… Who will do this work then? There is one big manager, owner of restaurants in Tel Aviv, and he talked on the radio, how the Israelis don’t want to dirty their hands, don’t do the work. And the radio presenter asked who did it before. And it has always been the immigrant workers. Or very young people. And no one wants to do it. And now you want to send them away? They came from a war zone. Instead of embracing them, welcome them, you send them away? They are idiots! It is really fucked up!

Political escape

As I have highlighted a little bit in the previous section already, most of my interlocutors were often not on the same page as the Israeli government. Interestingly enough, their political views would often be (re)presented in the restaurants. Although most of my interlocutors told me that they would rather have nothing to do with politics, it was often hard to not include the topic in our conversations. When Nir and I talked about the city of Tel Aviv and its safety, we inevitably got to the subject of politics.

Nir: Because we just… We do stuff, politically, without going into politics, because I don’t like it. I don’t like politics. Political ways, you know, building a wall and stuff like that, but it is keeping us safe. I know it is harsh, but still. I would rather have a wall and not get killed.

Mostly, my interlocutors did not want to go into politics - although they then sometimes did anyway. This corresponds with the idea of them living in the Bubble, where escapism is the way of life. My interlocutors, without exception, identified as being liberal. The only political issue that they would address - partly because it was very much a problem at that moment; the talk of the town - was that of the refugees from Sudan and Eritrea who were on the edge of deportation. On many restaurants there were posters on the windows, making people aware of the issue. I only realized after Hadar had told me what it said exactly.

Figure 14. ‘We were all once refugees’ on a wall in Tel Aviv

Hadar: You see the sign here? [pointing at a poster behind her] It says: “You like the foreigners? Because you are foreigners.” So it talks about the Jewish people. And then it says: “stop hunting and going after them”.

My interlocutors often felt the way the government was dealing with the situation was inhumane and racist. And so their most powerful way to present themselves, through food, sometimes became political; the restaurant or food would sometimes be mentioned as political statement itself. At the end of every interview I would always ask what the person concerned wished for their own future, as well as that of Israel’s. When I asked this of Yahav, the owner of Mishpacha, he answered the following:

Yahav: I am pessimistic about what the future will be. So I try to enjoy my small life and be kind to my employees and live a quiet nice life. I really love Israel, but I don’t think the future will be good. [...] If Bibi [Netanyahu] is sitting there for so many years already, it means that the problem is really deep. Tel Aviv is very small in comparison to the rest of Israel. Most people choose him every year. I always go and vote, but I am not optimistic about what will happen in the future. Still, I enjoy my life, I am not suffering. [So] for myself I just hope that I will still be in love with what I do, and keep creating, to open more places and be more creative. To travel, and to see the world. And stay in Israel, I love Israel and living in Tel Aviv, [and to] keep on doing what we do.

Yaël: Is it also a statement then, to the government, to keep on doing what you do, the way you do it?

Yahav: Yes, that is also why I do this kind of cuisine and not Italian, because I want to leave something behind, a statement, more than just be a successful chef. I want to be a guy of whom people will say: he was part of that movement. I don’t want to just copy other kitchens. I want to have my signature, and my philosophy as my guide. Building a cuisine that is more allowing to different people, more socialistic, yes hopefully.

Making the food that he makes, and - through that - being part of a movement that stands for inclusion of people and creativity of food, he takes a political stance. There was a tangible atmosphere of progression that my interlocutors wanted to emit.

Sticking together

The idea that the Jewish people are victim of the diaspora, and therefore they should not be the ones to reject refugees, was one I came across often. At a lunch with Nir and Jacob - with whom I had built up the best rapport - I became aware how deep this idea is rooted in people. I wrote the following passage from my field notes after they had taken me to a Polish restaurant. They brought me there, because Jacob originates from Poland, and they both agreed that I should taste everything Israel has to offer.

At a certain moment we get into a conversation about how Israelis always stick together when they are abroad, on holiday. They start telling me about how all Israelis actually always feel a little bit not welcome. Although I had heard jokes about this earlier, the build up rapport gives our conversations a new serious character, in this serious and quiet restaurant (they tell me that the Ashkenazi restaurant is like Ashkenazim: they are always grumpy and they only talk when they have something to complain) very different from the restaurants (the balagan) where we mostly are. Their Israeli identity is a common one. Field notes 05-03-2018

An article by Klar, Klar and Schori-Eyal, explains how the Holocaust as a memory is a core aspect of Israeli identity (Klar, Klar and Schori-Eyal 2013: 125). Although not every Israeli has a direct experience that creates this memory, or even in the family, they do share a common memory of diaspora. The very existence of Israel is built upon that idea. In my research I mostly spoke to Jewish Israelis, and although they often identified themselves as secular, they were clear about being Jewish. As Hadar once said: “We do celebrate holidays, but it is more because of the tradition, it is a cultural thing - there is nothing religious about it”.

The impact of the war and the aftermath of the army

The shared memory of diaspora and the lasting vulnerable position Israel has in the world, makes for a common Jewish Israeli identity - which still can be divided into sub- national identities, but this is a common denominator. The omnipresence of the army in the daily life of Israelis, enables this identity.

Today, on Eilat street I saw a young man taking over a painting from a seller. It was sunny, and the two men were smiling and talking friendly with one another. The painting was full of different colors, it looked interesting. It was only when he took it over from the older man when I suddenly realized the young man was carrying a rifle. It is a common thing to see in Israel - young people in army outfits; having lunch, smoking a cigarette, training next to the beach, or on their way home. It strikes me how much this is part of their daily life. They are so young but have such a ‘grown-up’ role already. Field notes 02-02-2018

Figure 15. Young girls in army clothing, having lunch at the beach: a common view

The experience of being part of the Israeli Defense Forces, is one that almost every Jewish Israeli has (Arab Israelis, like Bedouin, are excluded from conscription, as well as ultra-orthodox Jews, but do sometimes serve). From the age of eighteen, both men and women go to the army. For women this means serving for two years, and for men two years and eight months. There is a lot to be said about the specifics of the obligatory military service. This thesis, however, does not give me the space to do so, and - more importantly - I am for now mostly interested in the way the service helps to form a national identity. The common experience of being in the army strongly contributes to the imagining of a community. Many of my informants referred to the same aspects they remembered from their army time, as well as how this experience had formed them as a person. The experience is very significant and resonates with the cultural and relational factors of belongingness, as well as the auto-biographical. Soldiers learn a particular language, spend a lot of time together, befriend many peers, and are taught ideals.

Haim: Everybody’s the same! That’s what they tell you on the first day in the army. Everyone has the same uniform, you look the same, you have the same haircut, everybody’s shaved, and everybody has a gun, so everybody looks the same. Everybody is the same and no one is better than anyone. You and I are equal. Everybody is equal.

Later in our conversation, Haim pointed out how this feeling of community continues to exist after the army.

Haim: [After] the army it is easy to speak to somebody, because you just ask them: ‘Where do you come from?’ And then the other person says: ‘From Herzliya!’ And then you say: ‘Oh great, my friend comes from Herzliya!’ And you go ask them who they know from there you know too.

Becoming a soldier at the age of 18, when you just finished high school, did not come as a surprise for anyone I spoke to - it is a logical next step to everyone. It did, however, often felt as a big contradiction; the behavior that was expected of them, did not resemble what was expected of them before. The sudden break in adolescence, leaves an even more significant mark on people’s lives.

Jacob: I think [Israelis are] very much about ‘live today, we don’t know what tomorrow might bring’. A lot of people here are working with a trauma [PTSD] from the army. You know, when you are only 18, you are like: ‘Bye bye home! I am going to the army’. Still a kid. Take a gun and go!

Eli: Well, when you start the army, you are still a kid. And just like that, you are alone and you need to take responsibility for your actions. And it is the first time you start to understand that every decision you make has consequences.

In my interview with Eli, he later would give me valuable insights into how defining army experiences are for a young person. He told me it had made him more mature, and gave an intriguing example of something that caused this new characteristic.

Eli: You look at life in a different light. When you are eighteen years old and you already go to a funeral of a friend of yours, you start to be very realistic about life, and you start to realize what is important and what not. And a lot of people I knew got killed. Not my closest friends, but a lot of people I knew. [The army makes a person] more occupied with themselves. If you don’t clean, nobody will clean for you. If you are not eating lunch, no one will bring you lunch.

The last part of this quote reflects on the way many of my interlocutors felt how they should take matters into their own hands. This is something that I came across on many different levels. The ‘classic trip’ many Israelis go on - a trip of a couple of months often to either South-East Asia or South America - after the army, fits the idea of you being the only person who is responsible for making your own life worthwhile. As Eli explains:

Eli: We did something really hard and something significant and [then you feel like:] now I deserve to not think too much about the future, and live in the moment. Everyone feels that way. And most of the people after the army have Miluim, you know what it is? The army after the army, you

have to go back twice a year, something like that. The army is with you until you’re fifty years old!

This last quote demonstrates two important insights. On the one hand, people want to escape the army, and develop an immense urge to ‘break free’. On the other hand, people can never really break free from the army, because it stays with you, and is a part of the collective memory. He later explains how people find it hard to start their serious grown up life, because since you did the army, you feel like you deserve to still remain a kid.

The search for freedom

Army experiences and financial situations, often created a desire to be free among my interlocutors. This desire was manifested in the way they would present themselves in the restaurants - towards me, each other, and the customers. At the same time, however, they tried to create a safe, home-like space; the restaurant. These two aspects made that they created a specific culture, which was characterized by celebration, and included rituals, habits and a communal language. After the army many people would find freedom on the ‘classic trip’, but when they came back to Israel and started working at a restaurant, they looked for other ways to regain agency and ways to release stress. Many of my interlocutors told me how they liked to have control over their own lives. This resulted for instance in a general rejection of the uniform, after being obliged to wear the same military one for years. For restaurants, the attempt to regain agency, meant for instance that customers often expected to get free shots or extra dishes. In general, I came across this informal attitude towards life very often. When I spoke to Nir about ambition, he unintentionally summed this way of thinking up.

Nir: When you want to do something, don’t talk about it, just do it. That’s it. When you want to do something, you do. If you only talk about it, it never happens. Actions do more than words.

What seemed most striking to me, in the way they would release stress, was that the employees would drink during work and during the day - shots mostly. When I would ask them why they would do so, they often explained it was to release stress.

Haim: Everyone will drink at least one shot. Every guest, every worker, will drink one shot. It is to let go of the panic, we say. Yes, we like to drink. I cannot explain it, but people are very stressed in Israel, very stressed. People have to work a lot. It is expensive, really expensive. So one shot at noon, makes everything a little bit looser.

I did not come across anyone who did not drink, some estimated that they would drink around two shots and two beers per day, others told me they would have at least double of that. Tanya, who told me she would often drink six shots, and maybe some beers on a regular work day, explained that it helped her in her job as a cook:

Tanya: [It] works kind of as fuel. [You] work better with alcohol. At least I do. Sometimes I am drunk all day long and it helps me so much. To concentrate better. Well, not drunk. Just a bit, not drunk and lying on the floor. Just more relaxed. So you don’t panic about work.

At the restaurants, the drinking was often ritualized, at some more fixed than at others. At Misada, for instance, every day at one o’clock one of the employees pours every employee a shot, rings a bell and toast, while exclaiming: L’chaim! A communal moment of drinking shots is not the only practice that is ritualized. At Misada, every morning the place is ‘detoxed’ by one of the employees. This person burns sage in a little pan, walks around and in and out of the restaurant to ban out all bad spirits. Every morning, the smell of burnt sage fills the restaurant, customers look up to see how the one carrying the pan of sage is dancing through the restaurant, and the employees, too, all become aware that the day has started. I came to understand that most of these rituals were often initially created to attract customers; to create a sense of belonging for the customers.

Haim: Yeah and then we have a customer sitting at the bar and looking at us, they feel like we are a family, just for now; everybody’s drinking, everybody’s happy.

Lior: I feel like I have to be the initiator of the party, firstly because when the service is good, people like that. People like it when you are friendly, and you smile and ask question. So, yeah… people like it. But also,

because I need the tip. Because that is the money I eventually get. That is my cash. And also for fun. I like to have fun and have good vibes in my life.

Customers did seem to have a good time and be more inclined to come back, but that is beside my point. Simultaneously, it resulted in feelings of closeness among the employees themselves. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, at Misada there was also a kind of Bible, in which a specific language and ‘commandments’ were taught. This ritualization enforced a sense of belonging. Language, being the most important cultural factor, can create a ‘warm sensation’, “to be among people who not only merely understand what you say, but also what you mean” (Antonsich 2010: 648). The employees created a community that is based on celebration - on carrying out happiness. They emphasized how Israeli food was supposed to be fun, how people were allowed to eat with their hands and how chaser (shot) meant ‘happiness’ to them. In this community, however open-minded and including, people accommodate to it. The drinking, but also the standing up for yourself, was for some people at first something they would have to habituate. Tanya explains, how when she came to Tel Aviv from Belarus, she did not have the basic skill that she felt she needed to get around; speaking up.

Tanya: First I didn’t have it, but now I do. I like to be that person that knows what she wants and then gets what she wants. In Israel you can be that person. People leave you no choice. If you’re silent and you don’t know how to behave and if you don’t want to talk to other people, it is impossible.

Aviv, besides being her colleague at Misada, is Tanya’s boyfriend. He comes from a family with a long history of drug abuse - he was born an addict. That is why I was particularly interested in how he related to the many drinks that were consumed during the day.

Aviv: First time I came here they told me to take the chaser. And I said: no, no, no. And they told me to leave everything and just take it. That’s how it started. And now I am like: ‘Fuck it! You stop everything and pour a chaser for me now!’

Our conversation followed by him telling me how he was afraid he could be becoming an addict, because of how drinking was the norm. Besides Aviv, no one else confessed it was a problem for them. Also, I did not get the impression it was for many people, but it did became evident that participating was important when someone wanted to fall in line. The result was that everyone would join, and that created a communal feeling. The feeling of community, also became apparent in the story Adi told me about Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) at Misada. The chef of the restaurant, Ido Levy, is also a photographer, and for this holiday he makes T-shirts with a picture taken by him. He does this every year, and they are handed out to all of the employees of all of his restaurants (about eight in Tel Aviv).

Adi: And what is very funny and nice about it is that during the year you walk on the streets [and] you see people wearing those shirts, as a uniform. Sometimes you just see a guy walking down the streets and you are like: hey, he is from our company! And if you see T-shirts from, for example, five years ago. You’re like: ahhh! You’re an old timer! It is kind of like a… We do not have uniforms, but this symbolizes being a part of the company, the community.

This is a good example of how practices at the roots contribute to the creation of a national identity; it is not imposed from above but rather created by people themselves. The ritual of handing out the T-shirts as gifts, attempts to create a sense of belongingness. It also greatly resembles the idea of an imagined community. Even though these people do not know each other, and maybe never will, they do recognize each other as being part of the same community. Also, everyone from the company knows the same Ido Levy language from the earlier mentioned Bible. And lastly, his business partner envisions their company and the restaurants, as having a distinct social character; helping others and making a change. This perspective was often adopted, or shared, by my interlocutors, so their political views connect them as well. Like Bel Ami stressed in his speech, in the first chapter, the Tel Avivian national identity is characterized by a yearning for normalcy at all cost, which goes hand in hand with the exhausting and, to them, abortive longing for peace I encountered among my interlocutors. By emphasizing their similarities, the employees imagine their own culture, so they can overcome their heterogeneity.

Conclusion

“They wanted to kill us, they did not succeed, let’s eat!” American Jewish expression, often used during Purim (Evers and Stodel 2017: 105)

Food is a way to express oneself, not just by what is eaten, but also how, with whom and in what setting. The Jewish community is, among many other things, connected by the feeling that they should stick together, which finds its basis in the diaspora. Food is important way to express and construct that communal feeling. Furthermore, their collective memories and common backgrounds, make for my interlocutors to have a desire to be connected to one another and to be able to create a feeling of belongingness. In this chapter I showed how national identity is reflected in the feeling of belonging of my interlocutors in the restaurants.

CONCLUSION

Three overwhelming months of exploring the gourmetization foodscape of Tel Aviv have led to my findings in this thesis, in which I have answered the following research question: How does the gourmetization foodscape of Tel Aviv reflect its participants’ relationship to a national identity as well as being a place where they create a sense of belonging? The strong correlation between food and nationality is undeniable. The construction of a national identity is strongly tied to that of a national cuisine. Thus, a young country like Israel – in which the process of determining what the national cuisine comprises is still ongoing – makes for a rare opportunity to understand how a cuisine is constructed and how the people who are contributing to that construction, explore their own national identity while doing so. The gourmetization foodscape allows people to search for a ‘New Israeli Cuisine’. People are actively defining what the food and the restaurants in this foodscape should entail; what kind of story it should tell. Many restaurants play both with contradictions, for instance high and low culture, and tradition and modernity, as well as with tensions, specifically those between Israeliness, fusion and authenticity. A large variety of influences are welcomed in the foodscape, which leads to fusion becoming inherently Israeli. The heterogeneous character is resolved by imagining a community, in which nostalgia plays a big role. Since a national cuisine cannot arise from sheer nothingness, a collective past is imagined (by referring to collective memories), as well as a collective present and future. People find a sense of belonging in the balagan; they feel ‘at home’ in their restaurant which represents the foodscape. The desire to construct a homogeneous and democratic national cuisine is also reflected in how the people associated with it explicitly try to overcome initial internal rifts, and take a stance against the government – especially its deportation policy. A new internal rift, then, is possibly created, between secular and religious, between progressive and traditional; between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A rift between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as a concept makes sense, if one aims to understand how Tel Aviv - which is said to be a Bubble – is the epicenter of the construction of a national cuisine. The two cities are two very different, but very important political, cultural and economic powers in Israel. Jerusalem’s holiness and Tel Aviv’s hedonism are enforced by globalization. The foodscape reflects the secular character of the Bubble – with the rejection of kashrut. Tel Aviv, carrying out values of a global city, might seem contradictory to the formation of an Israeli identity. I argue however, that the foodscape

82 actually makes it possible to create an alternative Israeli identity; one that corresponds with the principles and beliefs of its actors – a striving for normalcy and homogeneity. A sense of belonging in the restaurant is how people at the roots shape their cultural identity. By imagining a cuisine, a community is imagined and a national identity explored. In this thesis I have contributed to knowledge on the contemporary construction of a national cuisine in Israel. Furthermore, my approach was different than that of other academics in this field; by understanding the relation of the foodscape to the construction of a national identity. Also, however specific this research might be, it is not merely relevant to the case of Tel Aviv, or even Israel. By conceiving the center of Tel Aviv and its gourmetization foodscape as a microcosm, macro questions on influences of globalization on food, and the construction of a national cuisine, can be answered. According to Cusack, “any national cuisine will have complex and multiple origins” (Cusack 2000: 210), and a national cuisine is at the same time “a useful part of building a national culture, a ‘prop’ in the process [...] of imagining the nation” (ibid.: 208). My findings are also applicable to other countries and cities where people are constructing a national cuisine out of a variety of influences, and in doing so, constructing a national identity that fits their personal desires and political views.

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