This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Teach Me How to Eat Like an Israeli Nationhood, Food Culture and Identity in Israel Prieto Piastro, Claudia Raquel Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 Teach Me How to Eat Like an Israeli: Nationhood, Food Culture and Identity in Israel Claudia Raquel Prieto Piastro Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD/MPhil in Anthropology of the Middle East 2017 Department of Middle Eastern Studies King’s College London 1 ABSTRACT Israeli food culture mimics the story of the country and the tensions in its society. The diversity of its food and how it is used in celebrations and in the everyday is a reflection of the divisions and tensions within. This dissertation has the aim of understanding the relationship between the food culture of Israel and the creation of its national identity. It is an effort to research what the mundane little things, the behaviours and practices of the everyday, such as cooking and feeding ourselves and others tell us about the place we were born and how we think the people of that place should act and live. In order to develop a better understanding of these topics and the many facets of Israeli nationalism this thesis interrogates how ordinary Israelis use food in their everyday life to construct, perform, consume, choose, talk about and negotiate their idea of nationhood. To answer this question, it uses mainly ethnographic methods that help to explore how Israeli national identity is experienced through its food culture and how social transformations are reflected in the consumption patterns of Israeli society. It argues that national identity cannot be imposed by the elites; on the contrary, it is negotiated, accepted or rejected by ordinary people, and reproduced through their daily routines. It pays attention to the role played by women as socializing agents of new comers: children and immigrants, in the private sphere. It also emphasises the power relationships that are revealed through everyday cooking and the differences between domestic and public food consumption. This thesis is an effort to shed light on the way ordinary people negotiate ideas of nationhood and contribute to its construction. 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to start by thanking all of my informants in Israel, especially those who opened their homes and shared with me not only food but their stories, secrets and everyday routines. Their generosity made my research possible and I will always be grateful for that. I would also like to mention those who helped me with their advice and knowledge and who supported me through the fieldwork by making a telephone call or sending an email introducing me to new participants. And of course, I have to mention all the people that fed me; from offering a Nescafe to a Passover Seder, you made sure I was never hungry for food or knowledge. Thanks a lot! I will always be thankful to my supervisor Dr. Charis Boutieri. Her constant support and supervision started even before my PhD, during my MA degree and has gone beyond the subject of my dissertation. Her comments and encouragement persuaded me to start research that five years ago seemed almost impossible. Through these years she has been constantly challenging my assumptions and supporting me in the challenge of researching and writing from an Anthropological standpoint, a discipline that five years ago was almost unknown to me. Thanks Charis, you have been an excellent guide. I cannot write these acknowledgements without mentioning Professor Michael Kerr, Dr. Stacey Gutkowsky and Dr. Simon Waldman at King’s College London, as well as Professor Alfredo Lopez Austin at Universidad Autónoma de México. Together with my supervisor they supported me and encourage me to continue at KCL after my MA. Thanks for all the letters, and bureaucratic procedures, but above all thanks for convincing me that I could write a PhD. I also need to mention Dr. Mayssoun Sukarieh, who in the last few years has become a constant support, and a source of coffee, food and good conversation, thanks! I also thank my fellow PhD students who made these years incredibly enjoyable, that gave me perspective and advice when needed and hours and hours of laughter. Amal, Bahar, Duncan, Jacob, Naveed and Shady thanks so much for all the help you gave me! Thanks also to all of my friends including Stacy, Liz, Becca, Cristina, Lara, Mariela, Jorge and Gaby and so many others that read my work, listened to me talking for hours about Israeli food or even ended up going to Israel with me. Also, I thank everybody that I met in the SOAS Food Forum, specially Zosia, Nese, Fran, Katie and Leo. Our conversations, workshops and celebrations were fundamental for my research. 3 It is too difficult to put into words my gratitude to my parents: Thank you, thank you, thank you! I promise that everything you did payed off. This one is for you. It is also almost impossible to express how much I owe to Juan Pablo. Thanks for leaving absolutely everything to support your crazy wife that wanted to do a PhD about food; you know this would have never happened without you. And of course, thanks to Samuel who had to spend his fist months existing sitting in silence in front of a computer: believe me, without you I would have never finished on time. Finally, this PhD would not have been possible without financial support from Conacyt and FIDERH. Hopefully they will keep giving this opportunity to many other Mexican students. 4 Contents Chapter 1. Nation and the Everyday: How food shapes the nation .......................................... 7 Israel, food and everyday nationhood ................................................................................... 9 The ethnographic voice ........................................................................................................ 25 Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 27 Food in different settings: chapter structure ....................................................................... 32 Chapter 2. Learning to eat as an Israeli ................................................................................... 35 The cookbooks ..................................................................................................................... 38 How to cook in Palestine ...................................................................................................... 44 The Tzena: Baking without eggs ........................................................................................... 49 Times of Milk and Honey ...................................................................................................... 56 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 59 Chapter 3. Food in context: between rural and urban life. ..................................................... 61 The change in discourse ....................................................................................................... 63 The kibbutz during the sixties and seventies ....................................................................... 65 Kibbutz and the institutional diet......................................................................................... 71 Caviar and champagne for a simple kibbutznik ................................................................... 73 Urban life: “From the Kitchen with Love.” ........................................................................... 76 Urban life: a taste for the exotic .......................................................................................... 79 The never-ending Israeli breakfast ...................................................................................... 82 The battle for Israeli food ..................................................................................................... 84 Changing Israel’s image: Beyond Milk and Honey ............................................................... 86 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 88 Chapter 4. Israel: A Kosher nation? ........................................................................................