Falafel Nation
Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel
by Yael Raviv
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Pub Date Nov 01 2015 | Archive Date Nov 16 2015
Description
When people discuss food in Israel, their debates ask politically charged questions: Who has the right to falafel? Whose hummus is better? But Yael Raviv’s Falafel Nation moves beyond the simply territorial to divulge the role food plays in the Jewish nation. She ponders the power struggles, moral dilemmas, and religious and ideological affiliations of the different ethnic groups that make up the “Jewish State” and how they relate to the gastronomy of the region. How do we interpret the recent upsurge in the Israeli culinary scene—the transition from ideological asceticism to the current deluge of fine restaurants, gourmet stores, and related publications and media?
Focusing on the period between the 1905 immigration wave and the Six-Day War in 1967, Raviv explores foodways from the field, factory, market, and kitchen to the table. She incorporates the role of women, ethnic groups, and different generations into the story of Zionism and offers new assertions from a secular-foodie perspective on the relationship between Jewish religion and Jewish nationalism. A study of the changes in food practices and in attitudes toward food and cooking, Falafel Nation explains how the change in the relationship between Israelis and their food mirrors the search for a definition of modern Jewish nationalism.
Advance Praise
“What do Israelis talk about when they talk about food? Yael Raviv explores the food stories emerging from Zionism as they take shape in response to crisis, propaganda, and wave after wave of immigration. This lively and enlightening study of agriculture and cuisine as powerful elements in the task of state-making deserves wide readership in the academy and beyond.”—Laura Shapiro, author of Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century
“Everybody who is interested in nation-building should read this book. Using falafel as a metaphor, Yael Raviv has done a brilliant job at portraying her native country. Bravo!”—Joan Nathan, author of Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France
“Original, thought-provoking, and in many ways groundbreaking. Falafel Nation is rich with interesting and insightful ideas and comments that made me think time and again of the ways in which Israel can be observed from the culinary perspective. No doubt, approaching Israeli history, society, and political conflicts from the kitchen and the restaurant allows for a fresh and, indeed, critical view of this society.”—Nir Avieli, author of Rice Talks: Food and Community in a Vietnamese Town
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780803290174 |
| PRICE | $34.50 (USD) |
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Average rating from 3 members
Featured Reviews
Reviewer 153322
In a useful work of food history, Raviv explores the first half of the 20th century in Israel through cookbooks, memoirs and menus, as Jaffa oranges (once so popular El Al cabin crews dressed in orange), falafel and hummus, for reasons of agricultural export, flexibility as neither meat nor dairy, falafel's availability as street food rather than the kibbutz-rejected domesticity of bourgeois cooking, and the absorption by Eastern European emigrants of Middle Eastern ingredients through cooking techniques of the Pale. In an interesting sidelight, she discusses how generations of kids (especially boys), not taught to cook at home, learned to cook in the army, and used their connections there to open succeeding waves of restaurants.
Mandy J, Reviewer
In this meticulously researched exploration of food and its importance for the Jewish nation in Israel, the author charts the changes in attitudes towards food and cooking in Israel over the 20th and into the 21st century which defined home, identity and nationhood. I’ve seen the book described as a “culinary anthropology” and that sums it up. The author examines the centrality of food to our lives and to what extent it represents much more than just a way to physically survive. All food has wider social and political implications. Although rigorously academic in approach the book is both entertainingly and accessibly written and is deeply fascinating. Evocatively illustrated, with a good balance of fact and anecdote, it gave me much to ponder on, and expanded my knowledge considerably. Very well done.
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