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On the eve of 30 March 1909, a celebratory dinner party was hosted, marking Hayim Nahman Bialik’s inaugural visit to Palestine. The renowned poet had only just disembarked at Jaffa Port the previous day. And before he had even set foot on Holy Land soil, groups of his adoring fans had managed to sneak into the small boats accompanying his ship to shore. The masses awaiting his arrival on land, swept him off his feet and carried him through the Old City streets of Jaffa (the Achuzat Bayit [‘homestead’] land lot draw – the first step towards the birth of Tel Aviv – was still 10 days away.) An exhausted Bialik, who only managed to pry himself away from his many well-wishers in the wee hours of the night, was covered in cold sweat and in a letter written to his wife, Mania, he described the panic that had overcome him.
The feast in his honour, held the following day, was hosted by the Hebrew Teachers’ Society. It was held at the Bella Vista Hotel’s dining and ballroom – by far and wide Jaffa and Palestine’s poshest hotel of the time. Bialik was in two minds as to whether he ought to accept the invitation – all this pomp and circumstance and standing on ceremony was so far removed from everything he was about – but ultimately, he didn’t have the heart to say no.
The diners, comprising an assortment of authors and intellectuals, were given a special menu printed in an exceptionally large font. Each of the dishes was named after a poem or story penned by the guest of honour. “Fish” was the sole explanation provided by the author of the menu next to a dish titled, Wandering the Distance (‘mishut bamerhakim’), with no further details available as to the type of fish or how it had been prepared. The Pool (‘ha-berekhah’) was a soup dish; (Ode) to the Bird (‘el hatzipor) – a chicken dish; the meat dish was dubbed, Aryeh of the Body (‘aryeh [lion] baal guf’) and so forth, including a full range of puddings and desserts. “It was a most extraordinary feast: stately, Hebrew, and ever so tasteful,” daily paper HaZvi (‘the deer’) concluded with delight.
Nowadays, well into the third decade of the 21st century when it seems as though every last dish and morsel we are served on our plate is shared and immortalised across all social media, it seems almost inconceivable that a dinner party so important and carefully curated would not have been meticulously documented down to the finest crumb. However in those days, the daily papers could not have cared less about the minutiae of dish ingredients, flavour, consistency, and all that. The only reason the menu made the papers in the first place was because of the exceptional circumstances behind it, and the ‘highbrow cultural’ air the titles of Bialik’s works lent to what on any other day was “just food.”
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These days, when discussing the contemporary Israeli cuisine revolution, the conversation usually focuses on trends that were taking place back in the 1980s and ‘90s: young chefs who, for the most part, were third generation Israelis, started mixing together the West’s haute cuisine cooking techniques with two main sources of influence: local Middle Eastern cuisine, and the cuisines of various Jewish communities from all over the world. This trend which, at the turn of the 21st century gave Israeli cuisine its international reputation is a product of the country’s then-stabilising political and financial climate. After nearly a century during which public attention was almost entirely devoted to the most burning existential issues, the relative stability of the period led to a growing exploration of leisure and pastime culture, of which culinary discourse is certainly a part.
In the years before the establishing of the State of Israel and the early decades of its existence, dining was rarely mentioned in the context of leisure, nor was food considered an integral part of “high society”. And yet, even then Israelis could not keep their fingers out of the food pie. Granted, in those days, food was primarily seen as a biological necessity; the substance required to feed and maintain the bodies of those toiling away at building the land and resurrecting the Jewish people – nevertheless, at the same time food, eating, and consumption habits all played a pivotal role in the attempt to shape and define a new national identity.
A collection of rare footage stored at the Israeli Film Archive including newsreels, propaganda films, and adverts shot between the 1920s and ‘70s brings viewers the story of the local culinary scene. It joins a breadth of still images and written sources, all of which attest to the local cuisine’s invaluable contribution to the establishing of Israelis’ national identity.
Food is a rather convenient reference by which to define identity – whether it be individual, familial, communal, religious, and national – seeing as it evokes the most intense feelings of relatability and belonginess in us. Its presence is a constant in just about all areas of life. Food is one of the first things we experience as we come into this world, through bonding with the mother and the nuclear family; as such, it provides a multisensory experience – through touch, sight, taste, and smell – all of which the brain associates with particular events and objects which it then translates into memories.
In the first half of the 20th century, Jewish immigrants sought to express their bond with the old-new fatherland through the fruits of the earth. Almost a hundred years before ‘locally sourced’ became the buzzword-in-chief at the heart of trendy culinary discourse, nutrition consultants on behalf of all the Zionist organisations around at the time published the first-ever Hebrew cook books, so as to encourage the use of locally sourced fruit and veg amongst new immigrants, to whom many of which were completely and utterly alien. The newsreels captured the Jewish pioneers’ work in the orchards and dairy farms, and the early days of industrialisation in the areas of agriculture and food manufacturing which, for many years were a tremendous source of pride, nourishing the Israeli ethos.
In the 1950s, within a staggeringly short period of time, the nascent country took in hundreds of thousands of immigrants, which also meant having to take on the many financial challenges that came with the territory by introducing food austerity measures and implementing equal rationing protocols on all citizens. Films of that period chronicle the search for production avenues and raw ingredients in line with the spirit of the time (including raring poultry for food), and the human struggle to live under the country’s harsh food austerity and rationing measures. In the sixties and seventies, after austerity had been abolished – and especially in the aftermath of 1967’s Six-Day War – cameras were there to capture the post-austerity euphoria as restaurants and street diners started opening up, and the constant quest for a common denominator – that distinctive national cuisine that will unite all the various cultures and ethnicities.
Israel is a young country located on ancient land that is rich with history and rife with geopolitical and cultural conflicts. Contrary to other, much older countries, Israel itself has yet to develop its own distinct culinary tradition. Any attempts thus far to steer it in that direction as part of the active construction of a national identity, have revealed a set of conflicts with which Israeli society continues to grapple to this day: from the Jewish-Arab conflict and the Ashkenazis vs. Sephardis ethnic conflict, to the religious conflict between secular and orthodox Jews, to name but a few. Israel has a diverse migrant society made up of a wide range of ethnicities, nationalities, and religions; however the search for a national cuisine is by no means unique to it. In a modern world that has, over time, become an all-encompassing global village, most individuals seek to define their own identity and differentiate themselves from others through streamlined circles of association which also include a national identity and cuisine.
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The camera lens isn’t always objective. More often than not, the point of view belongs to those with vested interests or deep-seated truths which they seek to voice through it. That said, beyond the biased angle – and at times, even thanks to it – the camera is able to deliver a rare documentation of people, places, and events. In 1962, director David Perlov shot a short documentary about Jaffa Port’s small boat fishermen. The film, commissioned by the government and Jewish Agency for Israel as part of its monthly news magazine for new immigrants, captured moments of rare co-existence between Arab and Jewish fishermen (the latter of whom were of Balkan-Turkish descent), and also featured footage of the rich diversity of local fish (fishermen are seen returning from the sea with their boats packed to the brim with all their daily catches) that have since vanished forever, in no small part due to lack of legislation, controls, and enforcement on the subject. In an age when it is now painstakingly obvious that the future of the planet is directly tied to the modern-day food industry that seems to stop for no one, one would do well also to bear that in mind when approaching this rare footage.
