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gothhabiba · 11 months ago

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loving your falafel research saga and just wanted to ask - something I remember hearing about falafel is that while Israeli culture definitely appropriated it, the concept of serving it in pita bread with salads, tahini etc. is a specifically Israeli twist on the dish. I wonder if you found/know anything about that?

The short answer is: it's not impossible, but I don't think there's any way to tell for sure. The long answer is:

The most prominent claim I've heard of this nature is specifically that Yemeni Jews (who had immigrated to Israel under 'right of return' laws and were Israeli citizens) invented the concept of serving falafel in "pita" bread in the 1930s—perhaps after they (in addition to Jews from Morocco or Syria) had brought falafel over and introduced it to Palestinians in the first place.

"Mizrahim brought falafel to Palestine"

This latter claim, which is purely nonsense (again... no such thing as Moroccan falafel!)—and which Joel Denker (linked above) repeats with no source or evidence—was able to arise because it was often Mizrahim who introduced Israelis to Palestinian food. Mizrahi falafel sellers in the early 20th century might run licensed falafel stands, or carry tins full of hot falafel on their backs and go from door to door selling them (see Shaul Stampfer on a Yemeni man doing this, "Bagel and Falafel: Two Iconic Jewish Foods and One Modern Jewish Identity," in Jews and their Foodways, p. 183; this Arabic source mentions a 1985 Arabic novel in which a falafel seller uses such a tin; Yael Raviv writes that "Running falafel stands had been popular with Yemenite immigrants to Palestine as early as the 1920s and ’30s," "Falafel: A National Icon," Gastronomica 3.3 (2003), p. 22).

On Mizrahi preparation of Palestinian food, Dafna Hirsch writes:

As Sami Zubaida notes, Middle Eastern foodways, while far from homogeneous, are nevertheless describable in a vocabulary and set of idioms that are “often comprehensible, if not familiar, to the socially diverse parties” [...]. Thus, for the Jews who arrived in Palestine from the Middle East, Palestinian Arab foods and foodways were “comprehensible, if not familiar,” even if some of the dishes were previously unknown to most of them. [...] They found nothing extraordinary or exotic in the consumption, preparation, and selling of foods from the Palestinian Arab kitchen. Therefore, it was often Mizrahi Jews who mediated local foods to Ashkenazi consumers, as street food vendors and restaurant owners. ("Urban Food Venues as Contact Zones between Arabs and Jews during the British Mandate Period," in Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean, p. 101).

Raviv concurs and furnishes a possible mechanism for this borrowing:

Other Mizrahi Jewish vendors sold falafel, which by the late 1930s had become quite prevalent and popular on the streets of Tel Aviv. [...] Tel Aviv had eight licensed Mizrahi falafel vendors by 1941 and others who sold falafel without a license. [FN: The Tel Aviv municipality granted vending license to people who could not make their living in any other way as a form of welfare.] Many of the vendors were of Yemenite origins, although falafel was unknown in Yemen. [FN: Many of the immigrants from Yemen arrived in Palestine via Egypt, so it is possible that they learned to prepare it there and then adjusted the recipe to the Palestinian version, which was made from chickpeas and not from fava beans (ṭaʿmiya). Shmuel Yefet, an Israeli falafel maker, tells about his father, Yosef Ben Aharon Yefet, who arrived in Palestine from Aden [Yemen] in the early 1920s and then traveled to Port Said in 1939. There he became acquainted with ṭaʿmiya, learned to prepare it, and then went back to Palestine and opened a falafel shop in Tel Aviv [youtube video].]*

But why claim that Yemeni Jews invented falafel (or at least that they had introduced it from Yemen), even though its adoption from Palestinian Arabs in the early days of the second Aliya, aka the 1920s (before Mizrahim had begun to immigrate in larger numbers; see Raviv, p. 20) was within living memory at this point (i.e. the 1950s)? Raviv notes that an increasing (I mean, actually she says new, which... lol) negative attitude towards Arabs in the wake of the Nakba (I mean... she says "War of Independence") created a new sense of urgency around de-Arabizing "Israeli" culture (p. 22). Its association with Mizrahi sellers allowed falafel to "be linked to Jewish immigrants who had come from the Middle East and Africa" and thus to "shed its Arab association in favor of an overarching Israeli identification" (p. 21).

Stampfer again:

On the one hand (with regard to immigrants from Eastern Europe), [falafel] underscored the break between immediate past East European Jewish foods and the new “Oriental” world of Eretz Israel.** At the same time, this food could be seen as a link with an (idealized) past. Among the Jewish public in Eretz Israel, Yemenite falafel was regarded as the most original and tastiest version. This is a bit odd, as falafel—whether in or out of a pita—was not a traditional Yemenite food, neither among Muslims nor among Jews. To understand the ascription of falafel to Yemenite Jews, it is necessary to consider their image. Yemenite Jews were widely regarded in the mid-20th century as the most faithful transmitters of a form of Jewish life that was closest to the biblical world—and if not the biblical world, at least the world of the Second Temple, which marked the last period of autonomous Jewish life in Eretz Israel. In this sense, eating “Yemenite” could be regarded as an act of bodily identification with the Zionist claim to the land of Israel. (p. 189)

So, when it's undeniable that a food is "Arab" or "Oriental" in origin, Zionists will often attribute it to Yemen, Syria, Morocco, Turkey, &c.—and especially to Jewish communities within these regions—because it cannot be permitted that Palestinians have a specific culture that differentiates them in any way from other "Arabs." A culinary culture based in the foodstuffs cultivated from this particular area of land would mean a tie and a claim to the land, which Zionist logic cannot allow Palestinians to possess. This is why you'll hear Zionists correct people who say "Palestinians" to say "Arab" instead, or suggest that Palestinians should just scooch over into other "Arab" countries because it would make no difference to them. Raviv's conclusion that the attribution of falafel to Yemeni immigrants is an effort to detach it from its "Arab" origins isn't quite right—it is an attempt to detach it, and thus Palestinians themselves, from Palestinian roots.

"Yemeni Jews first put falafel in 'pita'"

As for this claim, it's often attributed to Gil Marks: "Jews didn’t invent falafel. They didn’t invent hummus. They didn’t invent pita. But what they did invent was the sandwich. Putting it all together.” (Hilariously, the author of the interview follows this up with "With each story, I wanted to ask, but how do you know that?")

Another author (signed "Philologos") speculates (after, by the way, falsely claiming that "falafel" is the plural of the Arabic "filfil" "pepper," and that falafel is always brown, not green, inside?!):

Yet while falafel balls are undoubtedly Arab in origin, too, it may well be that the idea of serving them as a street-corner food in pita bread, to which all kinds of extras can be added, ranging from sour pickles to whole salads, initially was a product of Jewish entrepreneurship.

Shaul Stampfer cites both of these articles as further reading on the "novelty of the combination of pita, falafel balls, and salad" (FN 76, p. 198)—but neither of them cites any evidence! They're both just some guy saying something!

Marks had, however, elaborated a little bit in his 2010 Encyclopedia of Jewish Food:

Falafel was enjoyed in salads as part of a mezze (appetizer assortment) or as a snack by itself. An early Middle Eastern fast food, falafel was commonly sold wrapped in paper, but not served in the familiar pita sandwich until Yemenites in Israel introduced the concept. [...] Yemenite immigrants in Israel, who had made a chickpea version in Yemen, took up falafel making as a business and transformed this ancient treat into the Israeli iconic national food. Most importantly, Israelis wanted a portable fast food and began eating the falafel tucked into a pita topped with the ubiquitous Israeli salad (cucumber-and-tomato salad).

He references one of the pieces that Lillian Cornfeld (columnist for the English-language, Jerusalem-based newspaper Palestine Post) wrote about "filafel":

An article from October 19, 1939 concluded with a description of the common preparation style of the most popular street food, 'There is first half a pita (Arab loaf), slit open and filled with five filafels, a few fried chips and sometimes even a little salad,' the first written record of serving falafel in pita. [Marks doesn't tell you the title or page—it's "Seaside Temptations: Juveniles' Fare at Tel Aviv," p. 4.]

You will first of all notice that Marks gives us the "falafel from Yemen" story. I also notice that he calls Salat al-bundura "Israeli salad" (in its entry he does not claim that European Jewish immigrants invented it, but neither does he attribute it to Palestinian influence: the dish was originally "Turkish coban salatsi"). His encyclopedia also elsewhere contains Zionist claims such as "wild za'atar was declared a protected plant in Israel" "[d]ue to overexploitation" because of how much of the plant "Arab families consume[d]," and that Israeli cultivation of the crop yielded "superior" plants (entry for "Za'atar")—a narrative of "Arab" mismanagement, and Israeli improvement, of land used to justify settler-colonialism. He writes that Palestinians who accuse "the Jews" of theft in claiming falafel are "creat[ing] a controversy" and that "food and culture cannot be stolen," with no reflection on the context of settler-colonialism and literal, physical theft that lies behind said "controversy." This isn't relevant except that it makes me sceptical of Marks's motivations in general.

More pertinent is the fact that this quote doesn't actually suggest that this falafel vendor was Yemeni (or otherwise) Jewish, nor does it suggest that he was the first one to prepare falafel in pitas with "fried chips," "sometimes even a little salad," and "Tehina, a local mayonnaise made with sesame oil" (Cornfeld, p. 4). I think it likely that this food had been sold for a while before it was described in published writing. The idea that this preparation is "Israeli" in origin must be false, since this was before the state of "Israel" existed—that it was first created by Yemeni Jewish falafel vendors is possible, but again, I've never seen any direct evidence for it, or anyone giving a clear reason for why they believe it to be the case, and the political reasons that people have for believing this narrative make me wary of it. There were Palestinian Arab falafel vendors at this time as well.

"Chickpea falafel is a Jewish invention"

There is also a claim that falafel originated in Egypt, where it was made with fava beans; spread to the Levant, including Palestine, where it was made with a combination of fava beans and chickpeas; but that Jewish immigration to Israel caused the origin of the chickpea-only falafal currently eaten in Palestine, because a lot of Jewish people have G6PD deficiencies or favism (inherited enzymatic deficiencies making fava beans anywhere from unpleasant to dangerous to eat)—or that Jewish populations in Yemen had already been making chickpea-only falafel, and this was the falafel which they brought with them to Palestine.

As far as I can tell, this claim comes from Joan Nathan's 2001 The Foods of Israel:

Zadok explained that at the time of the establishment of the state, falafel—the name of which probably comes from the word pilpel (pepper)—was made in two ways: either as it is in Egypt today, from crushed, soaked fava beans or fava beans combined with chickpeas, spices, and bulgur; or, as Yemenite Jews and the Arabs of Jerusalem did, from chickpeas alone. But favism, an inherited enzymatic deficiency occurring among some Jews—mainly those of Kurdish and Iraqi ancestry, many of whom came to Israel during the mid 1900s—proved potentially lethal, so all falafel makers in Israel ultimately stopped using fava beans, and chickpea falafel became an Israeli dish.

Gil Marks's 2010 Encyclopedia of Jewish Food echoes (but does not cite):

Middle Eastern Jews have been eating falafel for centuries, the pareve fritter being ideal in a kosher diet. However, many Jews inherited G6PD deficiency or its more severe form, favism; these hereditary enzymatic deficiencies are triggered by items like fava beans and can prove fatal. Accordingly, Middle Eastern Jews overwhelmingly favored chickpeas solo in their falafel. (Entry for "Falafel")

The "centuries" thing is consistent with the fact that Marks believes falafel to be of Medieval origin, a claim which most scholars I've read on the subject don't believe (no documentary evidence, + oil was expensive so it seems unlikely that people were deep frying anything). And, again, this claim is speculation with no documentary evidence to support it.

As for the specific modern toppings including the Yemeni hot sauce سَحاوِق / סְחוּג (saHawiq / "zhug"), Baghdadi mango pickle عنبة / עמבה ('anba), and Moroccan هريسة / חריסה ("harissa"), it seems likely that these were introduced by Mizrahim given their place of origin.

*You might be interested to know that, despite their Jewishness mediating this borrowing, Mizrahim were during the Mandate years largely ethnically segregated from Eastern European Zionists, who were pushing to create a "new" European-Israeli Judaism separate from what they viewed as the indolence and ignorance of "Oriental" Jewishness (Hirsch p. 101).

This was evidenced in part by Europeans' attitudes towards the "Oriental" diet. Ari Ariel, summarizing Yael Raviv's Falafel Nation, writes:

Although all immigrants were thought to require culinary education as an aspect of their absorption into the new national culture, Middle Eastern Jews, who began to immigrate in increasing numbers after 1948, provoked greater anxiety on the part of the state than did their Ashkenazi co-religionists. Israeli politicians and ideologues spoke of the dangers of Levantization and stereotyped Jews from the Middle East and North Africa as primitive, lazy, and ignorant. In keeping with this Orientalism, the state pressured Middle Easterners to change their foodways and organized cooking demonstrations in transit camps and new housing developments. (Book review, Israel Studies Review 31.2 (2016), p. 169.)

See also Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, "Longing for the Aromas of Baghdad: Food, Emigration, and Transformation in the Lives of Iraqi Jews in Israel in the 1950s," in Jews and their Foodways:

[...] [T]he Israeli establishment was set on “educating” the new immigrants not only in matters of health and hygiene, [77] but also in the realm of nutrition. A concerted propaganda effort was launched by well-baby clinics, kindergartens, schools, health clinics, and various organizations such as the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) and the Organization of Working Mothers in order to promote the consumption of milk and dairy products, in particular. [78] (These had a marginal place in Iraqi cuisine, consumed mainly by children.) Arab and North African cuisines were criticized for being not sufficiently nutritious, whereas the Israeli diet was touted as ideal, as it was western and modern. […] [T]he assault on traditional Middle Eastern cuisines reflected cultural arrogance yet another attempt to transform immigrants into “new Jews” in accordance with the Zionist ethos. Thus, European table manners were presented as the norm. Eating with the hands was equated with primitive behavior, and use of a fork and knife became the hallmark of modernity and progress. (pp. 100-101)

[77. On health matters, see Davidovich and Shvarts, “Health and Hegemony,” 150–179; Sahlav Stoller-Liss, “ ‘Mothers Birth the Nation’: The Social Construction of Zionist Motherhood in Wartime in Israeli Parents’ Manuals,” Nashim 6 (Fall 2003), 104–118.]

[78. On propaganda for drinking milk and eating dairy products, see Mor Dvorkin, “Mif’alei hahazanah haḥinukhit bishnot ha’aliyah hagedolah: mekorot umeafyenim” (seminar paper, Ben-Gurion University, 2010).]

**On the desire to shed "old, European" "Jewish" identity and take on a "new, Oriental" "Hebrew" one, and the contradictory impulses to use Palestinian Arabs as models in this endeavour and to claim that they needed to be "corrected," see:

Itamar Even-Zohar, "The Emergence of a Native Hebrew Culture in Palestine, 1882—1948"

Dafna Hirsch, "We Are Here to Bring the West, Not Only to Ourselves": Zionist Occidentalism and the Discourse of Hygiene in Mandate Palestine"

Ofra Tene, "'The New Immigrant Must Not Only Learn, He Must Also Forget': The Making of Eretz Israeli Ashkenazi Cuisine."

#sorry for this but you should've known better than to ask me about falafel at this stage in my life #falafel research saga #food research #citation #culinary Zionism

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jewish-culture-is · 5 months ago

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Jewish culture is your grandparents having wrong ages on their certificates cuz they had to fake some of them while making an aliya to israel after the holocaust

(Or maybe that's just mine)

I doubt it's just you, I'm glad that they are safe <3

#jewish culture is #judaism #jewish #jumblr #shoah mention #tw shoah

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insane-control-room · 1 year ago

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a lot of you are going #freegaza and completely ignoring the massive spike in anti-semitism globally. i see a bunch of you talking about birthright and aliya as though its a big scary conspiracy.

yall dont know shit about us.

for thousands of years, we yearn to return home because of your oppression. when we get comfortable, shit like the progroms and the holocaust happens, because of course our loving goyishe neighbors will never try to kill us, or at least, they wont turn us in to those who will. when we try to leave, shit like getting deported to siberia and getting "disappeared" happen, and our goyish friends will tearfully promise to take care of our belongings- and simply never return them.

you tell us "go back to where you came from".

we're trying to do that. and you hate us for it.

we say "אם אשכחך ירושלים תשכח ימיני", and we have been saying it since it was compiled in psalms. you all glorify our pain, and ignore it.

you all make us into scapegoats, and say we deserved it. you all pillage our holy places, search for our holy artifacts, and denounce us as a people as you do so. your crusades and inquisitions lay long forgotten by you, but not by us. our memory is stronger than yours, apparently.

you desecrate our final resting places, you burn swastikas on our doors, and you do it in the name of freedom- a Mask of freedom, hiding Sunni Islam law and a long history of forced conversions, honor killings, hinduphobia and inherent anti-semitism. these people are not calling to take over the land for freedom, they are literally calling for jihad. they kicked us out of their lands- where is the outrage for us? these are a people who say JEWS are not welcome in the land they came from, and in saying birthright and aliya is bad, you do too.

i want to go home.

i will never be able to go home if as you guys want, hamas 'wins'. there is no winning here. you all wouldnt blink an eye if israel was nuked because you think everyone in it is a murderer and a settler.

were there because its our home. the land accepts us when you dont.

i WILL go home.

#israel #today's 5am rant #i see you all reblogging posts on how israel is losing #because 'we're not spreading israeli news!'#and then they say that this conflict #isnt one sided #as they gleefully share hamas sponsored news #yeah well i dont see you sharing anything about the #antisemitism #maybe #you dont care

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hebrewbyinbal · 3 months ago

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✍️ Comment KEN (Yes in Hebrew), and I'll show you how you can start speaking Hebrew today!

Leaving behind any confusion, overwhelm, or self doubt.

I teach different from anyone and any program out there - for one simple reason:

My methods work!

Tailored to English speakers, and built on students' success and feedback, you'll step into a learning experience that is -

✅️ Clear

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✅️ Gets you speaking and understanding Hebrew better than you ever thought possible... in a quarter of the time.

Sounds like a dream?

It's a reality of all my students.

And you are no different, I promise.

✍️ Comment KEN (Yes in Hebrew), and I'll show you how you can start today 😃🇮🇱

#hebrew #learnhebrew #modern Hebrew #hebrew langblr #language #israel #language learning #langblog #jumblr #Aliya

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notyourgoodjew · 5 months ago

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I have been meaning to share this small drawing I've made around the 2rd anniversary of my Aliyah and the feelings I've been mulling over at the time and I've finally found the courage to:

I made aliya around 2 years ago and I remember my first visit to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Our group of olim hadashim was taken to the park surrounding the museum where we stood in front of a small and unassuming structure. We were told that inside is the greatest painting we will ever see, but for the best viewing experience we had to close our eyes, enter and sit down on the benches inside. Our guide then played "So Far" by HaBanot Nechama and as we heard the lyrics: "So far, you see the sky, you cry, you don't know why" we opened our eyes to the breathtaking view of the sky above Jerusalem, it was a bright sunny day with a few fluffy clouds, the relative darkness of the inside of the structure only amplifying the daylight. The only thing going through my mind at the beauty of it all was: "I'm home."

#jumblr #jewish #ישראלבלר

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midnightrabbiinspired · 5 months ago

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Challenges to the Relationship - Don’t Under-estimate the Soul - Relationship, Soulmate, Business, Holiday, Parents of Soldiers Flow!

Challenges to the Relationship – Don’t Under-estimate the Soul – Relationship, Soulmate, Business, Holiday, Parents of Soldiers Flow! Challenges to our Relationship Flow – Keep Unified & Strong! United Souls – Section 2 by Eli Goldsmith – A Journey towards Real Unification in Everyway… Continued – Check out Part 43 for the Intro……

View On WordPress

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ace-hell · 3 months ago

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For the people who say "antisemitism doesn't legitimize israel existence" (and isaw even jews say it)

Mind i remind yall the the zionist movement started not only bc of the jewish longing for zion-jerusalem- but also from seeing how antisemic the world is and that we just need a safe place of our own, antisemitism literally legitimize the movement and made jews take part in it and make aliya

Also there's absolutely no excuse that's needed for indigenous group to build a country in their own homeland, which they were kicked out of by their colonizers. If europeans kicked out the native americans and the natives wanted to come back and make a state of their own you won't see people go around saying "but they lived here for 500 years and look white americans have traditional clothes, and they were farmers and bla bla bla" bo, you'd say "who cares how much time has passed yall are colonizers and its the natives pand, you are not native" so what makes yall think that fuckinf arabs are more indigenous and have more right to canaan than jews?

Anyway i kinda slipped to a different topic, still antisemitism is and always was the reason jews came back to israel, and YOU can live in antisemitic places and eventually die its your choice, but don't say that its no proof of how unsafe jews are abroad

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gothhabiba · 1 year ago

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During the hundred years of new Jewish settlement in Palestine, whose starting point is conventionally assigned to 1882 (and commonly called "the First Aliya"), a society was produced whose nature and structure proved to be highly fluid [...]. Each new wave [of immigrants] resulted in a restructuring of the whole system. It is, however, commonly accepted that around the time of the establishment of the State of Israel, in 1948, a relatively crystallized Jewish society existed in Palestine with a specific cultural character and a high level of self-awareness, as well as established social, economic, and political institutions. It differed, culturally and otherwise, from the old Jewish, pre-Zionist Palestinian community, and from that of Jewish communities in other countries. Moreover, this distinctiveness was one of its major goals, involving the replacement of the then-current identifications "Jew" and "Jewish" with "Hebrew." [...]

[...] [T]he cultural behavior of immigrants oscillates between two poles: the preservation of their source culture and the adoption of the culture of the target country. [...] Most migrations from England tended to preserve the source culture. European immigrants to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, on the other hand, left their home countries with the hope of "starting a new life in the new world" [...]. [This slogan's] effect was to encourage the replacement of the "old" by the "new" and often engendered attitudes of contempt towards the "old." Such replacement assumes, of course, the existence of an available cultural repertoire in the target country [...]. [...] [I]t is precisely here that the case of immigration to Palestine stands in sharp contradistinction to that of many other migrations. A decision to "abandon" the source culture, partially or completely, could not have led to the adoption of the target culture since the existing culture did not possess the status of an alternative. In order to provide an alternative system to that of the source culture, in this case East European culture, it was necessary to invent one.

The main difference between most other migration movements and that of the Jews to Palestine lies in the deliberate, conscious activity carried out by the immigrants themselves in replacing constituents of the culture they brought with them with those of another. [...] Zionist ideology and its ramifications (or sub-ideologies) provided the major motivation for immigration to Palestine as well as the underlying principles for cultural selection, that is, the principles for the creation of an alternative culture. [...] [T]he governing principle at work was "the creation of a new Jewish people and a new Jew in the Land of Israel," with emphasis on the concept "new."

At the end of the nineteenth century, there was sharp criticism of many elements in Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Among the secular, or semi-secular Jews, [...] Jewish culture was conceived to be in a state of decline, even degenerate. There was a notable tendency to dispense with many of the traditional constituents of Jewish culture. The assimilationists were prepared to give up everything; the Zionists, in the conceptual tradition of the Haskala, sought a return to the "purity" and "authenticity" of the existence of the "Hebrew nation in its land," an existence conceived according to the romantic stereotypes of contemporary (including Hebrew) literature, exalting the primordial folk nation. It is interesting to note that both assimilationists and Zionists accepted many of the negative Jewish stereotypes, promulgated by non-Jews, and adapted them to their own purposes. Thus they accepted at face value the ideas that Jews were rootless, physically weak, deviously averse to pleasure, averse to physical labor, alienated from nature, etc., although these ideas had little basis in fact.

Among the numerous ways manifested for counterposing "new Hebrew" to "old Diaspora Jew" were the transition to physical labor (mainly agriculture or "working the land," as it was called); self defense and the concomitant use of arms; the supplanting of the old, "contemptible" Diaspora language, Yiddish, with a new tongue, colloquial Hebrew (conceived of at one and the same time as being the authentic and the ancient language of the people), adopting the Sephardi rather than the Ashkenazi pronunciation; discarding traditional Jewish dress and adopting other fashions [...]; dropping East European family names and assuming Hebrew names instead.

[...] [E]xperiments were continuously carried out in Palestine to supply the components necessary for the fulfillment of the basic cultural opposition new Hebrew-old Jew. It was not the origin of the components which determined whether or not they would be adopted, but their capacity to fulfill the new functions in accordance with this opposition. Green olives, olive oil and white cheese, Bedouin welcoming ceremonies, and kaffiyehs all acquired a clear semiotic status. The by now classical literary description of the Hebrew worker sitting on a wooden box, eating Arabic bread dipped in olive oil, expresses at once three new phenomena: (a) he is a worker; (b) he is a "true son of the land"; (c) he is not eating in a "Jewish" way (he is not sitting at a table and has obviously not fulfilled the religious commandment to wash his hands).

— Itamar Even-Zohar, "The Emergence of a Native Hebrew Culture in Palestine, 1882-1948." Studies in Zionism 4, 1981. DOI 10.1080/13531048108575807.

#Itamar Even Zohar #quote #Palestine #Israel #food #Zionism

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readingbooksinisrael · 2 years ago

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March 2023 Read This Month

Rereads

The BFG/Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake (mg fantasy)-When Sophie sees a giant she is very lucky it is the BFG--the Big Friendly Giant--and not any of the other giants, like the Fleshlumpeater, who see children as snacks. Together, they hatch a plan to save children from being eaten.

Emily’s Runaway Imagination/Beverly Cleary, illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush (mg historical fiction)-There isn’t much to do in a little farming town in Oregon in the 1920s and so Emily’s imagination often runs away with her; but maybe some of her ideas aren’t so crazy, like getting a library.

Matilda/Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake (mg fantasy)-Matilda is a very smart little girl, but her parents hate her and deride her. When she goes to school the Headmistress acts exactly the same way. Then she discovers she can move things with her eyes. Can she use that to save herself and the other children in the school from the terrible Trunchbull?

5 stars

Top Secret/John Reynolds Gardiner, illustrated by Marc Simont (mg contemporary sci fi)-Allen is certain he wants to do a project on human photosynthesis for the upcoming science fair, but everyone except his grandfather forbids him to. He’ll have to prove he can do it--and if that involves calling up the President? Well, it involves calling up the President.

3.75 stars

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches/Sangu Mandanna (adult low fantasy)-As one of few witches, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of the residents of Nowhere House.

3.5 stars

The Priory of the Orange Tree/Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos #1) (adult high fantasy)-The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction – but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but makes a choice that could see her life unravel.

Two Dog Biscuits/Beverly Cleary, illustrated by DyAnne DiSalvio-Ryan (Two Times the Fun #2) (realistic fiction picture book)-Jimmy and Janet get two dog biscuits from their neighbor. How will they ever choose which dog to give them to?

3 stars

Haunted Castle on Hallow’s Eve/Mary Pope Osborne, illustrated by Salvatore Murdocca (Merlin Missions #2) (children’s fantasy)-On Halloween Night Jack and Annie receive another mission from Merlin: put order back to a castle, which the villagers say is filled with ghosts.

חבורת הרפאים/אביגדור שחן, מאוייר ע”י יואב בז’רנו (עלילות גבורה ומיסתורין #1) (ya Jewsish adventure and romance)-Avi is a refugee in a Jewish Romanian town after the Holocaust. He spends his days wandering around the streets when, all at once, he is invited to join two societies preparing for the aliya to Israel. One has the prettiest girl he’s ever talked to and the second is a secret society, preparing to steal back Jewish treasure from a church yard in the nearby Christian town.

2.5 stars

Cities of Wonder/ed. Damon Knight (adult sci fi collection)-A collection of stories ranging from the 20s to the 60s about sci fi cities.

#read this month #rtm #wrap-up #march 2023 #rtm 2023 #march rtm

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