Eating the Bubbe: Culinary encounters between secular and haredi jews in Bnei Brak

Abstract

Over the last few years on Thursday evenings, the main streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel’s largest haredi (ultra-Orthodox) cities, becomes a culinary meeting place. The Eastern European Jewish cuisine sustained by the haredi kitchen attracts non-haredi visitors to a society that tends to keep to itself. This article presents an ethnographic investigation of a new culinary scene that brings together local haredim and secular visitors. I draw upon the concept of “eating the other” to argue how the “haredi other” represents a complex kind of “otherness,” whose encounters with secular visitors simultaneously mark boundaries and cross them. These encounters demonstrate how culinary tradition can provide a link to collective memory and help build individual and group identities.

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Food and Foodways
Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment
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Eating the Bubbe: Culinary encounters between
secular and haredi jews in Bnei Brak
Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli
To cite this article: Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli (2020) Eating the Bubbe: Culinary encounters
between secular and haredi jews in Bnei Brak, Food and Foodways, 28:2, 69-90, DOI:
10.1080/07409710.2020.1745454
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Eating the Bubbe: Culinary encounters between secular
and haredi jews in Bnei Brak
Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
ABSTRACT
Over the last few years on Thursday evenings, the main
streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel’s largest haredi (ultra-
Orthodox) cities, becomes a culinary meeting place. The
Eastern European Jewish cuisine sustained by the haredi kit-
chen attracts non-haredi visitors to a society that tends to
keep to itself. This article presents an ethnographic investiga-
tion of a new culinary scene that brings together local hare-
dim and secular visitors. I draw upon the concept of “eating
the other”to argue how the “haredi other”represents a com-
plex kind of “otherness,”whose encounters with secular visi-
tors simultaneously mark boundaries and cross them. These
encounters demonstrate how culinary tradition can provide a
link to collective memory and help build individual and
group identities.
KEYWORDS
Culinary tourism; “eating
the other”; ethnic kitchen;
haredi; inclusion; Israel;
marking boundaries; secular
Introduction: Culinary tourism on Leil Shishi (Thursday nights) in
Bnei Brak
A secular teacher from Ramat Hasharon, Gadi smiles and points at a pot
of bubbling stew. “Here is the haredi (ultra-Orthodox, plural “haredim”)
tribe’s traditional food,”he declares in mimicry of the learned narrator in
National Geographic films. His joke comes at the height of a visit with his
family to a haredi city, serving to dispel the tension arising from an
encounter with a radical other.
On Thursday evenings, the central streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel’s
largest haredi cities, become a social and culinary meeting point. Many
yeshivas and synagogues uphold a tradition of “mishmar”—studying
Torah until late on Leil Shishi (Thursday night),
2
sometimes until
sunrise. During the night, yeshiva students eat at restaurants that serve
traditional foods. Of late, these restaurants have begun to attract a wide
clientele, including people who do not observe “mishmar.”The paradox-
ical result of this yeshiva tradition is a lively culinary scene. The
CONTACT Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli shlomoguzmen@gmail.com Department of Sociology and
Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 5290002, Israel
Eating the Bubbe
1
ß2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
FOOD AND FOODWAYS
2020, VOL. 28, NO. 2, 69–90
https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2020.1745454

nostalgia for Eastern European Jewish cuisine originating from the
Ashkenazi
3
kitchen, foods commonly consumed today by Ashkenazi
haredim, attracts many visitors from outside of the traditionally closed
haredi society. These visits carry tensions that reflect one of the most
basic rifts among groups of Jews in Israel, the rift between secular and
religious society (see Goodman and Yona 2004).
Haredi society is a complex segment in the mosaic of Israeli identities.
In order to place it in its broader cultural context, a brief introduction is
necessary. The term haredi can refer to a number of ultra-Orthodox Jewish
groups. It is heterogeneous, incorporating various ethnic groups, both
Ashkenazi and Mizrahi,
4
who share stringent observance of Jewish law,
rejection of modern secular culture, and even seclusion, to varying degrees.
The lifestyle of haredi society in Israel differs from that of secular society
and even from large segments of religious society. The haredi leadership
describes it as a counterculture—an alternative to the dominant secular
Zionist culture. As haredi culture flourished in Israel, the understanding
grew among its leaders that it could not be sustained without state aid.
This resulted in political involvement on the part of most haredim, but at
the same time, in order to maintain their lifestyle, it also reinforced their
methods of differentiation and led to a separate education system, housing
in separate neighborhoods, independent newspapers and media and more.
Their political participation on the one hand, and their differentiation as a
minority group on the other, have produced a somewhat paradox-
ical situation.
The haredim are a minority (who make up 12% of Israel’s population).
They suffer from poverty,
5
discrimination and the contempt of the secular
elite, who for the most part regard them as a primitive element that threat-
ens the liberal and democratic image of the state. At the same time, the
haredim have great political clout because it is almost impossible to estab-
lish a government without the support of their representatives in the
Knesset (Israeli parliament). Tension is maintained between receiving state
support on the one hand while opposing the institutions, culture and values
of the state on the other hand. Haredi culture is influenced by the paradox
of structuring their identity on feelings of religious and conceptual leader-
ship while experiencing distress and marginality on a daily basis (Heilman
and Friedman 1991).
In Israel, there is no legal separation of religion and state. Therefore, for
example, there is no civil marriage or divorce. They are under the jurisdic-
tion of the religious institutions. This has created a structure that, along
with their political power, has given the haredim a monopoly over religious
Jewish functions, including marriage, burial, and conversion. They have
also achieved exemption from military service for students in haredi
70 S. GUZMEN-CARMELI

yeshivas. These conditions have widened the fault lines between the hare-
dim and the secular and even between haredim and religious Jews that
serve in the army.
I now plunge into a meeting ground along those fault lines, presenting
an ethnographic inquiry into a new culinary scene where secular and
haredi Jews encounter one another. I describe how they manage to cross
symbolic boundaries (Harris 1998; Douglas 1975) and the ways their culin-
ary encounters facilitate circles of inclusion. I also examine how food and
its consumption nevertheless maintains a certain boundary (Lupton 1998)
6
during these encounters.
Culinary encounters present opportunities to “eat the other”(hooks
1992). In the scene under investigation, secular Israelis meet the haredim
they perceive as threatening in an arena that neutralizes that threat for a
limited period of time. Eating the familiar and well-loved foods of the hare-
dim render them at least temporarily non-threatening. Moreover, these
encounters mark secular culinary tourists (at least in their own eyes) as
pluralistic and multicultural. Nevertheless, even within the boundaries of
brief visits to the city that focus only on food, culinary customs, and a
basic acquaintance with haredi life, tensions surface between secular visitors
and the local haredim. These manifest in vocal debates over the nature of
the state, the relation between its laws and Jewish religious law, and direct
criticism of one another’s way of life. These debates are not about food,
they are due to the very meeting of people through food who do not meet
as a rule, who find themselves in a situation of religious and conceptual
confrontation.
Yet for many of the secular visitors who come to the city, either on tours
or individually, the culinary encounter with haredi society is not a form of
tourism, nor do they “eat the other.”Rather, they connect with their own
past. Secular Zionist ideology has demanded the abandonment of all sym-
bols of diasporic Jewish life, including Eastern European Jewish cuisine
(see, for example Kleinberg 2005; Tzabar 2016). Many visitors describe
their encounter with haredi diaspora cooking as reviving a part of their
identity that had been repressed and rejected by their parents and grand-
parents in favor of a hegemonic Israeli-Zionist identity (Sasson-Levy 2013).
Therefore, despite the prevailing hostility, when secular Ashkenazi Israelis
seek to recall the kitchen of their childhoods, they visit Bnei Brak. Between
the Ashkenazi haredi kitchen and the remembered flavors of grandmother’s
home, culinary encounters illustrate how the “haredi other”represents a
complex otherness, a kind of “semi-other,”awakening a shared identity
that permits the crossing of symbolic boundaries and creates circles of
inclusion, while at the same time reinforcing stereotypes and ignorance
about the “other.”
FOOD AND FOODWAYS 71

Food as a boundary and a bridge
Food is a powerful semiotic tool influencing identity of both the self and
the other (Appadurai 1981). Taste and culinary preference also carry social
implications. Food consumption in particular contexts can create distinc-
tions, indicate transitions, and mark one’s group and status (Douglas
1975). Eating together in families and groups create social connections,
whereas eating separately marks social distance. While food has the poten-
tial to form social connections across ethnic and class boundaries, it can
also delineate and reinforce them, sometimes performing both functions
simultaneously (Counihan 2005). For secular visitors to Bnei Brak, their
encounter with the local cuisine and residents serves as both a bridge and a
boundary. While their encounters offer a glimpse into the life of the haredi
“other,”the ways in which they consume food during their visits reify clear
boundaries separating them from their hosts.
A useful concept for understanding this dynamic is “eating the other,”
first employed by bell hooks (1992) although not directly in the context of
food or cuisine. For hooks, the concept served to critically discuss the con-
sumption of racial difference, cultural appropriation (see also Young 2010),
and the commodification of difference. hook’s insights, theories of
“colonization of food,”and the growing popularity of ethnic foods in
Western countries have inspired the study of ethnic food (see, for example,
Bell and Valentine 1997; Heldke 2003). Scholars have described the purvey-
ing of ethnic food as marketing difference as a consumer product. In con-
suming ethnic foods, consumers can claim to “experience”multiculturalism
and pluralism, while not necessarily learning about or even acknowledging
those who are different. “Eating the other”enables us to recognize the
depletion of history and obfuscation of politics perpetuated by turning eth-
nic identity into consumer goods. This practice reduces a culture to only
those salient characteristics that can be represented through foods and
other forms of consumption. While familiarity may promote consumer
knowledge of some cultural characteristics of the other, it nevertheless
presents a shallow image, reinforces stereotypes, and perpetuates power
relations (Girardelli 2004; Gvion 2015). The concept of eating the other is
also salient to the present haredi context as dominant secular Israeli society
regards the haredi as “other”and “eats them”to “experience”those who
are different when consuming their food.
Studies of “Culinary Tourism”(Long 2004; Germann 2007), present eth-
nic food consumption as a less damning practice than the conceptualization
of “eating the other”in describing Western tourists’enriching encounters
and acquaintance with foreign cultures through their food. Food tourism is
motivated by curiosity, by a desire to “try something new”(Long 2004), to
eat different, unfamiliar, and exciting food (Germann 2007; Gyim
othy and
72 S. GUZMEN-CARMELI

Mykletun 2009). These studies describe culinary tourism as creating a sense
of adventure, reflecting openness toward other cultures, and promoting
cosmopolitanism (Long 2004; Turgeon and Pastinelli 2002). Some even
argue that ethnic kitchens have become a powerful economic resource for
indigenous populations (Dallalfar 1994; Gvion 2014), with food gatherings
creating bridges through what Nir Avieli (2016) calls “gastromediation.”
Food tourism in Bnei Brak abides by some of these same patterns, while
also uniquely incorporating mediation, familiarity, and nostalgia.
When the other’s food is the food of your own childhood
Most of the secular visitors I met in Bnei Brak were of Ashkenazi descent
and are familiar with haredi Ashkenazi food from their own past, making
their sojourns more than merely tourist experiences or ones of eating the
other. Rather, they evoke nostalgia and culinary memories from childhood
(Saltzman 2004; Tene 2015). Therefore, in this case our interpretive gaze
should be directed to the nostalgic appeal of foods from the past (Yano
2007) and the encounters created around its consumption. While the con-
sumption of certain dishes invariably recalls political tensions (Hubbert
2007) and illustrates strangeness and otherness, it also facilitates proximity
through a shared culinary tradition. In other words, food encounters in
Bnei Brak embody both otherness and deeply rooted connection.
The dominant image of the Zionist nationalist movement was that of the
sabra, the Israeli-born Jew, the antithesis of the diaspora Jew (Almog 2000).
Although Ashkenazi was a key category in the hegemonic Israeli cosmology
that emerged with the state’s founding, it has gradually declined in salience,
and today it is reserved for distinguishing Jews from Western versus non-
Western origins (Sasson-Levy 2013). The sabra, the ideal type of the hege-
monic identity, embraced a new language, new clothing, and new culture.
This identity required discarding many everyday practices, even the paren-
tal kitchen (Tzabar 2016). Ashkenazi food, familiar before the establishment
of the state (Tene 2015), thus became old fashioned. Despite the hegemonic
status of Ashkenazi ethnicity in the developing country, it was the Mizrahi
cuisine that Jewish immigrants from Middle East and North Africa brought
with them that became identified with authentic Israeli home cooking
(Gvion 2015). Since culinary discourse interweaves with national and ethnic
discourse and reflects power relations, Mizrahi cuisine has been identified
by most Israelis with simplicity, authenticity, warmth, and family, becoming
Israel’s most popular cuisine (Gvion 2017).
Therefore, despite the extensive culinary offerings in Tel Aviv’s metro-
politan area—a hub of Israeli secular cultural life—restaurants that special-
ize in Ashkenazi cuisine have almost completely disappeared, along with
FOOD AND FOODWAYS 73

many other cultural markers (Tzabar 2016). However, in the haredi culture
that developed in opposition to the secular Zionist culture (Heilman and
Friedman 1991), aspects of Ashkenazi Jewish life in the diaspora have per-
severed, including the Eastern European kitchen. So, when secular
Ashkenazi Jews want to recall the food rejected by the general public but
reminiscent of the family kitchen of their childhood, they visit Bnei Brak to
sample the foods of the “haredi other.”The attempt to produce ethnicity in
a non-religious environment is more challenging and complex, so it sur-
prising to discover that secular visitors on the culinary tours manage to
create, precisely in haredi Bnei Brak, a secular Ashkenazi practice that is
not affiliated with religious practices.
Thus, the culinary gatherings that take place in Bnei Brak are symbolic
events in which not only a culinary but also a cultural rift is expressed.
The shift from tension and boundary marking, commodification, and eat-
ing the other, to memory, nostalgia, and shared identity becomes apparent
in the Thursday night encounters in the heart of this haredi town.
Fieldwork and methodology
I have been researching haredi society in Israel for over a decade in con-
texts relating to education, community, public protests, and health, but
only recently, and accidentally, became interested in food and the culinary
experience. During the holiday of Hanukkah, November 2017, in an
attempt to break the routine of my lectures on qualitative research, I
accompanied my students on a Leil Shishi tour of Bnei Brak. The trip was
a resounding success, and I subsequently led such tours in other courses.
In 2018, I began to visit on my own, holding conversations with the
owners of groceries, bakeries, delicatessens, and restaurants. I would ask
how they had established their businesses, who were their intended custom-
ers, how they decided what food to serve, and how they adapted the menu
to suit secular and haredi customers. The fieldwork also included photo-
graphic tours of the town, and 15 semi-structured interviews with visitors.
These interviews included basic questions about the food they were eating,
if it was familiar to them, and if they especially came to Bnei Brak to eat it
and why. I also participated in 10 organized tours designed for secular visi-
tors interested in getting to know the city and haredi cuisine. They were
not led by qualified tour guides, but by haredi or formerly haredi
7
entre-
preneurs who sought to combine the growing interest in Israeli food cul-
ture with the long-standing curiosity about haredi society. This article
primarily draws on visits not part of the organized tours.
My analysis was informed by Miles and Huberman (1984; see also Braun
and Clarke 2006) model involving preliminary interpretative reading and
74 S. GUZMEN-CARMELI

reduction of material, followed by conceptualization and thematic process-
ing, yielding two main themes. In the first, which I denote as “eating the
haredi other,”boundary markings are set that sharpen symbolic boundaries
(Harris 1998; Douglas 1975). The second theme refers to cases in which
food memories of childhood help to cross the symbolic boundaries and cre-
ate circles of inclusion.
In the following pages, I will describe the Ashkenazi foods and the food
scene that has developed in the city of Bnei Brak as well as the complexities
of the encounters it creates.
Leil Shishi cuisine
While barbecues have become a common feature of Israel’s Independence
Day celebrations,
8
Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine is characterized by slow cook-
ing and an attempt to take full advantage of every ingredient. It is simple
and inexpensive food generally containing a small amount of protein—
meat, poultry or fish—cooked with plenty of carbohydrates. A flagship dish
of the Ashkenazi kitchen, cholent is a slow-cooked stew containing a small
amount of meat and lots of potatoes, onions, and legumes. It is customary
to add kishke (Yiddish for cleaned beef intestine stuffed with matzo flour,
fried onions, and fat) to the pot. As Jewish law prohibits lighting or extin-
guishing a fire on the Sabbath, food can only be cooked or kept hot using
a constant source of low heat, commonly an electric hot plate on which the
cholent pot is placed for twelve hours or more. This stew conforms to these
strictures, making it traditional for Sabbath lunch. Cholent is also a favorite
dish among those who visit Bnei Brak on Thursdays.
Another Ashkenazi dish, traditionally served as an appetizer, is jellied
calves’feet (in Yiddish gala or galer). The flesh from the feet is grated
together with boiled vegetables, then cooled until it coagulates and turns
into gel. Gefilte (stuffed) fish contains carp ground with matzo flour, hard
boiled eggs, salt, and pepper, enabling one fish to feed an entire large fam-
ily. Dumplings, chicken soup, and herring also feature in the Ashkenazi
Jewish kitchen. Many other traditional foods contain only a small amount
of protein, such as kugel, a pie made of noodles or potatoes.
Although haredi society is comprised of different ethnic groups and
communities, most eateries in Bnei Brak cater to Ashkenazi haredim, who
make up more than two-thirds of the town’s residents.
9
Influenced by its
Mizrahi residents and popular Israeli culture, some establishments in Bnei
Brak also serve Palestinian and Turkish cuisine, and foods such as tahini,
hummus, falafel, Turkish salad, hraime fish, and spicy tomato sauce that
are identified with Jews of Mizrahi origin. But unlike in the rest of the
FOOD AND FOODWAYS 75

country, Bnei Brak’s focus is the cuisine of Eastern European Jews, attract-
ing haredi shoppers and visitors alike.
Food is a central theme in halakha (Jewish law). Kashrut (the laws and
practice for keeping kosher) entails a complex set of rules concerning per-
mitted and forbidden foods, and the manner and conditions of their prep-
aration (Kraemer 2007). Since Bnei Brak’s establishments cater primarily to
its haredi residents, they are under stringent supervision by the strictest
rabbinic kashrut organizations.
10
However, the kashrut derives not only
from the supplier but also from the consumer. For example, for many
haredim, if a nonobservant Jew opens a kosher bottle of wine, it is no lon-
ger kosher.
11
Because Jews observe or don’t observe kosher laws at varying
levels, kashrut is one means by which food here becomes a border, a sepa-
rating force.
12
While the culinary encounter in Bnei Brak necessarily
involves mutual contact and social connections, the tensions between the
religious and the secular only widen boundaries further. In the following
pages I will describe how these tensions find expression.
How, where, and with whom do I eat?
Israel’s most densely populated city, with 27,000 people per square kilo-
meter, Bnei Brak’s vibrant urban space (Lefebvre and Nicholson-Smith
1991) intersects with conservative haredi culture. For example, a shoe store
will have separate entrances for men and for women to ensure their separ-
ation, but they cannot help but mingle in the bustling street outside. Shops
festooned with pictures of rabbis sell religious objects next to stores selling
clothing, vegetables, and household goods. Charity boxes attached to elec-
tric poles, bus stops, and traffic signs demonstrate charity’s centrality, both
giving—as commanded by God—and receiving—as dictated by necessity.
What makes this so poignant is the fact that Bnei Brak falls within the low-
est income decile in Israel,
13
and poverty is evident in most of its
neighborhoods.
On a chilly Thursday evening in December 2017, the lobby of a residen-
tial building located in a busy downtown street is occupied by several
yeshiva students equipped with a hot plate topped by large pots of cholent.
At the entrance hangs a handwritten sign: “Leil Shishi Cholent.”The young
entrepreneurs seem torn between a desire to talk to me and fear that I am
an investigator from the tax authority. “What’s so interesting about chol-
ent?”repeatedly asks Yaki, manning the improvised stand. “I’m writing
about Leil Shishi,”I tell him, trying to dispel his fears. He explains
enthusiastically:
Leil Shishi is one of the week’s highlights. It’s time with the family, but it’s also a
social event. The streets are full, the shops, everyone is working late, and you’ll see
76 S. GUZMEN-CARMELI

tourists coming to Bnei Brak! From Jerusalem, from Tel Aviv. Even non-religious
people come. People without a skullcap. We just sold [cholent] to someone with long
hair, an earring, completely secular. His Jewish soul yearns to return to the tastes
of Judaism.
Yaki’s words demonstrate the complexity of Leil Shishi as a rich cultural
event, a key symbol (Ortner 1973) that combines tradition, leisure, a social,
cultural, and religious encounter. This blending of culinary and socio-reli-
gious-political spheres was reflected throughout my fieldwork in discussions
about cuisine, cooks, and consumers.
Religious practice is integral to every aspect of haredi life; the holy and
the everyday intertwine. The junction next to the Itzkovich synagogue,
where dozens of prayer quorums and Torah classes are held throughout
the day, has become a gathering place as well as the site of the various
marches and demonstrations characteristic of the haredi community
(Guzmen-Carmeli 2013). Next to the synagogue, which has become a
“quick”place to “daven”(pray) for those afraid of missing one of the three
daily prayers, a number of fast food joints have appeared. The Itzkovich
synagogue, Kiosk Shloimele, and the Me’adanei Shlomo restaurant
14
make
this spot one of the city’s main social and culinary venues, and it is a com-
mon starting point for culinary tours.
Bnei Brak’s rabbis and community leaders frequently decry its cafes and
restaurants as signs of secular Western culture that encourages idleness
(rather than Torah study) and brings together women and men, which can
lead to immodesty, even immorality. Backed by influential rabbis, the city’s
spokesman openly declared, “We are against the cheap and shameful cul-
ture of eating on the streets of the city.”
15
In response to the rigid cultural
codes imposed from above, proprietors have established modest culinary
institutions. Instead of coffee shops, many bakeries have appeared in the
city center. Instead of restaurants, small eateries have opened in the back
rooms of catering businesses and delicatessens. The culinary scene in the
city is laden with contradictions: public but frowned upon, crowded but
conducted in back rooms, facilitating encounters but also mark-
ing boundaries.
Most of Bnei Brak’s eateries arose to serve the haredi public. As more
and more haredi women entered the workforce, these establishments began
providing help with Shabbat cooking. Then Thursday evenings began draw-
ing yeshiva students and finally outside visitors to food purveyors.
On Thursday evenings, the entrance to the Muchan Umezuman restaur-
ant a short walk from the Itzkovich synagogue, is barely visible from the
street. In a small room stand men and women, haredi and secular, in an
untidy queue that faces steaming cooking pots. The restaurant staff swiftly
fills plastic plates or take-home containers. A separate queue forms by the
FOOD AND FOODWAYS 77

big cholent pot, a large ladle peeking out so customers can help themselves.
I wait my turn as kaftan-clad men burrow into the pot to select each choice
potato and bean. An elderly haredi man next to me yells at some yeshiva
students, a smile in his voice: “Why this queue for cholent? What is this,
Auschwitz?!”They seem to mumble an apology as elderly secular visitors
chuckle at his joke, and somehow the line moves faster. The man seems
pleased. He tells me he has been buying cholent since the death of his wife,
who made it every Sabbath; “It’s not homemade cholent, but it’s
still something.”
I talk to the patrons who describe the restaurant as authentic, family-
style, and friendly. “It’s not a pretentious gourmet restaurant. It’s a down-
to-earth place where people sit and get plenty to eat,”says Yehiel, a secular
Jew from Tel Aviv who regularly comes with friends to eat the cholent that
is only served on Thursdays and Fridays. A narrow staircase leads from the
entrance to a small room on the second floor occupied exclusively by
groups of haredi men, eating contentedly. Haredi couples and secular visi-
tors, men and women, crowd around the small tables in the ground floor
dining room. Other secular visitors eat standing on the sidewalk. I also
notice that several young haredi couples have taken their plates and are
eating in their cars in a kind of improvised private picnic. As Jewish prac-
tice requires b’rachot (blessings) before and after meals, eating cannot be
done in haste.
The manner in which local haredi and secular visitors navigate the res-
taurant illustrates the various boundaries marked by their encounters, in
space, time, and discourse (Lupton 1998). For example, the small second-
floor dining room is marked as haredi men’s territory: Their number and
density broadcast a clear message of their intent to eat separately from
women in order to observe the laws of modesty. The time of day also sepa-
rates the groups: secular visitors arrive in the early evening; haredim come
close to midnight, after hours of study.
Some haredi women refrain from even visiting the restaurant on
Thursday evenings because secular visitors are present and prefer Fridays.
Another difference appears in how the groups eat and the kinds of conver-
sations they have. Haredim usually order a single portion of food, eat
quickly, say their brachot and leave, whereas the secular visitors linger,
chatting and sampling various dishes.
“An easy to digest haredi”
“I feel like I landed in another country half an hour away from home. It’s
amazing. I can’t believe I never came here,”Guy, a tour participant from
Tel Aviv tells me excitedly. The feeling of being somewhere else, foreign
78 S. GUZMEN-CARMELI

and exotic, hidden away, right in their backyard is a common theme of my
secular Israeli interviewees. Guy lives with his family near Tel Aviv and
works for a hi-tech company:
I grew up in Ramat Gan [a city close to Bnei Brak]. All of my childhood, I rode my
bike everywhere, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Herzliya. As a child I rode to the sea and back, but
I have never been to Bnei Brak. It’s ten minutes from my house and I know nothing
about it. As if there’s a border! …I came here because my wife suggested we take a
guided tour, and I laughed at her. I said, “what guided tour? It’s a meter away from
my parents’house.”But she was right. I know nothing about haredi culture or
their food.
Geographical proximity coupled with a lack of familiarity surprises many
visitors on tours or those who come on their own. Boundaries between the
haredim and the secular general public abound: distinct residential areas,
different clothing, separate educational institutions, different consumer hab-
its, and contradictory worldviews. Only the framework of tourism can
allow visitors to attempt to cross these boundaries. The visits are an oppor-
tunity to meet the haredi other, who is geographically very near but whose
values and way of life are quite alien.
Such boundary crossing has evident effects on the local culinary scene.
Rechter, the co-owner of a well-known delicatessen, told me:
A few weeks ago, I prepared a delicacy, homemade kebabs [spiced ground meat] on
cinnamon sticks. I saw that only haredim buy them. They want to diversify. They
also want something fancier, like you can get in other restaurants. Cholent you can
get at home …But the [secular] visitors didn’t eat [the kebabs]. They told me that I
should stick to our food.
Through the culture of cuisine Rechter demonstrates how trends are
changing among the haredim. Culinary changes and influences are nat-
ural and familiar processes, part of the “geography of food”(Cook 2008),
and they frequently follow environmental, technological, and intercul-
tural encounters. It seems that the haredim also have a desire to
“consume the other.”In Bnei Brak, some locals’desire for new foods
perceived as “fancier”derives from their exposure to secular society.
And yet, this desire clashes with secular visitors’expectations for “eating
the haredi other,”which reduce the haredim to a uniform, unchanging
consumable. Tourists seem to prefer the haredim as a static, one-dimen-
sional stereotype.
For Gila, a secular woman of Mizrahi origin who did not grow up eating
Ashekanazi food, the tour combines eating the other and a culin-
ary adventure:
It’s food. I do not know what to tell you. I came to try it for the adventure
[laughs]. It’s not to my taste. Many people will say it has no taste at all. But not
everything isn’tgood.Here,whatdoyoucallthis?Kugel.Ilikeit;Ihaveno
FOOD AND FOODWAYS 79

problem with it. The rest, you have to taste it once, but may God protect us
[gestures with disgust], I would not bring it into my house.
Common descriptions of Ashkenazi food in Israeli literature and in
popular culture echo descriptions of the Jewish diaspora (see Gluzman
2007; Tzabar 2016), and evoke feelings of discomfort, aversion, and even
disgust, especially among those for whom it was not part of their child-
hood. Some tour participants, like Gila, describe dining in Bnei Brak’s res-
taurants as a kind of “culinary challenge”(Gyim
othy and Mykletun 2009).
For Gila and her companions, adventure does not lie in the encounter with
haredim but in overcoming their personal disinclination to eat strange
foods. Their attitude toward the food may also teach us something about
their attitude toward its cooks.
The tour guides work to navigate the social tension arising from the
encounter between visitor and local, and the guides’goal to provide an
entertaining experience. This boundary work is evident in tour guide Ruti’s
efforts as she responds to a comment about haredi yeshiva students’
exemption from military service:
16
I don’t want to get into politics at the moment. What is important to me is to open
a window to this world and to the tastes of Bnei Brak, to the cuisine of the shtetl.
17
I
want us to experience the uniqueness of this city, its beauty and also its food. The
wonderful sight of Torah scholars coming from the yeshiva to satisfy their hunger
with good, warm food. Look at Rabbi Akiva Street. This is the Champs Elysees of
Bnei Brak.
Ruti’s tour also draws attention to haredi clothing; she helps her custom-
ers learn about consumer experiences unique to haredi cities and neighbor-
hoods, such as the purchase of a woman’s wig.
18
Ruti also offers detailed
descriptions of the food, how it is prepared, and the shops providing it.
Although tour participants occasionally raise contentious issues, it is clear
that they want only to voice their disagreement, to demonstrate the differ-
ences between themselves and the haredim.
Although tours note the various haredi communities and the need to
meet the haredim on their own terms, total avoidance of controversial issues
make for a superficial experience. These tours flatten and commercialize
haredi identity, breaking it down into only a few well-known identifiers,
such as the different shtreimels (fur hats) that some hassidic haredim wear
or the special spice they use in kugel. The tours’entertainment aspiration
precludes the possibility for in-depth exploration of the multiplicity of the
haredi public. My interviewees made it clear that this superficial encounter
fully suits them. For example, Hani, a secular woman from Kiryat Ono, one
of Tel Aviv’s satellite cities, summarized her tour experience:
This really suits me. There’s no preaching and no Torah lessons …I come, I’m
impressed, I taste all sorts of things. I was surprised that they welcomed us warmly. I
80 S. GUZMEN-CARMELI

thought of coming in a dress [to more closely abide by modesty codes], but in the
end I didn’t. But no one shouted at me or made any remarks. For me there’s
something very oppressive in every encounter with haredim. When do I meet
haredim? In the rabbinate,
19
or when they try to get you to repent, but here they
managed to do it very well …to talk around the problems at a culinary encounter.
Hani describes places where haredim usually encounter secular Israelis:
meetings between the secular individual and the religious establishment,
rallies aimed at encouraging repentance, and other obligatory situations
that she describes as oppressive. Such encounters emphasize tensions and
difficult issues but do not create a space to discuss them. On the surface,
Hani’s remarks seem to indicate that culinary tourism can succeed where
other encounters have failed. Instead, it does the opposite: such “foodie”
tours create an entertaining experience that emphasizes visitors’familiarity
with several haredi cultural characteristics and thus work to reinforce
superficial perceptions and stereotypes (Girardelli 2004).
Yossi’s experience visiting a deli exemplifies this pattern. After receiving
his food, Yossi, a secular 65-year-old kibbutznik, told me: “That’s how I
love my haredim. Putting food on my plate but not interfering with my
dish.”Yossi prefers to meet haredim in a non-confrontational setting that
is strictly about consuming their food. In fact, the stereotypical thinking
implied by his words and his demand that they not interfere with his
“dish”becomes a metaphor for their not interfering in his life.
For some of those of the interviewees who came to “eat the haredi oth-
er,”the encounter was an almost cathartic entertainment experience. They
finished the tours with satisfied smiles, posting photos on social media
with hashtags like #Bnei-Brak NightLife, #Downtown Bnei-Brak, and so on,
to show their friends that they had penetrated the heart of haredi darkness.
They had “hunted”gefilte fish and not only survived but also found a sur-
prisingly lively culinary scene and even haredim who are “easy to digest.”
Note that many of the secular visitors who come to eat in Bnei Brak are
themselves of Ashkenazi origin. This makes their encounter more complex
than simply “eating the other.”Eating this food connects to a deep part of
their identity and can bring complex emotions to the surface. What follows
is how some of them experience this encounter.
Eating the bubbe
Tzipi, a woman in her fifties sporting short curly hair, sits alone at a small
table in a deli that sells five different kinds of herring, among other delica-
cies. Having arrived on a motorbike, she is the only woman among haredi
yeshiva students and myself. Tattoos peek out from the short sleeves of her
blouse. Although she strikes me as entirely out of place, she seems com-
pletely comfortable. In front of her sits a loaf of challah, a plate of pickled
FOOD AND FOODWAYS 81

of herring, and a large glass of beer. She tells me about her mother who
used to enjoy the same refreshment on Saturdays. “It’s instead of a memor-
ial service. I’m making a toast for my mother,”she says, raising her glass.
For many coming on the tours, and apparently even more for those
coming on their own to Bnei Brak, the encounter with Ashkenazi-haredi
food is a nostalgic journey. Many of the visitors recounted how their child-
hoods had featured these foods, whose preparation had been forgotten or
abandoned with the death of their grandparents’generation. Aviad
describes his visits to Bnei Brak:
I come here whenever I can. My grandmother was of Polish descent. I remember
Shabbat with my grandmother on the kibbutz …. On Shabbat morning, [she served]
a piece of challah with herring, with chopped liver. To me, this is the Garden of
Eden! On an ordinary day, haredim are like a red flag to me, because I believe
Judaism is 90% nationality, not religion …. Even all the parasitism of not working,
not serving in the army. But when it comes to food they understand. For me it’s
food from home, food that we don’t eat anymore.
Aviad’s words underscore the complexity of the encounter and its under-
lying tension. “Red flag”expresses his fears of religious coercion and the
connection between religion and state. With the loaded word “parasitism,”
he conveys his anger about governmental support of haredi yeshiva stu-
dents and their exemption from military service. Notably, in the same
breath, he also talks about the “Garden of Eden”he experiences every time
he eats “the food of home,”the Sabbath delicacies that graced his grand-
mother’s table. For Tzipi and Aviad, visiting Bnei Brak is not about “eating
the other,”but about using food to revisit their childhood memories. These
foods function as comfort foods (Locher et al. 2005). They are not about
touristic consumption. Aviad demonstrates how Bnei Brak’s maintenance
of Ashkenazi culinary traditions serve as a chain in ethnic-family memory,
particularly for those who may reject religion.
Childhood memories shape culinary memory and present-day experien-
ces of food (Kauppinen-R€
ais€
anen, Gummerus, and Lehtola 2013). And des-
pite their disconnect from their diasporic heritage, for many Israelis of
Ashkenazi origin their grandparents’or parents’food remains saturated
with the aroma of childhood. Interviewees repeated the word “home”again
and again while visiting a place that was evidently very different
from home.
For me, being here is like another planet, but if I close my eyes it’s very similar to
the food in my grandmother’s house …I wouldn’t dare serve such food at home.
It’s very fatty, unhealthy, very simple, but this food has something very homey, very
real, and comforting even, if you don’t get heartburn [laughs].
This is what Rachel, a 61-year-old secular woman from Nes Tziona, has
to say about the food served during the culinary tour. Rachel told me how
82 S. GUZMEN-CARMELI

much she enjoyed the tour. The food reminded her of foods she had eaten
as a child, but at the same time she notes that she is on a “haredi planet,”
and it seems that for her the haredi other is not just a stranger, but an
alien. She also notes that the food is problematic, unhealthy, simple, (per-
haps this is another term for cheap), and something she would not dare to
serve her children. Rachel’s description of the situation and the food recalls,
yet again, the concept of “comfort food.”
The first paragraph of the anthology on comfort food edited by Jones
and Long (2017) presents some basic and quite different definitions of
this concept:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “Comfort Food”is “food that comforts
or affords solace; hence, any food (frequently with a high sugar or carbohydrate
content) that is associated with childhood or with home cooking. Orig. N. Amer.”
Merriam-Webster’s10
th
edition Collegiate Dictionary defines comfort food as fare
“prepared in traditional style having a usually nostalgic or sentimental appeal,”while
in the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture (2002), Julie Locher notes that it is “any
food consumed by individuals, often during periods of stress, that evokes positive
emotions and is associated with significant social relationships”(Jones and Long
2017, 3).
20
It is interesting to see how much truth there is in each definition of the
Leil Shishi culinary encounter. The nostalgic yearning for Ashkenazi-Jewish
cuisine is fraught with tension, and it appears that as in the case of the
Israeli encounter with the Palestinian kitchen (Gvion 2009; Hirsch 2011),
many of the interviewees would like “to sever the food from its subjects.”
The comfort is embedded in the memory of previous generations, but the
food is usually eaten in a situation where tension surrounds the encounter
with the haredi “other”and the clash of faith and politics. If we allow for
the culinary changes resulting from the fact that many visitors are aware of
the importance of healthy food, the result is comfort food, a forgotten
reminder that evokes mother and home but at the same time provokes
anger, guilt and even disgust.
They look at me like I’m a fascinating museum display
Like their secular Zionist counterparts, the haredi inhabitants of Bnei Brak
also employ a language of duality to describe interactions with the secular
“other.”In my conversations and interviews with them, they expressed a
desire for dialog and closeness as well as fear and a sense that the other
needed “fixing.”The culinary encounters present an opportunity for them
to create circles of inclusion. They prompt a yearning for connection, or, at
the very least, a deep curiosity about the other. And yet, these desires
invariably remain unfulfilled, for the encounters are not “real.”The tours
and individual visits leave the haredi hosts with a sense of missed
FOOD AND FOODWAYS 83

opportunity. Bnei Brak resident Shulamit Orbach has written a poem,
“Tourists in a frame, between alienation and closeness”to express
this feeling:
On Friday nights and holidays
I encounter them on the street
Occupied with their work
Tourists a half hour’s ride
From Tel Aviv and its environs
exactly when I go to the grocery store
And they look at me from all sides
The guide explains to them over a bullhorn
the recipe for Shabbat cholent;
which kashrut certification I prefer;
Why I contribute to Kupat Ha’Ir;
21
Which shidduch I suggest for my neighbor’s son;
22
When I go with the little ones to the garden;
What movement I use to straighten the scarf on my head.
I walk, and they look at me
Like a fascinating museum display
The guide stops near the yeshiva; synagogue; grocery; pedestrian crossing
And I feel like stopping next to them
And casually chatting with them in Hebrew
In spite of it all, we do share the same language.
The desire to meet beyond a tour’s limitations is evident here.
23
She
remarks how secular visitors examine the lives of the haredim from a dis-
tance “like a fascinating museum display”while she yearns for a direct
encounter. The tourists of half an hour’s drive are interested in knowing
some things about them, but have no interest in really meeting them. The
visitors even seem to forget that they actually speak the same language as
the “locals.”
The sense of closeness and mutual family is almost always accompanied
by a desire to correct the other, a motivation expressed in many conversa-
tions. What follows is my conversation with Rachel, an elderly haredi
woman who came to the deli to buy fish for Shabbat:
I’m sorry for them. They come here in the middle of all the hustle. They eat kugel in
the street. It hurts me to see it. If you come tomorrow night [Shabbat], you will see
84 S. GUZMEN-CARMELI

that everything is closed. If they would come to visit on Shabbat, like normal people,
I would invite them for Shabbat, happily!
Indeed, after we speak, she approaches a secular couple standing outside
the deli and invites them for a Shabbat meal. The couple politely declines
but is noticeably moved by her invitation. The Shabbat invitation is a
familiar phrase in religious Jewish discourse.
24
For haredi Jews like Rachel,
an invitation to Shabbat dinner is more than an invitation to a meal. It is a
metaphorical summons to secular Israeli Jews to return to Judaism, i.e., the
haredi way, the only suitable way for Jews. The visitors later tell me that
they simply wanted to “eat and run.”They did not want to offend Rachel,
but they were not interested in the religious observance that a Sabbath
meal would necessarily entail.
Such examples show that despite the culinary encounter, no discourse or
social encounter between equals take place on Leil Shishi. While food can
be a great connector, it also functions to magnify divisions. The visitors,
the “secular tourists”and the “haredi natives,”each reinforce their polar
views of the “other.”
Discussion: Otherness, semi-otherness, and culinary tradition
Douglas (1975) discusses the meal as reflecting social structure and its
boundaries and constituting a microcosm of a broader national structure.
In this case, the culinary encounters in Bnei Brak reveal a part of the com-
plexity of the haredi/secular divide in Israel. For one, a gap appears to exist
between those who come to simply eat the haredi other, to enjoy them as
an exotic commodity, and those Ashkenazi visitors who come for a taste of
lost childhoods. From borders and exclusion to dreams of acceptance and
repentance by all Jews; from kugel and jellied calves’feet prepared by the
haredim who avoid the army and tasting cholent for the first time to kin-
dling the haredi fantasy of universal Jewish return to observance, the culin-
ary encounters tell a gnarled story of connection, alienation, and missed
opportunities. Here are “encounters”where nobody really meets.
Visits and tours of the culinary scene in Bnei Brak turn the haredim into
a commodity and their culture into a consumer product. The meeting
offers “gastromediation”(Avieli 2016), intercultural mediation through
food and the pleasure of discovering the other, that nevertheless also gener-
ates discomfort and sharpens boundaries (Lupton 1998; Counihan 2005).
“Cultural appropriation”is a common phenomenon in today’s postmod-
ern, global, and fragmented reality, whether in music, fashion, hair styles,
or culinary consumption. While championing multiculturalism, cultural
appropriation actually maintains a Western patriarchal hegemony. Not only
does bell hooks’notion about eating the other remain relevant, its currency
FOOD AND FOODWAYS 85

grows by the day. An other becomes an object of fear and apprehension
but also the subject of curiosity and desire. This paper also explores what
happens when the “other”is somehow not fully other but also evokes deep
meanings in the self.
“Eating the haredi other”thus serves as an important but only a partial
conceptualization of the encounters here examined, which simultaneously
reveal rifts, tensions, and warm sentiments. The nostalgia it evokes also car-
ries hope for the present and the future. Reflection on social divisions
through a contemporary encounter with foods from the past is enabled by
a consumer framework of eating the other. The encounter between haredi
and secular in Bnei Brak offers an example of culinary tourism that goes
beyond a superficial familiarity with what is strange and different today to
undertake a nostalgic journey to the past (Yano 2007).
Despite marked differences in religious practice, ideology, and outward
appearance, the haredi other that secular visitors meet is a hybrid creature, a
semi-other. Belonging to a distinct, isolated minority, suffering from stigma-
tization and even discrimination, haredim nevertheless represent for
Ashkenazi secular visitors “authentic Jews,”relics from the past whose polit-
ical clout makes them part of the dominant Jewish majority.
25
The concept
of shared identity does not overcome the obvious differences; they exist sim-
ultaneously. So when Yaakov jokingly compares the deli crowd to the food
line at Auschwitz, it is the secular Ashkenazi visitors, his contemporaries,
who laugh. Yaakov shares their ethnicity and history, making the joke pos-
sible, and the laughter permissible. This perception of the other as only par-
tially other allows secular visitors to eat the bubbe yet hate the chef.
Saltzman (2004) referred to a somewhat similar situation when describ-
ing culinary tourism that does not want to highlight what is different but
to return home. But this occurs only partially in the culinary encounter
described here because it takes place in Bnei Brak, an alien and even prob-
lematic environment for secular visitors. The closeness and distance,
acceptance and rejection that take place during Leil Shishi encounters show
us that inclusion and exclusion, marking borders and crossing them
(Lupton 1998; Counihan 2005) do not exist only as dichotomies. The
encounters also illustrate how, for those who do not attach much import-
ance to religion as a component of identity (Hervieu-L
eger 2000), culinary
tradition can function as a chain of choice in ethnic-family memory, col-
lective memory, and the construction of individual and group identities.
Notes
1. Yiddish for Grandmother.
2. The term “Leil Shishi”(lit. sixth night) refers to Thursday evening; each day in Jewish
tradition begins at nightfall of the previous day.
86 S. GUZMEN-CARMELI

3. In this context, the term “Ashkenazi”refers to Jewish immigrants to Israel from
Central and Eastern Europe.
4. “Mizrahi”is an accepted categorical term applied in the study of Israeli ethnic society
to descendants of the Jewish communities that existed in the Middle
East and North Africa.
5. According to the tenth report of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2016.
6. I prefer the term “boundary marker,”which is usually passive, in this case a product
of the symbolic significance of food and its consumption, over the more active term
“boundary work”(Lamont and Molnar 2002; Gieryn 1983) that seeks to differentiate
between the secular and the haredi (for the use of the term boundary work in the
context of food, see Yeh 2014).
7. Tour guides that left the haredi lifestyle but kept in touch with the community.
8. According to Avieli (2013) barbecuing meat on Independence Day is a form of
activity that emphasizes the presence and aspiration to own space of those who
practice it, see also Shoham (2019).
9. As of 2018, according to haredi media publications, General election voting patterns
and the Distribution of seats in the City Council.
10. There is both “regular”kashrut and “kashrut mehadrin”that entails stricter
supervision.
11. In the strictness of the halachic tradition of distinguishing kosher from non-kosher
wine, there is active ’boundary work’(Lamont and Molnar 2002) that seeks to
differentiate between the haredi and the secular.
12. For the dualism of food that both connects and divides, see Counihan (2005).
13. According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel: the survey of
household income and expenditure in the 14 largest cities in Israel for 2015.
14. A Bnei Brak rumor that I could not verify claims that this is the initiative of a shrewd
businessman, who has two businesses competing against one another in order to
maximize his income. The restaurant was given the distinguished name of Solomon’s
Delicacies and the kiosk was named Shloimele. Incidentally, rumor has it that they
are both named after him.
15. See “Rabbis of Bnei Brak against street eating, the conduct of those on the fringes of
society,”published on 12.12.15 in one of Israel’s leading haredi news sites, “Shabbat
Square.”The article describes sitting in cafes as a cheap culture and likens street
eaters to dogs: https://www.kikar.co.il/187783.html.
16. Haredi yeshiva students can defer their military service so long as they are studying
and then obtain a full exemption to focus on Torah study. Critics describe this
arrangement as discriminatory with haredim failing to “share the burden”of
Israel’s defense.
17. This term refers to Jewish-only towns and villages of Eastern Europe.
18. Some married haredi women wear sheitels (wigs) in accordance with the dictates of
Jewish law; married women must cover their heads.
19. As previously mentioned Marriages are supervised by the religious institutions and
not by the civil authority. Therefore, when Jewish citizens seek to marry or divorce,
they must turn to the rabbinate, to the religious establishment. The issue is one of the
main points of disagreement regarding the relations between religion and state and
secular and religious relations in Israel.
20. For more on comfort food, see Locher et al. (2005).
21. A haredi charity fund.
22. A system of matchmaking for Orthodox Jews.
FOOD AND FOODWAYS 87

23. See https://www.jdn.co.il/breakingnews/963341 (accessed on November 5, 2018) for an
interview with Orbach echoing these sentiments.
24. The implicit assumption in the invitation is that staying with a haredi family that
observes the Sabbath will lead to repentance and adoption of a haredi or at least a
religious lifestyle.
25. Haredi political parties are nearly permanent partners in Israeli Knesset coalitions,
whereas Arab parties are historically excluded from the government.
Acknowledgments
I thank my good friends and colleagues Omri Grinberg, Nissan Rubin, Orna Sasson-Levy,
Nissim Leon, Samuel Cooper, Hizky Shoham, Larissa Remennick, and Galit Ailon, for their
careful reading and constructive comments on preliminary drafts of this manuscript.
Special thanks to Carole Counihan and the four anonymous reviewers of Food and
Foodways for their substantial and most constructive comments on the advanced versions
of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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