Beyond Hummus and Falafel by Liora Gvion

Author:Liora Gvion
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2012-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 3

Labaneh with Light Bread and Knafeh from White Cheese

Tradition and Modernity Meet

Modernity is a key word for Palestinian citizens of Israel.1 The modern lifestyle encourages mobility and gradual detachment from the past. For Palestinians, modernization entails a rise in educational level, greater professional opportunity, gradual entry into the middle class, recognition of their equal rights in Israel, consumption of new products, and adoption of life patterns perceived as more Western and more suited to the specific demands and needs of the Palestinian public.

During the final decades of the twentieth century, social stratification reshaped the face of Palestinian society in Israel. On the fringes of the Israeli bourgeoisie arose a Palestinian bourgeoisie, which aimed to exist within the Israeli economy. During the same period, the intelligentsia, whose numbers had grown, began to organize. Academics sought to have an impact on life in the villages to which they had returned. Institutions that acted outside the parliamentary framework arose.2 Exposure to democratic political apparatuses raised political awareness among Palestinians in Israel and stimulated organization to achieve civil rights, raise the level of education, and thus promote social mobility.

Contrary to the Western perception, which advocates exchanging the old for the new, modernity for Palestinians in Israel does not constitute a break with tradition but rather an attempt to add to and complement tradition while improving the quality of life and assigning new meanings to their lives and traditions. Modern life includes better housing conditions, good education for children, access to privacy, improved health and medical care, a gradual change in patterns of dress, and a change in conceptions of marriage. In the realm of cuisine, it includes the buying power to purchase new appliances for the home and kitchen and the enrichment of the culinary repertoire, both of which lead to improved living conditions for women. One also finds religious revival or national awakening among some members of the Palestinian public in Israel. The adoption of ways identified as modern is perceived not as antithetical to such developments, but, on the contrary, may be seen as complementary.

In the domestic sphere, and especially in the culinary domain, women are the agents of modernization. Wives prepare dishes that they have encountered outside the home for their husbands and children. They use new electric appliances and gradually abandon complicated dishes for those that are easier to prepare. The desire to adopt technologies that are perceived as useful creates patterns of imitation, implementation, and transformation of culinary knowledge in the Palestinian kitchen in Israel.

These patterns find expression in four complementary ways. First, culinary modernity emerges from the replacement of traditional dishes prepared in the home with versions that are easier to prepare, thanks to advances in domestic technology or ingredients now purchased in stores. The purchase of ready-made dishes is considered both a status symbol and an indication of economic well-being that saves women hours of work. It is also an attempt to blur the differences in lifestyle between Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel. But paradoxically,

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