Balagan in the bubble : the gourmetization foodscape as a means for constructing a national identiy

Yaël van der Schelde 10242988

yaelvanderschelde@gmail.com

Amsterdam - 15th June 2018

MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology Department GSSS University of Amsterdam

Word count: 27.719 Supervisor: Dr. Y. van Ede Second and third readers: Dr. B. Kalir and Dr. R. Ibáñez Martín

BALAGAN IN THE BUBBLE

The Gourmetization Foodscape as a Means for

Constructing a National Identity

2

Plagiarism Declaration

I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper.

Yaël van der Schelde 15/06/2018

3

Acknowledgements

Yolanda - Your immense passion has been contagious. I could not wish for a wiser, more inspiring supervisor. Because of you I will now confidently call myself an anthropologist.

My family - You have always taught me to stay true to what I want and who I am. I am intensely grateful for the strong connection we have. Without you, and our best family dinners, I would never be where I am right now.

Daan - You have lifted me up when I was feeling down, gave me back confidence when I had lost it again. You are my force for stability. Thank you for being weird, it keeps me sane.

Marie and Charlotte - Our hours in the library, countless meals and many insightful

conversations have given me strength on a day to day basis to get out of bed and get behind my laptop again.

And last, but certainly not least... Everyone I met and worked with in my time in Israel: my friends, roommates and interlocutors - My welcome was warmer than I could ever have hoped for. I am so thankful for you allowing me to sit at your bar for hours, ask you annoying questions, letting me into your kitchens and following you around with notebook and camera. You taught (and fed) me lessons that I will certainly cherish for the rest of my life.

4

CONTENTS

FIGURES

Figure 1. Casablanca on a Friday 9

Figure 2. Map of Tel Aviv 17

Figure 3. Modern and old buildings in Tel Aviv 20

Figure 4. A spice shop on Levinsky Market 37

Figure 5. A coffee spot on Rothschild 37

Figure 6. Shabbat dinner at Nir’s grandparents 41

Figure 7. Pita with Nutella and banana 47

Figure 8. Map of Misada 52

Figure 9. Open kitchen, bar and food display in one 52

Figure 10. Free shots at the bar 59

Figure 11. Burning sage 61

Figure 12. Money on the wall 65

Figure 13. Hierarchy in the restaurant 69

Figure 14. ‘We were all once refugees’ on a wall in Tel Aviv 71

5

INTRODUCTION

In the heat of the day Tel Aviv seems like any normal city, garish, noisy, dirty. But before the glamour of the day begins and after it has died down, the city seems to open up and has, like the light, a surprising gentle quality. This miracle occurs every day, and yet it never loses its sensational, sensuous effect. Even those who dislike Tel Aviv admit that this city has a special way of engaging all the senses: it heightens our seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling and touching, and also our imagination. In dramatic fashion it stages a riot of perception which can seem greater than the city itself. It arouses curiosity. Its impact on the senses makes one strongly suspect that the streets of this city have more to tell. (Schlör 1999: 9)

The basis for this research is to be found in my childhood. As my name might suggest, I have a Jewish background - my father’s family. I have always felt a certain connection to Judaism and to Israel, although I could never really pinpoint what gave me a sense of belonging when I would visit Israel or talk about the subject. During my last visit, prior to this research, I suddenly realized that it mostly had to do with something else that was particular about my childhood. Food! My father is a passionate home cook who has never cooked anything ‘Dutch’. We never had stamppot; instead we would have a table full of small dishes; lamb kebab with yoghurt, carrots with cumin and coriander, hummus with some extra tehina and chickpeas on top, grilled eggplant, and so on. His preference for this kind of food originated from his time in a kibbutz when he was only twenty-one. During that time, he went to visit a Jewish Moroccan family for a Shabbat weekend in the desert town of Dimona. His cooking, which has been developing ever since, resulted in our house being filled with all sorts of cookbooks, and my parents being beloved hosts of dinner parties.

Besides the food itself, I also recognized the way it was being consumed. Sharing tables and dishes, eating with one's hands, talking loudly and having short heated discussions - after which both parties would passionately embrace -, it would all seem foreign to my schoolmates when they would have dinner at my home. To me, however, that was exactly what gave me a sense of belonging when I visited Israel.

6

Thinking about food has much to reveal about how we understand our personal and collective identities. Seemingly simple acts of eating are flavored with complicated and sometimes contradictory cultural meanings.

Philosopher Uma Narayan cited by Ilan Zvi Baron (2016: 270)

As the quote of Narayan suggests, much can be said about a certain culture and personal identification when researching food and food habits. This thesis attempts to understand the restaurant scene of the center of Tel Aviv, and its actors, through the concept of a foodscape. Tel Aviv knows a particular food culture that I will define as the

gourmetization foodscape, which finds its basis in the attempt to create a ‘New Israeli Cuisine’.

Gourmetization is essentially defined as food that before was not classified as high culture, but now is. This term is mostly used for home cooked food and street food (Johnston and Baumann 2014). Although one could argue gourmetization in Israel also relates to burgers, pasta and sushi, I will not go into those foods, because they are not part of what is currently defined as the national cuisine - which is what I aim to analyze.

Before I went to Tel Aviv this January, I already had a vivid idea in mind of what the foodscape would involve. When I got there, however, I was constantly overwhelmed by the chaos and unexpected turns. This ‘balagan’ I encountered was very characterizing for my time in Tel Aviv.

It is Friday one o’clock, when I arrive at the restaurant Casablanca, where I meet my friends. The place is located on a square right across from the Great Synagogue. Since it is immensely popular and they do not take any reservations, there are people waiting for a seat everywhere on the square; even the stairs of the Synagogue are being used as waiting spot. The fact that Casablanca is so close to the synagogue strikes me as funny, because if anything, Casablanca is the opposite of religious. The owner, the famous TV chef, Ido Levy, who is well known for his outspoken style, made sure this place is very non-religious, like most of Tel Aviv. The non-kosher restaurant is also hard to be just called a restaurant, since there is always a DJ, playing records, and the high valued food is often served in paper bags or

7

cardboard plates. The high status of the chef does not make this place fancy as I know it: bread is ripped, the masabacha is wiped, everything is shared and waiters give away shots of arak, reserving one for themselves, knocking them over together with their customers. The influences of various cuisines and nationalities are very apparent at this place. On the menu there is gefilte fish, a classic Ashkenazi dish, along with many different Middle Eastern dishes, in a place with a Moroccan name, and finally, the chef himself proclaims that he makes food that can be called ‘new Israeli’. We order a dish that is especially striking to me when it comes to gourmetization. It says on the menu: ‘two slices of bread, with half an onion, tomato salsa and olive oil’, and it turns out to be just that. Two slices of bread are being served in a paper bag, together with a plate of tomato salsa and oil and on that there is crème fraîche turned over. When the waiter serves it, he takes off the container, leaving us with the whole content of the crème fraîche. It is a performance on its own.

Around four o’clock ‘the party is over’ and Casablanca, like the other restaurants on the square, is closing. From this hour, the streets are emptying, the endless honking by taxis stops, public transportation takes a near 24 hour break and it is no longer possible to do grocery shopping, except for at the AMPM, a supermarket chain true to its name. By the time the clock strikes seven, and the sun is already down, every Tel Avivian seems to be inside, with family; having Shabbat dinner.

The extremely secular city seems to have turned into its big traditional brother. While people are often celebrating Shabbat for traditional reasons and less so for religious ones, suddenly the Jewish character becomes clear and like so many things in Tel Aviv the situations I come across are confusing and contradicting, and often hard to categorize. However, the phenomenon that I am interested in, gourmetization, seems to fit this paradoxical quality very well.

8

As becomes clear in the text above, the restaurant scene was exciting and confusing at the same time. I became interested in what this foodscape means to its participants, and how it becomes part of their identity. During the many conversations I had and the long days I spent with my interlocutors, I came to two understandings about the way they value not only the food they make, but more importantly the place they work at and the city it represents. Firstly, the foodscape they were in showed to be a reflection of their life experiences, ideas and often political views. And secondly, the world views they carried out formed the basis of their sense of belonging.

In all my reading, I did not find other researchers who conceived any foodscape to be a means for the construction of a national cuisine in Israel. With this thesis I aim to contribute to the understanding of this construction, as well as to a broader understanding of the ways in which a national cuisine can be constructed.

The exciting process of establishing a national cuisine is now taking place, and

interestingly enough it is not homogeneous, but rather characterized by its fusion. They are in search of a new Israeli cuisine, one identity, but on the other side of the same coin, this new identity exists of a pattern of heterogeneous tastes. Also, you will find some restaurants in other cities that show similarities to what is happening in Tel Aviv, but the latter is

undoubtedly the epicenter of the foodscape. Interestingly enough, Tel Aviv is seen as a ‘Bubble’; particularly different from the rest of Israel. However, this is the place where a national cuisine is constructed. This research aims to understand this tension by analyzing how the participants of this foodscape construct a cultural identity and an idea of Israeliness that might not be consistent with a general national identity, but fits their own life world, and relates to a certain kind of national identity. The question answered in this research is: How does the gourmetization foodscape of Tel Aviv reflect its participants’ relationship to a national identity as well as being a place where they create a sense of belonging?

9

Figure 1. Casablanca on a Friday

The formation of a national identity

Smith argues that national identity is socially constructed, and at the same time a historic core counts as its basis; a sense of “the homeland” (Smith 1991: 9). The notion of a national identity arising from a sense of continuity, collective memory and a shared destiny, derives from the logical idea that “people survive in some form because they are rooted in their homelands and enjoy a large measure of independent statehood” (ibid.). For the Jewish community and in the case of Israel, however, this explanation does not simply apply: there was no state, and the Jews know a long history of exile. Still, this case can be understood through Smith’s theory, since for this community these two important factors were “more […] a symbol than a living memory” (Smith 1991: 33). Zionism, the national ideology that aimed to rebuild the Jewish homeland in the historic land of Israel, long was the

manifestation of that symbol. For the Jewish community the absence of a homeland did not mean they could not form a collective identity, which can be understood through the concept of “victim diaspora” (Cohen 1999: 31). This term explains “people who have survived and been displaced by catastrophe, the memories of which continue to bind them together on some level” (Levy and Weingrod 2005: 53). A physical homeland only came into being in 1948 - less than a lifetime ago - when Israel was founded. Since then a national identity could be formed, which replaced the earlier collective identity that was based on the imagining of a nation.

10

Apart from its historic basis, Smith argues, nationalism is fundamentally secular, but at the same time religious nationalism should not be excluded. For the Jews in particular, the idea of a nation had always been closely connected to their religion (Smith 1991: 49).

According to Kalir, “an analysis of Israeli public opinion cannot disregard the underlying national sentiment of most Jewish Israelis, who see themselves not only as members of the state of Israel but also crucially as belonging to a Jewish nation” (Kalir 2010: 54). For Jewish Israelis - which most of my interlocutors identified as - Israel is inherently Jewish, and

religion is an important aspect of their sense of belonging and of their imagining the state as a community.

Anderson understands a nation as an ‘imagined community’. It is imagined “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 1983 [2006]: 6). And he calls it a community, because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (ibid.: 7). For Anderson, a common language is the most significant factor in imagining a community. He gives the example of reading the newspaper, which he calls a mass ceremony. When a person reads the newspaper, s/he knows that this is

simultaneously done by thousand (or million) others. Anderson poses the following

questions: “What more vivid figure of the secular, historically clocked, imagined community can be envisioned?” (ibid.: 35). Sutton argues, however, that food is a better example, for it is less based on cognitivity and is “one of the mundane reminders that keep national identity “near the surface of daily life” so that people do not forget their nationality” (Sutton 2001: 127). Consuming food, because of it being a basic human need, is thus one of the most direct ways of identifying with one’s nation. I argue that food and nationality are inextricably linked; by imagining a cuisine, a community is imagined.

The formation of a national identity is mostly based on cultural production (Vinitzky-Seroussi 1998: 187). For instance, through festivals, rituals, commemorations, food and language. In the case of Israel, the Zionist movement chose the historic language Hebrew, which at the time was only used for religious purposes and which referred to their ancient claim to the land. Since the language was not used for everyday life by almost anyone, it could function as a way to construct a national identity. The aim to create a general cuisine in Israel, by mixing a variety of cuisines, like Anderson understands the introduction of one single language, creates the feeling of community. In Israel, a country defined by its fusion of

11

ethnic groups, the formation of a general national identity was attempted in the fifties by the dominant melting-pot ideology.

This ideology proclaims the relinquishment of particular ethnic identities and the formation of an overall Israeli common character, thus converting a heterogeneous conglomerate of separate immigrant subgroups into a homogeneous nation with mutually shared goals and aspirations. (Shapira and Navon 1991: 110)

In contemporary Israel, this still applies - mainly maintained by the obligatory military service, which Anderson also points out as an important factor of the imagined community. The community is so well imagined that people are colossally willing to die for one’s country (Anderson 1983: 155). I agree with Vinitzky-Seroussi, however, that one main distinction between two general national identities in Israel can be made (Vinitzky-Seroussi 1998). One is referred to as manifested most significantly in (the center of) Tel Aviv and the other one in Jerusalem. Although my research was not located in Jerusalem, the rift was often mentioned in my conversations with interlocutors. By theoretically comparing Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the national identity mostly linked to Tel Aviv, and most relevant to my research, can be

contextualized. This way, Tel Aviv - although seen as a Bubble; different from the rest of Israel - can be the place where a national cuisine is in construction.

National cuisine and foodscapes

Food is an important factor in the process of constructing a national identity. According to Appadurai, a national cuisine is mostly constructed by cookbooks. He notes that:

[Cookbooks] combine the sturdy pragmatic virtues of all manuals with the vicarious pleasures of the literature of the senses. They reflect shifts in the boundaries of edibility, the proprieties of the culinary process, the logic of meals, the exigencies of the household budget, the vagaries of the market, and the structure of domestic ideologies. (Appadurai 1988: 3)

The construction of a national cuisine demonstrates the historical and cultural context in which it appears (Appadurai 1988: 22). Like all cultural phenomena, a national

12

cuisine is not fixed. In this manner, Appadurai rejects the notion of a center-periphery model, when it comes to the phenomenon of globalization; according to him “the new global cultural economy has to be understood as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order”

(Appadurai 1990: 296). Through his notion of the formation of nations and communities, the blurred lines of the Israeli cuisine too can be understood. He uses Anderson’s ideas on imagined communities to explain how flows of scapes (ethno-, techno-, media-, finan-, and ideoscapes) constantly influence the “imagined world” of people. These scapes all influence each other and are not fixed; they are highly subjective and informed by “the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sorts of actors” (ibid.: 297). And so, the Israeli cuisine can become a flexible scape where imagination is constantly influenced by other scapes.

In regard to Israeli cuisine, it is important to acknowledge the binary categorization often made between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews. Sephardic Jews, who descend from Spain and Portugal, share a lot of history with Mizrahi Jews, so to my interlocutors they would often fall under the category of Mizrahi. This binary categorization, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, was first formulated by the Israeli CBS indicating the perception of cultural and social differences between the two. Mizrahi means ‘east’ in Hebrew, which indicates that these Jews have their roots east - in Middle Eastern and Arab countries. Ashkenazi Jews descend from Europe. Their complicated relationship starts with Zionism. The mainly traditional Mizrahi Jews were initially less involved in this secular political ideology that originated in Eastern Europe. Ashkenazi Jews were the founders of the state of Israel, and Mizrahi Jews, who overwhelmingly arrived after the state came into being, were often seen or felt treated as second class citizens. To this day there are still traces to be found from this status classification, although it becomes less significant and there are increasingly more Mizrahi Jews in high functions. For food, this division has meant that it is part of the discourse, but it has not necessarily led to the same status hierarchy. Often Ashkenazi food is seen as

“coming straight out of the washing machine”, since it is considered to be tasteless and pale, while Mizrahi food is seen as exotic and exciting.

Instead of only considering internal tensions in Israeli society, there are much more factors that influence a cuisine. Drawing on Appadurai’s notion of scapes, Johnston and Baumann offer the concept foodscape as “a dynamic social construction that relates food to places, people, meanings, and material processes” (Johnston and Baumann 2014: 3). Instead of the material form of food, the political-economic structures of the food industry and the places that produce food being disconnected, they see those aspects as holistically connected.

13

It functions as a way to connect food culture to food materiality, and, in the case of my research, as a frame to understand the Tel Avivian food culture. Like Ariel points out, “[as] foods become increasingly global and foodways are gradually homogenized, national groups affirm their distinctiveness through assertions of food authenticity” (Ariel 2012: 34). In chapter two, I will explain how the gourmetization foodscape sets itself apart and how, in doing so, the ambiguous term authenticity is part of the discourse that is used.

This thesis demonstrates how people construct a national cuisine, by bringing together traditions in food, and inventing new ones. This bottom-up approach shows how people in the small space - that is a restaurant - contribute to the construction of a national cuisine and thereby demonstrate their national identity.

Place-belongingness

I argue that a national identity is appropriated by people not on abstract macro levels, but rather through a small manageable space. This is similar to the way in which I earlier argued how an imagined community is built; not through a distant concept of nationalism, but through banal daily practices or reminders. A sense of belonging made it possible for my interlocutors to create their own culture, in which these daily practices are carried out. By creating their own culture, they were able to get a sense of belonging in the restaurants, which made it possible to get a sense of a national identity.

In his overview on belongingness, Antonsich divides this notion into two concepts: ‘politics of belonging’ and ‘place-belongingness’. The former has to do with socio-spatial inclusion and exclusion, and the latter, on which I will focus, with a personal sense of being ‘at home’ in a place (Antonsich 2001: 645). Belonging on a national level, reinforces the construction of a national identity; a sense of the homeland, as explained by Smith. A sense of home, and of belonging, however, can also be felt in a smaller space, like a restaurant for instance. As I will explain in chapter three, my interlocutors often characterized the

restaurants they worked at as a place that felt like home, often calling their colleagues brothers and sisters. According to Antonsich, “‘home’ stands for a symbolic space of

familiarity, comfort, security, and emotional attachment” (ibid.: 646). He shows how feelings of belonging to a place are linked to identity construction. This is how I could understand the actions of my interlocutors as performances of identity. The place where people feel they belong is undeniably connected to how they want to identify. Furthermore, he mentions five

14

factors that can contribute to generate a feeling of belonging: auto-biographical, relational, cultural, economic and legal. For my research I will mostly concentrate on the

auto-biographical, relational and cultural factors. I will shortly explain the other two, because they are less, but still of some importance to my research.

Economic factors “contribute to create a safe and stable material condition for the individual and her/his family” (Antonsich 2010: 648). Antonsich uses the example of refugees who are financially secured by a job; they are significantly more successful in creating a sense of belonging in their new homeland (ibid.). The restaurant is an interesting place considering economic factors, since it is a business that provides jobs for people. Also, it is eminently a place where food and the performance of a certain identity become a

commodity. This research, however, shows how these factors actually contribute to the desire to be included.

Legal factors involve issues of citizenship and resident permits. The “formal structure of belonging [allows an individual to] participate in and actively shape one’s environment, which is deemed important in generating feelings of belonging” (Antonsich 2010: 648). Some of my interlocutors were refugees and this status sometimes influenced their connection to Israel negatively, but the restaurant often functioned as their second home.

Auto-biographical factors involve attachment through one’s personal history; experiences, relationships, and memories to a certain place. In the case of my interlocutors, they would often refer to childhood memories and Shabbat dinners at their parents or grandparents. Although they would think of another place, they would find a part of that in the restaurant, similar to how Antonsich explains that “memories of one’s ancestors also contribute to feelings of place-belongingness” (Antonsich 2001: 647). The auto-biographical factors turned out to be very important in my research, which is why they are a significant part of the third chapter. In the life histories of the people I interviewed I found countless reasons for why they felt a connection to the place; in stories about their army time, the fusion of food when they grew up and their political encounters.

Antonsich divides relational factors into two categories: dense and weak ties. The latter, interactions with strangers, would not be sufficient to provide a sense of belongingness. Dense ties, on the other hand, are relationships with friends and family. If those are “long-lasting, positive, stable and significant, [and] ‘take place’ through frequent physical interaction”, they can lead to a sense of (group) belonging (Antonsich 2010: 647). This I found often in the restaurants, many of my interlocutors would refer to one another as close friends, and sometimes as family members even.

15

Lastly, for cultural factors, language is valued as the most important one, for a “particular language stands for a particular way of constructing and conveying meaning” (Antonsich 2001: 648). In politics of belonging, language is often used to create a ‘we’ and ‘them’ dichotomy, but in place-belongingness, language is used to create a sense of

community, which can generate feelings of intimacy and a sense of feeling ‘at home’. Antonsich mentions how other forms of cultural expressions can lead to a similar feeling, of which food production and consumption are a part of (ibid.). People were creators of their own culture, which involves habits, rituals, obviously food production and consumption and even the creation and practice of a communal language. In my research, the restaurants function as a place where a sense of belonging is generated by my interlocutors, which reflects their relationship to a national identity.

Researching restaurants

My research took place in the center of Tel Aviv, where the gourmetization foodscape is most apparent. Before I started this research, I already had an idea of what kind of restaurants there are in Tel Aviv and the local discourse that categorizes them. After I had read about

gourmetization I started doing research online on which restaurants fit my concept of the term; by contacting a number of locals that are interested in food, as well as reading blogs and review websites. The search for representative restaurants turned out to be easier than I anticipated. I chose three restaurants with which I worked closest. The ones I selected all communicated having a new outtake on traditional foods, and two of them specifically claim to reinvent Israeli cuisine. My options, however, went far beyond the three I chose; I

discovered that a lot of restaurants actively communicate having the same premise - articles on various Israeli websites also indicate that many Tel Avivian chefs are in search of a national cuisine. Therefore, I believe it is safe to say that the restaurants I chose were representative for the center of Tel Aviv. I emphasize on the center, because most of the restaurants that are part of the gourmetization foodscape are situated in the center or in the, just now gentrified, neighborhood Florentin (Figure 1.). Together with my interlocutors I simplistically categorized the different restaurants of the city for the purpose of understanding the position of the gourmetization foodscape. According to them, their restaurants fit the category of modern Israeli. Other categories were, among others, ‘traditional’ - which came

16

in many different forms; like Yemenite, Ethiopian or Polish, ‘Italian’, ‘hummusiya’ (hummus restaurant), ‘burgers’, ‘Japanese’, ‘haute cuisine’ and ‘street food’; mostly falafel and kebab.

I visited the three restaurants I chose on a regular basis, I conducted all of my

interviews there and worked in their kitchens. However, I did include other restaurants, some of them fell under another category, and other under the same, like Casablanca - the one I mentioned in the earlier vignette, but at those I only observed and had short conversations.

Misada, which translates into ‘restaurant’, is what initially got me thinking about

street food that retrieved a new higher status. This restaurant is from Ido Levy, who is also the owner of Casablanca. At Misada, the cooks put all kinds of dishes in a pita, which is according to them ‘essentially Israeli’; because it is new, done in Israel and the products are local. The atmosphere is very informal; the cooks shout whenever a dish is ready, for the customers to come and get it, the food is served in paper bags and it feels like an updated snack bar. Furthermore, like in many restaurants in Tel Aviv, drinking is an important part of the day, at this restaurant it is even ritualized and done daily at one o’clock. Apart from this particular Misada, which is situated right in the center of Tel Aviv, there are two other establishments of the restaurant in the city.

Mishpacha, meaning ‘family’, is a restaurant founded by two brothers. It is situated a

little north from the center, in the high tech area. When they initially opened their restaurant, it was not very well received by the public. The owners wanted to have a restaurant which was a lot like the traditional shipudia, an Israeli grill place, like they knew from their childhood. When their first attempt failed, they realized that they should modernize the idea of a shipudia and experiment with an interpretation of the traditional one. Now, the chef is an important figure in establishing a New Israeli Cuisine. Their menu consists of local

ingredients, creative coal grill dishes, (‘Israeli’) burgers, mainly Mizrahi dishes, and some Ashkenazi influences (like challe). The restaurant is open every day from twelve till twelve. During lunch it is mostly filled with people who work in the area, and at night, when the restaurant turns more into a bar, the place attracts mostly young people (25-40 years old). On Fridays and Saturdays they serve a lunch buffet, which is enjoyed by a mixed audience. With their big terrace, the place has a lot of variety to offer.

Shawia & Sons is a (mainly) Yemenite restaurant in Florentin. The father of one of

the owners has a Yemenite bakery in Tel Aviv, and this restaurant is a modernized version of that bakery. They serve mainly Yemenite food, but also hummus and shakshuka. The fusion of cuisines is very notable here. The place is especially very busy on Friday afternoons, when there is a big line in front of the restaurant and people are handed free beers until they can be

17

seated. As with the two previous places, here there are a lot of sharing tables, which again makes this place very informal.

In the following chapters, I will elaborate more on the restaurants, since they are both setting as well as subject of this research.

Figure 2. Map of Tel Aviv

Exploring the field

During my fieldwork my approach was relatively informal and loose. Pretty soon into my fieldwork I realized that the people I was working with, and the environment we were in, did not fit a strict approach. The gourmetization foodscape is pre-eminently one where one

18

should ‘go with the flow’, not only because the ‘balagan’ will not allow convention, but even more so because otherwise I would have missed out on a lot of knowledge.

As I mentioned in the previous section, I conducted most of my research at three restaurants; there I built close relationships with employees and restaurateurs. I participated in as many daily practices as possible. I spent hours sitting at their bars - talking to them about their lives, food and Israel. A number of times I helped out in the kitchens, where I cut vegetables, composed salads, and kept a close eye on how all of the dishes were made. I served food to customers, and had brief conversations with them. I talked to dishwashers, hosts, owners, managers, bartenders, cashiers, cleaners, deliverers, and to some of their friends and family members; the whole spectrum. Among them were mostly Jewish people and two Arab Israelis, but also some Sudanese and Eritrean refugees, some of them Christian and others Muslim. The age range was between eighteen and 39 years old. The number of employees in the restaurants went from twenty at Shawia & Sons, to 110 at Mishpacha.

Most of the interviews were conducted at the restaurant the interviewee worked at. This place was chosen both out of practical considerations (these people had little time off), but also because it often seemed the most natural setting. They always seemed very relaxed at this setting. I would often set up an interview after or before working hours, and I would pick out the area that was most quiet. It should be taken into account that it was actually always very loud in the restaurant, but this would often help the interview go more smoothly.

Before I would set up an interview with someone, I would have spoken to that person for many times already. This would make them trust me, and at the same time give me access to topics in a later interview. According to Driessen and Janssen,

[...] small talk gives access to information that is difficult to get otherwise but that could be central to understanding culture: rituals that are not on the official program, activities not in line with formal ideologies, double meanings, unspoken antagonisms, muted criticism, cartoons, jokes, or secrets. (Driessen and Janssen 2017: 260)

Furthermore, to make my interlocutors at ease during the interview - which they often still found somewhat intimidating - I would first talk about topics that would not ask to much from them. We would talk about food, and I would focus on getting a sense of what they felt was important and particular about the food culture in Tel Aviv. When those topics would be

19

thoroughly discussed and they would be comfortable with the interview, I would turn to their personal life histories, desires and political views.

For all of my interlocutors I have used pseudonyms, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I told them I would do so before every interview - that way they felt more secured to open up about personal stories. Secondly, because my research revolved mainly about the profession they were in, some of their stories could potentially harm their relationship with their

employees, colleagues or employers. And lastly, the restaurants I have worked with, all have made a good name for themselves, and although I do not think I write anything that will endanger that name, I want to be precautious. Thus, for all the above reasons I have tried to ensure the anonymity of my interlocutors and restaurants.

Besides writing down my encounters and interviews, I also collected visual data. During my fieldwork, I would always carry my camera and my phone with me, to capture the look and feel of my surroundings: the atmosphere, the colors, the screaming and the high or low speed of it all. In the discipline dominated by words, visual anthropology has not gained the status of general anthropology (yet), but there is no doubt that film can function as a legitimate research method (Hockings 2003). The camera can function both as a catalyst of meaning and knowledge, and as a transmitter of knowledge where text falls short. My field was, at times, a lot to take in at once. I found that filming helped me remember small

sensuous details, when I would review the recordings I had made. Furthermore, a selection of the photos is included in this thesis for demonstration purposes. A short film is still worked on, but the text - with visual hints - is ready to be read!

20

CHAPTER 1

REPUTATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF TEL AVIV

21

Hill of Spring: Imagining a city

In a certain sense, the imagining and construction of Tel Aviv was an attempt to secularize space, to make what had been the biblical Land of Israel - dreamt and written about for thousands of years, and which God’s presence abided - into an actual space - a place with the attributes of home. (Mann 2006: 5)

Today, walking the long boulevard, with the Mediterranean shore line on your one side and the impressive, ostensibly eternally in construction skyline on your other, who would ever believe that this city only exists little over a hundred years? In 1909 Tel Aviv was initially founded as a garden suburb of the (biblical) port city of Jaffa. Its founding and further development was governed by Zionist, Garden City and Modern Movements (Schlör 1999: 11). Within only two decades the city had already surpassed Jaffa in population and it grew out to be the cultural and economic center of Israel and its main gate to the outside world (Kipnis 2014: 186). To understand how this rapid development came to be, first needs to be explained which cultural and political grounds made the city into a unique space in time.

Before the city even existed, there was already the conception - the fantasy - of Tel Aviv as a space. The name of the city is a translation of the book Altneuland by Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. In this book he envisions a Jewish state as a utopian model society with a liberal and modern social character. The title of the book functioned as inspiration to the founders of Tel Aviv; they translated it into Tel Aviv (‘Hill of Spring’). Here, tel meaning ‘heap of ancient ruins’, refers to an archeological site built on previous settlements, and aviv, meaning ‘spring’, refers to newness and rebirth (Israel Yearbook and Almanac 1999: 11-12). This literary name represents both the contradiction of recognizing history as its basis together with emphasizing its modernity through its rebirth, which is as the hopeful ideological character of the newborn city.

The city as imagined by Herzl was the ultimate utopia; Jewish, European and modern, with white buildings and many green gardens, “[without] prehistory - and therefore

indisputably and authentically Zionist” (Nitzan-Shiftan 2009: 58). At the same time,

however, this premise of a city arising from “nothingness” conflicts with the establishment of Tel Aviv “[as] part of a fundamental revolution in modern Jewish culture regarding notions of space and place’ (Mann 2006: xii). Political Zionism was critiquing the normative notion

22

of Jews as “rootless” and “people of time”, and so Tel Aviv as “the first Hebrew City” could be seen as the best example of fulfilling the desire to give Jews a place in history and make them a “people of space” (ibid.).

The population: rifts inside the community

Mann claims that there were many different Jews with different motives, so their approach toward Tel Aviv as their new home varied fundamentally. According to her, “one of the ways these disparities were ostensibly dissolved was through the conception of Tel Aviv as a ‘Jewish’ city” (Mann 2006: xii). But still, now that there was a place where Jews of all kinds belonged, did not mean there were no difficulties. Besides complicated attitudes toward the apparent “other”, the Arab population, there were also internal Jewish differences, mainly between Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews.

To fully understand Israeli society today, and that of Tel Aviv, this internal rift must be taken into consideration, because it still counts as the basis for many current frustrations. Much has been written about the so-called Ashkenazi-Zionist hegemony. In her article on hegemonic ethnicity Sasson-Levy draws the ethnic hierarchy within Israeli-Jewish society, which is mainly based on this rift. She explains how Ashkenazi Jews represent the upper and middle classes, both in regard to class and social status and how Mizrahi Jews on their turn mostly represent the lower classes (Sasson-Levy 2013: 28). I do not want to suggest that these are the only Jewish communities that exist in current Israeli-Jewish society, because, as Sasson-Levy also explains, “the massive immigration from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and the arrival of the Ethiopian Jewish community, both starting in the early 1990s,

complicated the ethnic map of Israel; nonetheless, Ashkenazim still represent the dominant group” (ibid.). How complicated the ethnic map of Israel is, becomes clear in the CBS

statistics of the country. The majority of the population is Jewish, which originated from over forty countries. Twenty percent of the population is Arab, who also do not fall not under the same category; there are, among many other groups, Arab Christians and Druze.

Furthermore, Israel is also home to Syriac Christians, as well as African refugees. And still, I have not named all of the different ethnic groups that live in Israel, but this short summary functions to show the complexity of the many national influences.

For my research I will only focus on the Mizrahi and Ashkenazi differences, for those are the main forces that are shaping Israeli cuisine. Also, during my fieldwork I have

23

experienced comments on people’s ‘Ashkenaziness’ or ‘Mizrahiness’, and even sometimes of that of my own. For instance, one day, around one o’clock in the afternoon, when the staff at Misada would usually have their first toast with shots. When Aviv, a Mizrahi Jew, asked me what kind of shot I would prefer, holding up a bottle of Campari and Arak, I chose Campari, because of its less alcoholic taste and with my eye on the clock. He then told me that that was ‘so Ashkenazi’ of me, jokingly. Arak is an alcoholic spirit originating from the Levant and Campari is from Italy. Also, Campari is seen as worldly, classy and luxurious, while Arak is old school and traditional. He thus linked Arak to Mizrahi and Campari to Ashkenazi and by asking me this question he put me up for a test. Since Aviv was the most outspoken and joking interlocutor I have had and since I never came across such a remark again I did not take it as a general perspective, but it did point out that there certainly still exists the idea of the differences being distinct. Furthermore, these comments were not limited to people’s ethnic descent only, but also to that of foods. However, in regard to food, there was generally a different status ascribed (often the opposite) to its ethnic descent, than to people’s ethnic descent. On this topic I will elaborate more in the next chapter.

The two groups, Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, were also divided in the city of Tel Aviv. This translated into the wealthier North of the city being mostly inhabited by Ashkenazi middle and upper classes, and the South (-east), which is more in decay, by

Mizrahi lower classes (Schipper 2016: 256). This socio spatial polarization was reinforced by the process of globalization the city is now in, the South now also being populated by African refugees; mostly around the Hatachana Station (ibid.).

Globalization and independency

Globalization has resulted in an increase of wealth, which has made the city into the most expensive city in the country and thus housing became generally highly unaffordable

(Schipper 2016: 522). I distinctly remember my visit in the summer of 2011, my family and I were walking past one of Tel Aviv’s main streets Rothschild, and it was very different than we knew it. Usually this street breaths serenity; its many symbolic Sycamore trees carry their leaves gently, so that their shadows make the big boulevard the ultimate sun release in the summer. This summer, however, the street was marked by something totally different than ease. Rothschild had now made place to house “the largest socio economic protest movement in Israeli history, directed against decades of neoliberalization” (ibid.). Initially, there were

24

some protest tents blocking the way in the street, but soon enough the protest grew out to be a mass movement with rallies “up to 400 000 people weekly” (ibid.: 523).

During my fieldwork all of my interlocutors, without exception, told me how expensive Tel Aviv is to live in. One evening at a Shabbat dinner I talked to the wife of one of the owners of a restaurant (a math teacher at a private school), and I was surprised when she told me that they would not be able to afford a house in Tel Aviv. Together they form a middle class couple, both working full time and making a good salary. Since most Israeli banks ask for 25-30% down payment, Tel Aviv has become unaffordable. She was upset that even they had to turn to suburbs. Another interlocutor gave me his views on the

expensiveness of life in Tel Aviv, and in doing so he summarized the general perspective of all Tel Avivians I met:

Eli: Tel Avivians don’t care about the future, because the economic situation here is

that you cannot live in Tel Aviv and at the same time safe money. Everybody here spends everything they have every month, and go in debt even. You have to understand that it is like that, if you want to live here, that is your life. I think it is starting to be a big metropolitan city in the world.

The housing crisis in Tel Aviv has mainly derived from its “high degree of relative autonomy in relation to the national state” (Schipper 2016: 526). In their article, Alfasi and Fenster show how different the municipalities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv work in order to compare the two cities in an age of globalization and how their “cultural, political and economic differences continue to grow” (Alfasi and Fenster 2005: 351).

The capital city of Jerusalem is bigger than Tel Aviv, although the latter is in the country’s biggest metropolitan area. Furthermore, Jerusalem is the sacred place to the three main monotheistic religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The city is ascribed a very different status than secular Tel Aviv. Where Jerusalem’s holiness is symbolized by its buildings, Tel Aviv’s sandy beaches symbolizes “the city’s secularity and stands for its dynamic, open mood” (Alfasi and Fenster 2015: 352). This resembles how I described Tel Aviv in my field notes in my third week there: “The city is an oasis at sea. It stands for the good life”.

Since the very beginning Tel Aviv has maintained a very independent identity, trying to run its municipality and financial affairs independent from the national government. The self-governing city emphasized international contacts, and this enforced the influences of

25

globalization more so than in other parts of Israel, without the exception of the capital Jerusalem. The gained affluence of the city was based on, among other things, the city’s owned property and land, but more importantly the independent financial resources the city has; not being “financially supported by the Ministry of the Interior” (Schipper 2016: 526). Its independency is enforced by the influences of globalization (Alfasi and Fenster 2015: 352).

Contemporary globalization is the increasing flow of trade, finance, culture, ideas, and people brought about by the sophisticated technology of communications and travel and by the worldwide spread of neoliberal capitalism, and it is the local and regional adaptations to and resistances against these flows. (Lewellen 2002: 7)

The quote above shows the general anthropological approach to globalization. The global process has been influencing the local and regional levels, which can lead to different affects: resistance or adaptation. Many anthropologists use center-periphery models like these (Ram 2004; Lewellen 2004; Eriksen 2014). This idea, however, implies approaching

researching globalization as a binary opposition.

Much has been written about how globalization has had a very different impact on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (Alfasi and Fenster 2015; Schipper 2016; Ram 2013). This again implies a binary opposition. Ram proposes a helpful “unitary contradictory

complementation” to understand these differences, without seeing them as being separated. In his book The Globalization of Israel: McWorld in Tel Aviv, Jihad in Jerusalem he describes McWorld as being “the world of universal commercial brands” and Jihad as “the world of communitarian holy wars” (Ram 2013: 12). By understanding globalization in Israel, through this concept, one can see how Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have had a very different reaction to the phenomenon, and how they relate to one another. In his book, Ram quotes Ben Ami, historian and former minister in a Labor government, just after current prime-minister Benyamin Netanyahu was elected in 1996 (after the former one Yizhak Rabin had been assassinated) where he explains how this election is a metaphor for the rift in Israel. It reflects the identities of both cities very well and at the same time marks a turning point when the differences between them grew and became even more apparent:

26

This schism [between the cities] today converges inside it all the schisms in Israel. ‘Tel Aviv’ is the manifestation of an updated ‘Israeliness’, one that does not hold the Uzi [shotgun] anymore, and does not follow the plough, but believes in the state of Israel as a judicial entity and central axis of secular national identity. This is no more a mobilized society. It substituted the pioneering ethos with an urge to ‘[economic] growth’, a belief in all sorts of ‘information highways’, [a global city] in which there is a room for Madonna and McDonald’s. This is Israel who is eager for peace and ready to pay high price for it… This yearning of ‘Tel Avivian’ Israeliness for ‘normalcy’ at all cost, is regarded by the other Israel, the ‘Jerusalemite’ Israel, as a shallow yearning, devoid of historical depth and liberated from the burden of Jewish memory and history… The ‘Jerusalemite’ Israeliness is the yearning for Jewish roots, is the manifestation of almost perennial fear from the Arab and a deeply rooted distrust in non-Jews. The peace that the labor party reached for, held within it not only the threat of returning of the [Palestinian] territories, but also the threat of the ‘returning’ of history itself, the forgetfulness of Jewish memory and the decline of Jewish identity. The ‘Tel Avivian’ peace was considered as an attack on the Jewish tradition and roots, and in fact on the Jewishness of the state… (Ram 2013: 121)

While globalization influences Jerusalem in becoming more religious and “still influenced traditional norms of governance based on the homogeneous Jewish nationality”, Tel Aviv is becoming more secular and “internalizes such values of citizenship as a global city” (Alfasi and Fenster 2005). The last decades a lot of religious people have left Tel Aviv and secular people have left Jerusalem for those reasons. Also, the autonomous municipality of Tel Aviv functions as an important agent in this process, in a way that it is actively framing Tel Aviv as a global city. Since 2010, the municipality has made positioning Tel Aviv as a global city a political goal. On the official website of the city this goal is described as: “[ensuring Tel Aviv as] a leading international business center that specializes in

innovation”. The pillars the municipality is focusing on are attracting international tourists, creating economic development and enforcing global communications. According to Alfasi and Fenster, Tel Aviv-Jaffa should be seen as a local globality, opposed to Jerusalem, which

27

is in their terms a global locality. The term local globality indicates that it is the “focal point for a local cluster of globalized economic activities” (Alfasi and Fenster 2009: 553).

Still, looking at Tel Aviv only through its relationship with Jerusalem and their “unitary contradictory complementation”, as Ram proposes, is downplaying the complexity of the globalized city. Since culture is not static, Tel Aviv too cannot be understood as having a static identity. The ostensible arbitrary contradictions I have found during my research make more sense in light of Appadurai’s theory of flows and scapes.

Tel Aviv’s high tech industry is where these flows of scapes are best notable, and this too is very specific for the city’s particular global attitude. Israel is often dubbed the ‘Start-Up Nation’ and a big part of the coastal area ‘Silicon Wadi’, referring to Silicon Valley, where Valley is replaced by Wadi - which means ‘canyon’ and is commonly used in both Hebrew and Arabic. At the very center of this high tech industry is Tel Aviv: “Tel Aviv metropolitan area is the central hub of commercial and high-tech activity as well as the dominant international gateway to Israel for people, capital and trade” (Roper and Grimes 2005: 303). This means that the city attracts a lot of young internationals, mainly European and American Jews. This industry is an easy entrance for these people to live and work in Israel, so I have noticed during my fieldwork. Some of my friends were working in this business and they told me that it is significantly easy to get a job there, which pays relatively well. In order to be eligible, an academic diploma is a big advantage, but there is often no need to have prior knowledge of high-tech. As a result of the developed high tech industry, many people on the street speak English, and there seems to be a general desire to improve and develop.

Ram claims that the state is not the most important force in regard to the Israeli economy anymore. He notices how the high tech industry has mainly taken over this function and how that has created a new kind of elite group (Ram 2013: 112). Alfasi and Fenster recognize a same kind of category in Tel Aviv and use Florida’s (2002) concept of the “emergence of a “creative class” that is currently transforming the urban lifestyle. The creative class encompasses scientists, high-technology workers, and R&D personnel, as well as artists, designers, architects, and the like” (Florida 2002: 547). This new class has the tendency to be tolerant towards diversity, which means that “[the barriers are low for] the entry of human capital” (ibid.), leading to a more social openness. Tel Aviv is, for example, known for its vibrant gay community (which the autonomous municipality encourages (Schipper 2015: 527)), but also presents itself as being open minded towards ethnic origin, religion, and so on. I found this to be the case in my fieldwork too. Ibrahim, a 27 year old

28

Muslim refugee from Sudan, had been living in Israel for six years and had been working as a cook at Misada for three years. He spoke English very well (not all of the refugees I

interviewed did). In an interview I asked him what to him felt like the biggest difference living in Tel Aviv opposed to living in Darfur - one should keep in mind that he was a political refugee and could not practice Islam.

Ibrahim Nobody asks you: “What is your religion?” That is better. Better

than in my country. Because if Jewish people went to Sudan, they would probably be asked: “What is your religion? What are your beliefs?” And maybe it would be dangerous for them, just as it was for me. But here I feel free. Nobody asks me: “Who are you?” And: “What is your religion?”

The Tel Avivian restaurant scene, which is part of this open creative class, proved to be very diverse and open to different kind of people. As one of my interlocutors called the staff at the restaurant he works at a “troubled kids class”. According to him, these were all people that did not fit in other parts of Israeli society - for instance because they would not be able to get a job in another profession, or restaurant even, or because of their political views. Also, relatively many of my interlocutors were part of the gay community, and the ones that did not grow up in Tel Aviv desperately wanted to go there, because of its good name in this community. One of them, who grew up in a kibbutz, was sure that he had never met a gay person until he was twenty and lived in Tel Aviv.

This tolerance, however, applies to the people within this class; it might be easier to access - more flexible - but it still is a class, so intrinsically limited, and within that class there still are distinctions. Thus, there are boundaries to the “cultural capital for all” too (Marom and Yacobi 2013: 61). ‘The globalized Tel Avivian’ becomes an identity of its own, one that sees itself different from other Israelis. But how is this identity constructed, by the people themselves and by the people that do not belong to this group? And what are the boundaries of this identification?

29

‘The Bubble’

During my research I have come across the identity that is linked to the globalized secular Tel Avivian many times; not only during conversations with the people who identified

themselves as such, but also in conversations with people who did not (often non-Tel Avivians) or when I visited other cities I often did recognize a different atmosphere. ‘The Bubble’ is a term often used when talked about what distinguishes Tel Aviv and her people from the rest of Israel - and especially from Jerusalem (Abourahme 2009: 503). Both people from outside of Tel Aviv as well as Tel Avivians themselves use this word. Often its

connotation is more positive when used by the latter than when used by the former. Although it is an arbitrary concept, and is ascribed different meanings in different contexts, I have identified the most important aspects of the Bubble, which are all connected and influence each other. I will elaborate on how Tel Aviv, as the major global city of Israel, shapes the idea of the Bubble - together with its independent position. From this will follow how that leads to disagreement with the government; which gives (the center of) the city a different position. Furthermore, I will show how most of my interlocutors deal with the war leads to a certain escapism, characterized by its hedonistic character.

Globalization often leads to a decrease of faith in the state and an increase of autonomy among citizens (Alfasi and Fenster 2005: 353). Itay, the manager of Misada told me that he had stopped believing the government and its claims. Furthermore, many of my interlocutors mentioned their rejection of the current prime-minister and his political choices. Some were more outspoken than others, with restaurant owner Nir taking the biscuit, calling the government “shit” and “a bunch of clowns”. Also, the previously mentioned independent character of Tel Aviv’s municipality also reinforces the weakening of the state. Yahav, the owner and chef of Mishpacha, emphasized the power of Tel Aviv municipality to make own decisions, while he addressed the secular character of the city.

Yahav: I am not religious. Most of Tel Aviv is not religious. I don’t know

many people that are religious. We have an issue with the forcing of religion in this country by the government. [Like working] on Saturday is being made more difficult. So lately, we have become even more against religion, because of the politics. But that’s politics. It is a law that they are trying to pass. And it will probably pass. It will be a national law, but in

30

the end every municipal city-hall can decide how to enforce that law, so in Tel Aviv it won’t happen. It won’t touch us. It makes us more aggressive against religious people.

Many of the frustrations came from how the government is currently dealing with the refugees that came from Eritrea and Sudan. These people - of whom many work in the

restaurant business - are probably being sent away to Rwanda and some other countries. Nir’s business partner Jacob made an extreme comparison that I once heard Yahav make as well.

Jacob: The Israeli government is doing what - this might be harsh to say -

but they are doing what other governments did to us when we were all over the world, the diaspora.

Although the liberal center of Tel Aviv mostly welcomes them, 70% of all Israelis want the asylum seekers to leave. Most of the Israelis that are against those refugees staying in Israel, are either religious Zionists, or live in the Southeast of Tel Aviv. Only one of my interlocutors who grew up in the Southeast, in the poor Hatikva neighborhood, was not fully welcoming of the asylum seekers, but even he was very mild in his opinion.

Shahal: Hatikva was a nice place to grow up. I liked that neighborhood

back then, now not so much. Now there are a lot of Eritrean and Sudanese. They came to Israel and all of them live there. I don’t like it because it is too much. I don’t hate them, not at all. […] There are just too many in one place. And now it is too late to send them back. That is not okay. We took them now, so we have to keep them. We need to make them Israeli. Send them to better schools, better kindergartens, give them better houses. Now that they are here, they should get better lives too. But just not let all of them in.

Thus, I did not come across anyone who was very supportive of the idea to make them leave (which probably had a lot to do with not speaking with a lot of people from the South of Tel Aviv or with religious Zionists). So, this last example was not representative for the general political worldview I encountered with my population. The overall response I got was very socialist and very enraged with the government.

31

During some of my trips - I went to Jerusalem twice, to a Kibbutz near Haifa twice and to some other villages and cities - I spoke to non-Tel Avivians about the notion of the Bubble. One of them told me: “In Israel we don’t say: the city of Tel Aviv, but we say the country of Tel Aviv”. The city is accused of being self-absorbed. I have experienced both non-Tel Avivians as well as Tel Avivians distancing themselves from the other. For instance, besides the liberal, often socialist political views of my Tel Avivian interlocutors, many of them were at the same time expressing being intentionally not involved in national politics.

Yahav: We protest sometimes, last Saturday for instance. But that is

against a lot of stuff. Not only this. But yeah, I try not to get involved too much. I try to live in my small world and carry out my values, without really giving a damn about politics. My values are just to be a human being to your surroundings, be nice. I don’t want to take sides; I don’t want to be involved, because everything is so corrupt, so it doesn’t even mean anything. Everyone in the government is corrupt. So these are not people I want to represent me. Tel Aviv is like that. We are hated in Israel because we live in our own bubble, we don’t care, we only care about having fun, and we are not serious. That is how they perceive us.

This attitude towards politics, this sort of ‘escapism’ characterized by hedonism, was an issue that was reflected in many of my interviews. When writing about Israel and its people, one cannot exclude the conflict entirely. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been ongoing for over a hundred years, has led to many tensions, and wars, in the region. In this thesis, however, I will not go into the conflict itself, because it is too complex and it is not the premise of this thesis to contribute to knowledge on this topic. Although I did not intend to focus on this aspect of Israeli life, it did turn out to be an inevitable topic, for it is impacting Israeli daily life in many ways. Maya, a young woman who worked at Mishpacha and studied art therapy, told me that she used to check the news all the time, but she realized at a certain moment that it would break her up; reading the dispiriting news articles. She ended up deciding to delete her news apps and not to watch the news anymore. When my interlocutors would refer to Tel Aviv as ‘The Bubble’, it would become clear that escapism in regard to the war was part of the notion of the nickname. Ben, a young man working as a cashier in Misada, told me that Tel Avivians are often seen as people “who live a beautiful life, without too much worrying, and not aware of the war”. As an article in the Monitor

32

explains: “Here, residents forgo news about Hamas rocket fire for an espresso, then mosey down to the beach. While Jewish settlers spar with Palestinians in the West Bank, ‘Tel Avivis’ make merry at disco clubs”. When Israel was at war in 2006 with Hezbollah and Lebanon, Tel Avivians were accused of again hiding their heads in the sand and being their hedonistic selves. The global citizen is often more preoccupied with themselves, and in that regard Alfasi and Fenster view Tel Aviv as “[appearing] busy with the daily conflicts of work, maintenance, property, and status. Inhabitants are concerned with democracy as part of their tendency to modernity, convenience and individualism” (Alfasi and Fenster 2005: 354). This last bit I found to be often the case with my interlocutors as well. Ben, Misada’s

bartender, told me that the war was not where he was most worried about. He worried more so about his financial situation.

In my interviews the less serious identity of the city was often described as a playground, where people do not have to grow up and can be a kid forever. One of my roommates even said that people deliberately move to Tel Aviv for this purpose. Lior, the bartender of Shawia & Sons, said something similar by calling people in Tel Aviv Peter Pan. This also leads to exhaustion. Many of my interlocutors have told me that they go to bed late and wake up early. They feel the pressure of the city that is, next to its many other

nicknames, also dubbed ‘non-stop city’. This flow of aliveness gives people a variety of options to escape. I was surprised to learn that the way Tel Aviv is perceived also goes beyond the borders of the country. The band Athens, which is, unsurprisingly, Greek, wrote a song about the city.

My hill of spring is not a place for mourning […]

Two old lovers laugh away "Hedonism is our way Let's pretend, let's be hopeful"

[…]

We could move to Tel Aviv Fly away across the sea

To this place where we can breathe at last We should move to Tel Aviv Feel the Middle Eastern breeze

33

(Matisse, 2007)

On the last day of my stay in Tel Aviv, I took a cab that would take me to the airport together with my two heavy suitcases, my brain full of stories and my heart filled with mixed feelings about leaving. Tel Aviv had proven to be a very welcoming exciting city for me to live in; it had given me much more than anticipated, on many levels. In the three months I had lived there I was starting to identify with the city. Also, I had not left the city for trips for little over a month and so, when I got closer to the airport, and the landscape started to change again, it felt as if I got ripped out of the Bubble, without any remorse. I wrote down what happened in the time in between leaving Tel Aviv and entering the plane.

After being in the cab for around twenty minutes, only fifteen minutes away from Tel Aviv, when we get closer to the Ben Gurion airport, we come across a checkpoint where security looks inside the car and asks questions about where we come from. After a couple of questions and apparently correct answers, we can drive further. Once I am at the airport, I realize this stop was nowhere near the last security check. Before checking in my baggage I am stopped by a woman in uniform who starts asking me a lot of questions: “Where do you come from?” “How long have you been here?” “How often have you been here before?” “Do you have family living here?” “What are those friends of your parents called that live here?” “What were the purposes of your trip?” “Why did you want to learn Hebrew?” “Where did you study Hebrew?” And so on… At a certain moment I understand that I might be better off not answering all of these questions as extensively as I do. But at first, I was naive (probably because I still did not realize how the conflict is everywhere, because I just came out of the Bubble), being very open about what I have done here and how much I have learnt. In retrospect I now think that I was very eager to have a nice final conversation with someone about the time I had. But being as open as I was, gives the questioner even more input to interrogate. When we finally do finish our conversation I have to walk on to the airport customs, where I have to hand in my hand luggage. Every item is unpacked and exhaustively searched. Also, my bags are swabbed

34

with a stick that checks whether there are any drugs or explosives in there. At other airports it usually takes me a minute or two, to get passed this stop. Here it cost me at least fifteen minutes. After that I too am carefully searched, with the swab stick as well. After gathering my stuff again, just when I think I had finally proved that I was ‘a good citizen’, I have to show my passport at a next desk. At this desk a photo is taken and I am given a little card is, which allows me to open the last gate, that leads to the duty free area, where I am finally not bothered anymore by security stops.

Although I know that there is a conflict, I rarely realized that during my time in Tel Aviv. Now that I have gone through four security checks, it becomes painfully clear how real the situation is. I almost feel bad that I might not have been able to fully grasp the gravity of it, but maybe that is part of the Bubble too; maybe I too have become part of the Bubble.

Because of this experience, I could better understand how people could think of Tel Avivians as hiding their heads in the sand, by partying, eating and drinking all the time. At the same time, however, I realized that Tel Avivians of course have got a good understanding of what is happening, because all of them have been in contact with the war, and almost all of them have served in the army. On the latter I will elaborate more in the last chapter.

Conclusion

Tel Aviv is a very interesting place to study, starting with its existence being imagined long before it came into reality. The city ultimately was the fulfillment of a

(Zionist) dream. The varieties and contradictions in the city are very characteristic. The city is modern and traditional; full of white skyscrapers and of brown low-rise buildings; it is home to Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews; to young and old; secularism and empty streets on Shabbat; global and local; Jewish Tel Aviv and (partly) Arab Jaffa. These contradictions are also reflected in its initial premise.