Content area
Full Text
Yael Raviv has recently completed a dissertation on Jewish nationalism and the Israeli state at New York University. She is now an adjunct professor in the Nutrition and Studies Department there.
"Food permits a person [...] to partake each day of the national past."
Roland Barthes, 1961
In his study of nations and nationalism (1990), E.J. Hobsbaum states the importance of giving due attention to the "view from below" when studying questions of nationalism, yet he says that it is extremely difficult to discover the view of ordinary people as opposed to governments or activists. I argue that the study of food affords us such a view: it allows an examination of national identification through a new perspective, one which gives voice to "ordinary people" and to formerly marginalized groups within the nation. Food offers a tangible and concrete window into the illusive concept of national identity. It is useful particularly because it is not a pure category, but rather, it is implicated in and influenced by historical changes, political and ideological shifts, and economic considerations.
David Bell and Gill Valentine, in Consuming Geographies (1997), see a certain paradox in the discussion of nation and food since the two seem "so commingled in popular discourse that it is often difficult not to think one through the other" (168-69). Calling the French "frogs" or thinking of the Chinese as rice eaters are typical examples. Yet, all so-called "national foods" are products of movement, cultural exchange, colonialism, and trade. One speaks of "Italian food", but there is inherent contradiction between, the complex, multi-faceted past and the national impulse to present a "united front" or a common history as it appears in food habits. This can provide a window into the complexities of a nation's past and a way to better understand its present.
I would like to focus here on the case of Jewish national identity and the Zionist movement in Israel as an example of the role of food habits in the construction of the nation. The Israeli case is unique for several reasons. The small geographical space of Israel, its social structure which limited class differences, and the transplanting of Jewish people from other countries to a new area creating a clear historical break-all these...