AThe people of Israel are going through a difficult time, and the influence of the national mood on our country’s restaurants is evident. So instead of a parade of kneidlich or a review of gluten-free dishes, this year the holiday section is dedicated to the connection between people and food. In honor of Pesach, we brought together two culinary experts who, although they come from different habitats, share a great love for cooking, and a sharp and intelligent mind. And above all they share an open and curious heart.
Dei Afaiim is a shmotznik, an officer in the reservist in Shalad, a chef and farmer, a winemaker and winemaker who founded the Afaiim farm in the Arava and he cooks and sells its products in the farm’s stores in Jerusalem, Binyamin and Maccabim. While Ephraim Greenblatt is a Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox, a member of a privileged family of rabbis from the state of Tennessee who immigrated to Israel. After he started brewing beer in his backyard and received compliments from friends, he opened the Hatch Brewery in the Mahane Yehuda market and Schmaltz, a meaty Jerusalem restaurant that succeeds in producing food and longing for everything American and Jewish.
We meet on the eve of Rosh Chodesh Nissan, which was spontaneously determined this year as a day of public fasting and fasting due to the polarization in the nation.
How do you see the connection between fasting and destruction and correction?
Afaiim: “The idea of fasting is foreign to me as a free Jew who did not grow up in an Orthodox home. In our home, they did not fast during the offensive, neither on Yom Kippur nor on Tisha B’av, and to this day I do not fast. But ‘Taanit’ is the tractate I am most connected to in the Gemara, and it almost always deals with salvation At the last minute. Most of the original fasts were not decided after the fact but as a means of correction. If we are in a crisis situation and deviated from the course, a fast is a kind of possibility for such a restart. A reset between classes, between gaps between those who have and those who do not, certainly in the old days.”
Dei Afaim: “Nowadays we eat non-stop, food security is no longer an issue. But in the past, fasting came to answer the existential fear that there would be no food, that it would not rain, that the wheat would not grow.”
And it’s also a time for soul-searching.
“Definitely. When I remove lust from my body and torture my soul, then I can look inside. When everything is comfortable, there are no problems.”
Greenblatt: “Before treatment or before I go up to perform in front of an audience, I don’t eat for several hours, not out of excitement but out of a desire to be sharp and alert. To be restless in a positive sense. By the way, before fasts I’m always under pressure. Because as the cliché says that Food is Love , after all, when there is no food – there is the opposite of love, which is neglect. There is something in a situation of deprivation, of being impossible, of having no one to take care of me, that causes me deep anxiety.”
Afaiim: “It’s a primal fear. Nowadays we eat non-stop, food security is no longer an issue. But in the past, fasting came to answer the existential fear that there wouldn’t be food, that it wouldn’t rain, that the wheat wouldn’t grow. Food is connected to lust, and to the thought that if I answer, if I will overcome – something in the nature around me will change.”
Speaking of clichés, does food really bring people together?
Greenblatt: “When I ride the light rail in the city, I usually don’t feel the need to strike up a conversation with all those foreign and very different people who share a car with me. What about me and a 65-year-old Iraqi man? But when I suddenly meet Israelis in Chiang Mai, all I want To do this is to chat with them in Hebrew and talk about Israel and what it’s like to be Jewish and about any possible topic. I think we always have a choice whether to focus on what is similar between us or what differentiates us, and when we are in a certain atmosphere, it often affects this choice. We can – Both as a society and as individuals – to find the common ground, and for me food is the perfect setting for this. Not only do we all need food and love to eat, we are also usually quite interested in foreign food that is different from our own. The truth is that it makes me wonder if this is why on Purim, delivering meals is actually a mitzvah through which they seek to connect people.”
“Food does not bring people together,” Afai hurries to share. “People bring people closer together. There are those who do this by using food, but it is never the food itself, it is always the meals. Meals bring people closer together. Sitting together around one focal point – the table, with everyone bringing their baggage, the past his, but looking before the eyes of the woman sitting in front of him, around the same matter, this is the thing that brings people together. In his text on ‘The Culture of the Circle’ Haim Guri wrote about bonfires, and I see meals. People who choose to sit together around one table.
Ephraim Greenblatt: “I think we always have a choice whether to focus on what is similar between us or what differentiates us. We can – both as a society and as individuals – find the common ground, and for me, food is the perfect setting for that.”
“And another thing: not only does food not bring people together, many times it is the very thing that separates and separates people – those who have and those who do not, those who have only basic and meager food and those who have an excess of decadent delicacies in which they wave. People fly private planes to satisfy their cravings for caviar or truffles and are completely blind to the hardships, injustices and hunger outside their home gates. Food does not bring people together, it is a caressing invitation and nothing more. Meals, on the other hand, are those made by people for people, those that put the diners at the center and not the cost Or the rarity of the raw materials, they bring people closer together.”
Holiday meals always excite me, they have a different charm. What makes food festive?
Greenblatt: “I think it’s related to the same way I experience food in the context of love. Even though I have a great passion for food, I’m really not picky and can enjoy even pretty mediocre food. But when I feel that the person who prepared the dish in front of me didn’t feel like preparing it, that he didn’t enjoy it in the process or he didn’t care about my experience as a diner – suddenly it’s really, really hard for me to eat it. We all know that you can taste and smell and look at food. So it’s as if there is another sense, beyond the usual ones, that we simply don’t have a name for. When we work on special foods For any holiday, it is often a demanding work process that is also accompanied by very personal sensations and memories and feelings. For example, a dish with ground meat, which historically involved a lot of work, or when dealing with expensive raw materials – naturally this makes us think more about the dish and the meal in which it will be served And who will eat it. It becomes a container for love, a way to express belonging and caring. This elusive thing is what makes food festive in my eyes.”
Afaiim: “What makes a holiday meal powerful for the soul is the voluntary sitting together around one table and the knowledge that we are just a conduit that continues the abundance of the earth, the rain and the labor of the body.”
Finally, what is between freedom and food?
Afaiim: “Freedom is a necessity for the soul just as food is a necessity for the body. A second bullet for a Holocaust survivor I learned from childhood: those who were once hungry for bread as a result of the tyranny of others will never agree to lose their freedom again. Both are connected to each other and as a farmer I know what a wonderful right it is, a real redemption , that there is in my generation who is privileged to grow bread from the land, from the Land of Israel, his country, after two thousand years of slavery. This is freedom: the right to be responsible for your food and the food of your family members, friends and relatives. Anyone who has had the privilege of witnessing food rising from the ground knows firsthand the meaning of the verse: ‘Truth From the earth you will grow’. And as we know, truth and freedom are almost synonymous words.”
The post “We can find common ground, and food is the perfect setting for that” appeared first on Mekor Rishon.
