JERUSALEM FOOD

Medieval map despicting Jerusalem as the center of the Universe

Is there even such a thing as Jerusalem food, though? Consider this: there are Greek Orthodox monks in this city; Russian Orthodox priests; Hasidic Jews originating from Poland; non-Orthodox Jews from Tunisia, from Libya, from France, or from Britain; there are Sephardic Jews that have been here for generations; there are Palestinian Muslims from the West Bank and many others from the city and well beyond; there are secular Ashkenazic Jews from Romania, Germany, and Lithuania and more recently arrived Sephardim from Morocco, Iraq, Iran, or Turkey; there are Christian Arabs and Armenian Orthodox; there are Yemeni Jews and Ethiopian Jews but there are also Ethiopian Copts; there are Jews from Argentina and others from southern India; there are Russian nuns looking after monasteries and a whole neighborhood of Jews from Bukhara (Uzbekistan).

All of these, and many, many more, create an immense tapestry of cuisines. It is impossible to count the number of cultures and subcultures residing in this city. Jerusalem is an intricate, convoluted mosaic of peoples. It is therefore very tempting to say there isn’t such a thing as a local cuisine. And indeed, if you go to the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Me’ah She’arim and compare the prepared food sold in grocery shops there to the selection laid out by a Palestinian mother for her children in the neighborhood of A-tur in the east of the city, you couldn’t be blamed for assuming these two live on two different culinary planets.

However, if you take a step back and look at the greater picture, there are some typical elements that are easily identifiable in most local cuisines and crop up throughout the city. Everybody, absolutely everybody, uses chopped cucumber and tomatoes to create an Arab salad or an Israeli salad, depending on point of view. Stuffed vegetables with rice or rice and meat also appear on almost every dinner table, as does an array of pickled vegetables. Extensive use of olive oil, lemon juice, and olives is also commonplace. Baked pastries stuffed with cheese in all sorts of guises are found in most cultures.

Then there are looser affinities, those shared by a few cuisines but not all of them: bulgur or semolina cases stuffed with meat (kubbeh), burnt eggplant salads, white bean soups, the combination of meat with dried fruits. Eventually, these separate links among the different groups join all of the groups together into one clear and identifiable local cuisine.

Aside from that, there are the local ingredients. Jerusalemites tend to eat seasonally and cook with what grows in the area. The list is endless. It is made up of dozens of vegetables — tomatoes, okra, string beans, cauliflower, artichokes, beets, carrots, peppers, cucumbers, celery root, kohlrabi, zucchini, eggplants — fruits — figs, lemons, peaches, pears, strawberries, pomegranates, plums, apricots — herbs, nuts, dairy products, grains and beans, lamb, and chicken.

THE PASSION IN THE AIR

The diversity and richness of Jerusalem, both in terms of the cooks and their disparate backgrounds and the ingredients they use, make it fascinating to any outsider. But what makes this city doubly exciting is the emotional and spiritual energy that pervades it. When it comes to people’s emotions, it is hard to overstate how unique the city is.

Four thousand years of intense political and religious wrangling  are impossible to hide. Wherever you go — in Jewish parts in the city center or within the walls of the ancient Old City — people are zealously fighting to protect and maintain what they see as their piece of land, their endangered culture, or their right to a certain way of life. More often than not, this is pretty ugly. Intolerance and trampling over other people’s basic rights are routine in this city. Currently, the Palestinian minority bears the brunt with no sign of it regaining control over its destiny, while the secular Jews are seeing their way of life being gradually marginalized by a growing Orthodox population.

The other, more positive side of this coin is that the inherent passion and energy that Jerusalemites have in abundance results in some fantastic food and culinary creativity. The best hummus joints, where methods have been perfected over generations, are in the city (and locals are happy to go into some seriously heated debates about the best one), as are some of the country’s most creative modern restaurants. There is something about the heated, highly animated spirit of the city’s residents that creates unparalleled delicious food. It also has a very obvious effect on the flavors, which are strong and bold, with lots of sour and sweet. The Jerusalem Palestinian hummus is patently sharp, as are the Friday night Sephardi soups.

On top of that, there is a spirit of warmth and generosity that is sometimes almost overbearing. Guests are always served mountains of food. Nothing is done sparingly. Eat More is a local motto. It is unthinkable not to eat what you are served. Going into a friend’s restaurant, or a friend of a friend, you are never expected to pay. It is a combination of the famous Middle Eastern hospitality that goes back to the days of Abraham and the typical Ashkenazi Jewish way of always showering guests and relatives with delights, lest they “go home hungry.” Heaven forbid.

Alas, although Jerusalemites have so much in common, food, at the moment, seems to be the only unifying force in this highly fractured place. The dialogue between Jews and Arabs, and often among Jews themselves, is almost nonexistent. It is sad to note how little daily interaction there is between communities, with people sticking together in closed, homogenous groups. Food, however, seems to break down those boundaries on occasion. You can see people shop together in food markets, or eat in one another’s restaurants. On rare occasions, they work together in partnership in food establishments. It takes a giant leap of faith, but we are happy to take it — what have we got to lose? — to imagine that hummus will eventually bring Jerusalemites together, if nothing else will.

By Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi in "Jerusalem, a Cookbook",published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, (Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House), New York, 2012, excerpts p.12-19. Edited and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.