Narrating Modernity and Tradition: The Case of Palestinian Food in Israel

摘要

This article looks at Palestinian cuisine in Israel as revealing negotiations over inclusion and self-identification of Palestinians in Israel. By sustaining culinary practices and transmitting them from one generation to the next, Palestinians become active agents who construct and negotiate their cultural differentiation and entitlement to ethnic distinctiveness. This course of action is taking place in two complementary spheres. By applying their culinary “know-how” knowledge in the domestic sphere, Palestinian women narrate modernity and construct their form and modes of participation in Israeli culture. Simultaneously, men, who cook in the public sphere, deliberately uphold traditional knowledge. Thus, they sustain traditional images of Palestinian cooking, establish forms of resistance to the appropriation of their culinary assets into the Jewish culinary repertoire, and negotiate positioning in Israeli society.