The first meal we had was a shawarma, the first service staff we met were Arab Muslims, the first sound from a religious structure travelling through a busy square was the Muslim call to prayer. My Israel experience began in Jaffa, the old port city that is part of the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality and home to a vibrant mix of Jewish and Muslim population. Walking through its flea market and dining areas on the first evening and meeting a diverse set of locals, I experienced that Israel is not a country of one kind of people.The common perception is that Jews who live in Israel came only from Germany or Poland, or only from European lineage. You meet Jews from Syria, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, Iran, Russia and from all over South Asia and Latin America, and that too in big numbers. You’d rarely hear the word “melting pot” used for Israel, but once there, you experience how different nationalities, even if followers of one Jewish faith, have all brought their own food, music and local cultures with them.
Overlooking Tel Aviv skyline from Old Jaffa
There are two broad groups here. Ashkenazi Jews came from Europe, and Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews came from the Middle East and North Africa, and each set brought their own food and culture. It is the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews who’ve made the food and cultural scene of the country a spicy and lively affair. Together they make up roughly half the population, yet the world rarely hears about them.While you may have read or heard about the Jerusalem bagel, challah bread or babka, the most popular dishes in the country are sabich, an Iraqi sandwich, shakshuka, a Libyan and Tunisian egg preparation, bourekas, a flaky Ottoman pastry, and of course hummus and pita, shawarma, and desserts like knafeh, malabi and halva.Israel, it must be noted, is also not an exclusively Jewish country. According to various statistics, about 74 percent of people are Jewish, close to 20 percent are Muslim, and the rest are Christian, Druze and other faiths. That means nearly a fourth of the country is not Jewish at all, and even among the big Jewish majority, not all are orthodox or practising Jews. Hebrew is the official language, while Arabic, English and Russian are recognised and widely spoken.
Vibrant street dining scene of Tel Aviv Jaffa
Israel’s food tells the story of this diversity better than anything else. My mornings usually began with hummus, olives, falafel and dates. Shawarma showed up for lunch almost every day, and locals will proudly tell you theirs is the best in the region. Abu Hassan is a landmark for hummus, while Abulafiya bakery has been around for over 100 years. As we spent an afternoon walking through the busy Levinsky market in Tel Aviv, tasting one stall after another, we sampled flavours from all over the world with a local spin, perfected over decades.The politics here, too, is more layered than what shows up on the news. Settler violence is real, and so are the harsh statements from some right wing ministers. But there is another Israel too. Tel Aviv has seen large protests against its own government for over a year now, many led by young Jewish activists against the handling of the hostage crisis, and demanding change. In response to an ultranationalist Flag March in Jerusalem, Jewish rights groups registered their presence too, forming a human chain to act as a buffer between the ultra-right marchers and Arab shopkeepers. The city of Tel Aviv has a big and visible gay community. Young Israelis, on the whole, are progressive and openly discuss political situations. You can hear, on TV or social media nowadays, politicians and officers, both retired and serving, including Gadi Eisenkot, the politician who’s suddenly part of pub conversations, speak about wanting to protect the “soul of the country.”
Dining along the Lake Tiberias overlooking Golan Heights
While there are divergent views on various topics, one day stands apart from all this argument. October 7 is the one date that unites everyone in grief, whatever their politics. Everyone I met carried the same sadness when they spoke about it.Another group you’d have heard very little about is Israeli Arab Muslims. Citizens of Israel with full rights, they feel recent right wing rhetoric that uses “all Arabs” as a blanket term amounts to hate speech that could easily be avoided. They are an integral part of every industry, with some of the country’s most prominent surgeons, hoteliers, restaurateurs and startup founders coming from the community. Several Arabs said they have no connection to Iran or to the Palestinian cause. They have spent their whole lives in Israel and have nothing to do with the politics outside. They simply want to be seen as who they are.The trip itself moved through some of the country’s oldest corners. Roman ruins at Caesarea, the old Crusader lanes of Acre, meal at Uri Buri, the most well known seafood restaurant of the country, Haifa’s terraced Bahai gardens, a boat ride across the Sea of Galilee at sunset. In the Golan Heights, got to spend a morning in a Druze village learning to cook their food, a community few outsiders know much about at all. Further south, there was a visit to a date farm in the Jordan Valley aling the border. We later climbed to the desert fortress of Masada before floating, almost involuntarily, in the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. There is a lot to explore in a very short stretch of land, and what makes it interesting is that most of the southern part is just desert.In Jerusalem, you can walk through the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City in a single afternoon, pray at the holiest of sites and stand inside tunnels beneath the Western Wall. One evening ended at a home-cooked Shabbat dinner that turned out to be entirely Turkish and Moroccan food, nothing like what people expect a Jewish meal to look like.One thing that surprised me was that nearly everyone I met, Jewish or Arab, had some link to India. Be it a stint in Bengaluru’s tech offices, a marketing or diplomatic assignment in Delhi or Mumbai, or a backpacking trip through the hills or down south after their army service. People in hotel lobbies or lifts brought up Prime Minister Modi entirely on their own, and always warmly. In Haifa, there is a small cemetery for Indian soldiers who died fighting here during the First World War.None of the places felt like a country at war. Markets were full. Restaurants were busy. Chefs from Yemen were cooking food you will not read about anywhere else. The only real damage one heard about from the war was to tourism. Hotels that should have been packed through the summer were running half empty. Israel gets a lot of tourists from around the world on pilgr that peak. When the Lebanon ceasefire was announced, our driver, who was showing us around the agricultural farms, revealed there was big relief in the hospitality and food business.I must assert, and add a disclaimer, that a trip like mine, curated and welcomed everywhere, showed me a side of Israel, an unusually gentle and positive side, that I had never read or heard about. I also agree I didn’t get to see the destruction in Gaza or the situation in the West Bank. I didn’t see the war zone I had gone expecting to see. But that doesn’t negate what I saw. The coexistence in Israel, the arguments within society, the grief around October 7, the news of the plight of Palestinians, the bustling food scene of Tel Aviv and the news of scarcity in Gaza, all of it was real, sitting right alongside the war headlines.Israel is not only the shiny startup nation it markets itself as abroad. A visit to the Peres Centre for Peace and Innovation will tell you how Israel has leaped ahead of its neighbours in technology, but you’d also find that not every young Israeli is pursuing a business or technology degree. Many are studying history, liberal arts and music, and are openly centre or left leaning.It is a mixed, argumentative and deeply layered place. I had gone to Israel a bit nervous about the ground situation, given the war and the talk of it being a police state. I came back with a changed perception of food, faith, and a country that is in the global eye, not always for good reasons, but has remained resilient and most importantly a democracy. It has a past, and is set to decide its future with an upcoming election.The writer was in Israel at the invitation of Israel tourism ministry.
