261. Maisa’s Kosher Kitchen
- Author:
- Lindsey Pullum
- Publication Date:
- 07-2022
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
- Abstract:
- How one woman’s restaurant reveals the intersections of ethnicity, militarism, and nationalism at play in culinary tourism. Maisa* has turned her modest home on her sleepy residential street into the most popular eatery in the Israeli Druze village of Daliyat al-Carmel. To get there, tourists take the 672 road out of Israel’s port city, Haifa, and climb the mountain north before turning off the main road that leads to the famous Druze Saturday Market. Maisa’s restaurant is part food stop, part cultural museum. With a long, bricked parking lot for 40-passenger buses, the neighborhood transforms daily into a small tourist hub. As you walk in, the enlarged portrait of the late Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Amin Tarif hangs directly in front of the open doors. The coffee stand garners much attention from tourists with a fabric designed with Israeli flags draped down from a window ledge. The fabric is held up by a brass menorah and a miniature metal tank, while a significantly smaller Druze flag is off to the side. Displayed with prominence next to the Israeli flag fabric is a certificate of kosher status, important for any Jew who might adhere to kosher food laws. These displays will soon fade from tourists’ attention once food is served, but for the time being, their function is unambiguous. The stand encapsulates the dominant narrative of brotherhood and patriotism told about a sect within Israel’s Arab minority.
- Topic:
- Nationalism, Food, Tourism, Ethnicity, Druze, and Militarism
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Israel