Seeing Israel Through the Stomach
In February 2008 Bonnie Stern and Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
took their third annual Food for Thought Israel Culinary tour
with 26 lovely, thoughtful and hungry participants!
The call came in about a month before I was leaving for my first Kolel educational trip to Israel in 2004. “Is there room for 2 more?” asked the voice on the other end. “My sister and brother in law are coming, and we’d like to join them, if its possible.” Her name was Bonnie Stern, she said. “Bonnie Stern??” I asked. “The chef and cookbook author? Of the Bonnie Stern School of Cooking?” I stammered. “This trip’s not about food, you know, I can’t promise the food will be that good, we’re just eating in the hotels…” On and on I went but Bonnie persisted. She and her husband had never been to Israel, and even though this trip was going on the cusp of the second intifada, she was determined, and didn’t care at all about the food, she claimed.
But even I was surprised by all the great food we had on that trip. Even in the hotels we discovered so many delicious things: we found sweet tomato jam, the famous Israeli breakfasts; we drank sachlab, sampled shakshuka, and for the Sephardic Shabbat dinner while we were surprised not to have gefilte fish we were delighted to eat spicy fish called charaime.
That was our first culinary tour. We decided on that first trip that Israel was definitely a “culinary destination” and we made a decision to help people experience Israel through their stomachs. We believe we were the first to offer culinary tours of Israel, but we are delighted that the idea has caught on and proliferated across North America. But still both North Americans and Israelis are shocked when we say we are on a culinary tour. They still think of Israel as only falafel and humus. They think of Israeli wine as the sickeningly sweet purple stuff of bygone Seders. In February 2008 we led our third Food for Thought tour, with 26 thoughtful, friendly, hungry participants!
We both feel a culinary trip to Israel must be about more than food, or it turns into a hedonistic orgy of eating with no depth or spiritual meaning. We also study Biblical and Talmudic texts on the connection between food and soul. We want people to understand the deep connection between the land, the people, the Book, and the food. But the most important aspect of any culinary tour—really any tour of Israel at all— is the people. The stories, the connections, and the personal aspect of life in Israel turn the food into “background music” of the whole experience.
Here are some photos of that third Food for Thought. We hope you can see how delicious the trip was!
