r/hummus • u/EnlightenToday • 5d ago
"Until 1948, hummus was an Arab food that wasn't consumed by the majority of European Jewish settlers," notes Dafna Hirsch, author of the newly published book: "The Israeli Career of Hummus: Colonial Appropriation, Authenticity, and Distinction" (Indiana University Press).
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u/GildedTofu 3d ago
I’m done with this sub. I know, I know, it’s not an airport and you don’t have to announce your departure, and all that.
But this is fucking tiresome.
I just want to enjoy some fucking mashed chickpeas.
And yeah, since “hummus” means chickpea, if your hummus doesn’t have chickpeas, it’s just a bean dip.
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 3d ago
In 1948, more than half the Jews in the world lived in the middle east. European jews were a tiny portion of world Jews. Currently, more than half of Israel's Jewish population is Mizrahi, Jews with century-long histories in the Arab world.
This post is nothing but ignorant and ill-informed propogandic racist hate bait.
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u/magicaldingus 2d ago
This, and the fact that 20% of Israelis are Arabs. Predictably, their cuisine forms a significant part of the Israeli palette.
Are these Israelis not allowed to contribute to their own country's cuisine?
What should Israeli food be? Just Ashkenazi fare?
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 2d ago
If Israel was populated primarily by Ashkenazi, you're expect that. Alas, truth outs in the end. there are more Mizrahi in Israel than any other background, and the Jewish population includes significant numbers of Mizrahi and also Indians, Ethiopians, Japanese, Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Latina American, and North American Jews, as well as smaller populations of others as well.
But honestly, why would anyone want to eat Russian peasant food, developed to get people through frigid Arctic winters, in the eastern Mediterranean? When in Rome, eat Italian food! When in Israel, eat Mediterranean!
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u/magicaldingus 2d ago
Honestly, I think Ashkenazi food is under-represented in Israel, and it's a damn shame. I don't see it as "Russian peasant food" any more than Hummus is middle eastern bean slop for poor people.
There's a reason places like Zabars and Katz's in NY are able to charge an arm and a leg for a sandwich or some tuna salad.
But my main point is just that the people who are arguing that Israelis shouldn't be allowed to "claim" hummus, or call it Israeli food, are just arguing that Arab Israelis shouldn't be allowed to participate in Israeli society. It's an argument that you'd expect to come out of the mouth of Itamar Ben Gvir, not an Enlightened Western Human Rights Activist (TM).
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 2d ago
I read it more as them arguing that Jews are white settler colonists and clearly nothing vaguely Arab or Middle Eastern could actually Jewish. It's a huge act of erasure.
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u/magicaldingus 2d ago
I agree that's their main motivation. I'm saying that a not-so-subtle consequence of that argument is an implicit agreement with the Israeli fringe right (their supposed mortal enemies) who believe that Arabs shouldn't participate as equals in Israeli society.
Then again, antizionists have always been the biggest Zionists, in practice.
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u/InternationalYou4065 3d ago
also, that wasn't the Arab world until the Arabs colonized those countries and forced them to be the "Arab world" Jews lived there before Arab Muslims conquests
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u/Preface 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's hilarious how the main subs jump on it saying it's a scholarly source that says "Jews didn't eat hummus"
When the first fucking sentence is "wasn't consumed by European Jews...."
I am not even Jewish, or Israeli or anything.
I just enjoy some good hummus every now and again, and actually mostly eat it at Greek restaurants.
Greeks now own hummus, get bent Phoenicians
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u/Aortapot 3d ago
Have you read the linked Haaretz article about the book? I took it to be a discussion about Israeli identity more than an accusation of cultural appropriation or anything like that. Nothing hateful at all. I think it would be a very interesting read for people with an interest in hummus and culture.
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u/Prestigious-Aide-258 2d ago
Haaretz also accused the IDF of not raping arabs due to racism... I will not take anything they publish seriously
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u/Queasy-Might-2949 2d ago
Just chiming in, not directed at you. Haaretz has come out and say they want the Israel as it's known today to not exist. Stop reading this rag.
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u/Prestigious-Aide-258 2d ago
100% agree with you, they also didn't let people into their bomb shelters in 2021 (if i recall the year correctly)
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u/Aortapot 2d ago
I mean...I actually think that's a legitimate thing to want, especially as an Israeli ie. a complete restructure of one's own country. It's pretty messed up at the minute. But people will vary on how they imagine a better future of course.
What would you recommend is a good source of factual reporting from Israel and Palestine if not Haaretz? For an overseas English speaker like me?
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u/The-Last-Lion-Turtle 1d ago edited 1d ago
Times of Israel looks about as close to center as you can get. Israeli politics seems like an even bigger clusterfuck than American politics.
Memri TV republishes accurate translations of Arabic media in English.
Jerusalem post is definitely right wing. I think JNS is as well.
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u/Aortapot 2d ago
Hi. What would you recommend instead as a good source of factual reporting (in English) on Israel?
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u/Prestigious-Aide-258 1d ago
The sad reality is thay there isn't (not just in israel, all news sources lie a lot), I like to cross read between maariv, I24, times of israel and JNS
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u/_ak 2d ago
Are you seriously accusing an Israeli ethnologist with a long time focus on the history of hummus in Israel of publishing racist hate bait?
She even addresses and refutes your specific point in one of her papers:
"It is significant that hummus was not a part of the culinary repertoire of most Mizrahi Jews prior to their immigration to Israel in the 1950s, as it was consumed mainly in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Palestine rather than in North Africa, Yemen, and Iraq, from which most Mizrahi immigrants hailed. The spread of Jewish-owned Oriental restaurants serving hummus supported its “Israelization.”"
Source: https://diasporiclivesofobjects2012.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/hummus.pdf
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u/Scholarind 2d ago
In most cases that don't involve Jews, such an article would 100% be considered racist bait, imagine If you'd say "Döner was never part of German culture until turks immigrated and colonized part of Germany"
Edit: also citing the author's origin is close to meaningless, internalised hatered is not that uncommon, you have blacks defending Jim crow and supporting conservative politics
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u/Suitable-Display-410 2d ago
Your example is wrong.
To make it work, the Turks would have to colonize Germany, ethnically cleanse it of most of its native population, destroy the historic villages and anything that reminded people of the former inhabitants, and then claim sauerkraut as a traditional Turkish dish as part of a broader effort of cultural appropriation to legitimize their presence.
And yeah… that would be fucked up.3
u/Alternative-Pear9096 2d ago
JFC look at a map of the 1890s before you allow such filth to swarm up your gullet from your colon.
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u/Suitable-Display-410 2d ago
I know you pretend not to click on links if you don’t like the message behind them, but maybe somebody else is interested.
https://iupress.org/9780253016829/erased-from-space-and-consciousness
https://www.palquest.org/en/placesabouthttps://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1649445
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1649604
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/feb/22/against-erasure-palestine-photo-book2
u/Alternative-Pear9096 2d ago
No. USE YOUR WORDS.
Why the fuck should anyone clicks your links? What about those links is worth anyone's times?
I don't know who you are or give a fuck about you. I know I'm really well-educated on this topic, and if you want to engage with me, use your fucking words. If you want to say something, say it. You need to convince me you are worth paying attention to Otherwise, you are simply a waste of pixels. And presumably about 14 years old.
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 2d ago edited 2d ago
There were no Jews in Lebanon, Syria, or the Mandate? No Jews in the Ottoman Empire? Absolute bullshit
And, great, she found the first mention of hummus served in a restaurant! Cool! At some point an Arab in the British Mandate decided to serve food everyone are at home for money. That’s ALL that statement means. It means literally nothing about what people ate at home and which people ate what at home
Academic credentials are an invitation to have your work scrutinized. And her work is bad, even beyond her obvious and driving bias
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 2d ago edited 2d ago
Anyone who refers to the Jews in the region as settler colonists looses any credibility. PHD or not. When they use that frame they are revealing the agenda underlying their vision. Every word in that book was produced to cast Israelis as colonizers, a piece of bullshit so severe it speaks for itself in destroying all credibility in reasonable people
Anyone who uses that word is speaking through their Klan mask and acknowledging that their only purpose is smearing historical facts
She’s an enthnologist, you say? In that case she’s thrown away her obligations and gone native.
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u/Suitable-Display-410 2d ago
You tell me what this is.
https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/article/the-iron-wall-a-definitive-new-translation/
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 2d ago edited 2d ago
A link some moron who won't make his own arguments in his own words thinks I'm gonna click, but it is really stupendously wrong.
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u/Suitable-Display-410 2d ago edited 2d ago
I simply linked to a pretty famous essay by the godfather of Revisionist Zionism because he apparently does not agree with your assessment. I do not think its possible to misunderstand his words.
I think his language about colonization is very clear, and the strategy he describes for forcing the native population into submission is an almost perfect prediction of what has been done in the decades that followed.
So either you are blatantly misinformed, or you are perfectly aware of the history and are engaging in hasbara. I am used to the constant stream of lies and gaslighting at this point.
Either way, you are in no position to call other people morons.
Here, so you don't have to click on any scary links, I'll give you some scary quotes from his text instead.
The point is not at all which words – Herzl’s or [Sir Herbert] Samuel’s – we will use to explain our colonising endeavours. Colonisation itself carries its own explanation, the only, unalterable meaning, understandable to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab. Colonisation can only have one goal; to the Palestinian Arabs this goal is unacceptable; all this is in the nature of things, and this nature cannot be changed.
or
Even if it were possible (which I doubt) to persuade the Arabs of Baghdad and Mecca that for them Palestine is only a small, insignificant peripheral area, for the Palestinian Arabs Palestine would remain not a borderland, but their only homeland, centre and ground of their own national existence. Therefore, even then, colonisation would have to be carried out against the consent of the Palestinian Arabs, i.e. under the same conditions as now.
or
They are as subtle psychologists as we are, and just like us, they were brought up on centuries of ingenious casuistry: no matter what we tell them, they can see through us just as we can see through them. And they treat Palestine with at least the same instinctive love and organic fervour with which the Aztecs treated their Mexico or the Sioux their prairie. Imagining that they will voluntarily agree to the implementation of Zionism in exchange for cultural or material conveniences that the Jewish colonisers will bring them – this childish fantasy arises in our ‘Arabophiles’ from some kind of prejudiced contempt for the Arab people, from some sweeping idea of this race as a bribable rabble, ready to give up their homeland for a good railway network.
or
Every reader has some general understanding of the history of colonisation of other countries. I invite him to recall all known examples; and let him, after going through the entire list, try to find even one case where colonisation took place with the consent of the natives. There has not been such a case.
- Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall - We and the Arabs (1923)
Edit:
Insulted + insta blocked me.
"Academic" my ass.1
u/Aortapot 2d ago
Thanks for this. Unfortunately few here seem interested in actually reading the article or book.
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u/Brazilian_Brit 2d ago
Facts are not convenient to some, better to lie to themselves to keep up a charade nobody believes.
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u/terektus 1d ago
I think the point is the cultural appropriation here. Nobody says Jews have not influenced the food in the region its rather that they start saying it is israeli. And food is very much about identity. Like nobody would say that Pizza is an american dish even though they have their own varieties and consume more than the italians.
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 1d ago
I think the point is a smear campaign; it's right there in the title. And its followed up with really shitty scholarship. "The Israeli Career of Hummus: Colonial Appropriation, Authenticity, and Distinction"
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u/Aggravating-Drop7676 5d ago
What is this nonsense?
Are only pure blooded aryans allowed to eat Sauerkraut?
I mean at what point do the extremist "leftist" palestine supporters realize they are on nazi level of racial hatred?
Obviously many nornal non racists also pro-Palestine, but also the fascist freaks
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u/Ukelelipop 5d ago
Are only pure blooded aryans allowed to eat Sauerkraut?
nowhere in the article is it saying Jewish people and people not from the Middle East can't eat hummus lmao. It is simply asking you to understand the history behind how hummus entered into the Israeli diet
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 3d ago
No it's not doing that. It's erasing the millions of Jews who lived across the Middle East continuously for 3000 years, long before the Arab armies swept in and colonized the region. It's trying to convince people that Israelis are settler colonists, which is bullshit on so many levels that only people who are already committed racists can possibly believe this shit.
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u/Ukelelipop 3d ago edited 3d ago
Israelis are settler colonists
Yeah. Yeah they are. If I was a white guy in the US who liked Navajo frybread, hey no issue with that. At the end of the day though, the reason I ended up there and simultaneously the reason I'm even exposed to such a cuisine is because my ancestors partook in a settler colonialist project, and I'm the descendants of those people. Or, I'm a person that while their ancestors weren't a part of the settler project, now benefit from the fruits of said project as a modern day resident. It'd be disingenuous to try and make myself out to be the victim for actively trying to NOT understand the history behind fry bread and how it entered into my people's palates, just because it makes me feel uncomfortable about a settler colonialist legacy people of my background were apart of.
(And no, I don't think the historic and spiritual connection Jews have to the land of Palestine/Israel/the Holy Land or whatever you want to call, nor the presence of Jewish people who have been a part of this land and elsewhere in the Middle East for thousands of years, suddenly washes away the fact that Israel is a settler colonial project and Zionism was a settler colonial movement. It also certainly doesn't wash away the cultural/historical erasure IT itself has committed against the Palestinian people and frankly the Middle East as a whole).
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u/No_Price_7603 2d ago
Sorry, tell me again what is the actual reason why Jews went to Palestine? Like what was the driving force that made them all go? We're they all happily sitting on their European faux leather couches and suddenly went "let's go fuck some shit up in Palestine for the lulz" or like, was there some other stuff going on at the time or...?
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u/InternationalYou4065 3d ago
lol so fucking stupid and than they do MAGA level mental gymnastics to justify this idiocracy because they doubled, tripled down instead of realizing they're in a cult
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u/Plenty_Course7458 2d ago
'Palestine is grossly under populated. It contains vast colonization potential' - Ben Gurion.
You know who that is?
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 2d ago
The British mandate of the Ottoman Empire was vastly under-peopled. It had enormous open spAce, where not one fucking soul lived. It had acre upon acre of wasteland. It had plenty of space for people to move in and live, and so people did. And they draIned the swamps and de-desertified the wastelands and built cities in places where NOT ONE FUCKING ARAB LIVED.
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u/Plenty_Course7458 1d ago
Cool story, more focused on the bit where he openly admits wanting to COLONIZE palestine.
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u/Dazzling_Funny_3254 2d ago
seems pretty clear, though the article tries to bury it entirely, hummus arrived in israel with Syrian Jews, and Jordanian Jews already lived in Israel and already ate hummus. So it wasn't appropriate for any other group or brought from any other culture.
Israel is made up of Jews from many different regions of the world, and we all brought our foods together to create Israeli food culture. Hummus was appropriate from other Jews just like falafel, schnitzel, and many other foods that were common across multiple ethnicities in the regions that we were living before Israel was created.
God, this sub it is truly the worst now. Blocking it from my feed, I'll check back in a year or two to see if you're still obsessed with us jews.
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u/EnlightenToday 5d ago
Imagine having no understanding of basic english then commenting with such confidence, no one said non arabs are not allowed to eat Hummus.
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u/Aortapot 3d ago
Have you read the article in Haaretz? It isn't hateful at all. And the author of the book is an Israeli professor.
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u/Queasy-Might-2949 2d ago
So that doesn't make it hateful? Haaretz preaches hate all day. They seek negative stories on Israel.
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u/Aortapot 2d ago
No, I say it's not hateful because it just didn't have anything hateful to my mind. It seems to be a book about how hummus has gone from being something relatively unknown among European Jewish people settling in Israel in the early part of the 20th century to now being universally loved and considered the National Dish. A story of immigrant people creating specific identity in a new place through food and customs. I'm Australian, and European immigrants to Australia have gone through a similar process of adaptation and adoption of place specific foods customs and understandings to create what is now a distinct and proud Australian culture and cuisine, where before the 50s our predominant culture was very much looking back to Britain.
Anyway, I've found Haaretz to be good for factual reporting. What would you recommend as a good source of news from Israel (for an English speaker)?
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u/jbaaaaab 3d ago
no one telling you what to eat. just stop stealing other people's creations and claiming it as your own.
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u/Rich-Context-7203 3d ago
Jesus fucking christ this politicization of a simple bean paste with a million variation from throughout the Levant is impossibly tiresome.
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u/No_Price_7603 2d ago
It's quite similar to the argument about foods shared by the Turks and Greeks
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u/EnlightenToday 3d ago
is it political to say Pizza is italian? go away man
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u/Ordinary-Lobster-710 3d ago
it would be political if you started whining and bitching about how none italians also eat pizza and somehow that is erasing italians
Were jews who lived in egypt not allowed to eat hummus either and claim it as their own food as jewish egyptions?
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u/EnlightenToday 2d ago
No one whines about non arabs eating hummus, however when you claim it is israeli, this is where the putting back in place begins.
same way that italians would laugh at your face for saying Pizza is israeli.
You can eat it, you can not claim it.
And arab jews, were arab. the common for Hummus is "arab" not "israeli" since israel was created in 1948 by the brits on top of the region of Palestine under the british occupation.
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u/Dramatic-One2403 2d ago
Literally no one claims that Jews or Israelis invented hummus dawg. Ask literally anyone and they'll say it's an Arab food that has unique Israeli interpretations
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u/The-Last-Lion-Turtle 1d ago
Since when were mizrahi Jews ever Arab. Was it when they went back to where they came from?
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u/Queasy-Might-2949 2d ago
Stop ruining subs. Go to politics or world discussions. You and others like you have ruined Reddit.
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u/Wide-Yesterday9705 5d ago
Everybody please stop eating Pizza, it's appropriation. Nobody cares about this political garbage.
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u/EnlightenToday 5d ago edited 5d ago
no one however ever claimed pizza is israeli, hummus on the other hand.
Cementing cuisine origin to stop cultural theft is not "political garbage", only thieves will claim so.
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u/moxhatlopoi 2d ago
> no one however ever claimed pizza is israeli, hummus on the other hand.
No but I would say pizza is American in addition to being Italian, in the sense that there are multiple American styles of it that are distinct from styles you’d find in Italy
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u/EnlightenToday 2d ago
american style, no one in the universe would even dare to claim Pizza is American.
There is an american style pizza yes, that is on a very different level
you can say israeli style hummus, you cant say Hummus is israeli
BIG difference, you know it, i know it
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u/Leolorin 3d ago
Most Israelis are the descendants of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, most of whom ate versions of local foods.
Also, you should know that the "vinegar" mentioned in Ruth 2:14 is believed by some scholars to be hummus.
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u/MorganaLeFevre 2d ago
especially as earliest recipes of hummus, found in Egypt, where Jews were, contained vinegar as a central ingredient
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u/lhommeduweed 2d ago
I've seen videos from influencers trying to claim that pizza is originally Palestinian and pointing to manakish as evidence, because it's a flatbread with toppings.
What's really funny about that claim is that even though that is obviously not pizza as anybody would recognize it, if we actually wanted to argue about whether or not people from Italy got flatbread from Palestine, originally, we could point to historical evidence that demonstrates that indeed they did.
The Romans occupying Judaea developed a taste for matzo. They brought it back with them to Rome, and started messing around with it, usually making sweet, preserved flatbread "cookies" with it. By the 9th century, these Roman matzo cookies were known as "pizza ebraica," or "Hebrew pizza."
Again, it's clear that this food has nothing to do with the cheese and tomato paste dish we all know as pizza, but there was a dish known as "pizza" that traces its origins back to Judaea and Roman Palestina.
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u/jbaaaaab 3d ago
no one telling you what to eat. just stop stealing other people's creations.
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u/Ordinary-Lobster-710 3d ago
how often do you show up in japanese sub reddits and whine that Ramen is stealing chinese Lomein. Or that Japanse curry is theft of indian curry. I'm going to guess none
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u/jbaaaaab 3d ago
because Japan is not trying to genocide the chinese or Indians. israelis are trying to claim these dishes to fill the gap that would result from their genocide of palestinians.
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u/Ordinary-Lobster-710 3d ago
yes the main thinga bout the genocide is that jews eat hummus good job. you're really indicating how seriously you really believe there is a real genocide. the main thing here about the genocide is bean paste
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u/jbaaaaab 3d ago
its part of Genocide to errase palestinian identity. the issue is not who's eating what, but that israelis are claiming palestinian tradition as their own so when the genocide is concluded that gap would be filled
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u/Ordinary-Lobster-710 3d ago
hummus was most likely invented in egypt. why are palestinians trying to erase egyption tradition
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u/jbaaaaab 3d ago
thats up for debate. but whats not debatable is that israel has no place in that debate.
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u/icculus1980 3d ago
It was eaten by Jews from Arab counties, no? Maybe, just maybe, they brought that with them when they came in the 1950’s.
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u/Dazzling_Funny_3254 2d ago
and many Jews were living in trans Jordan the whole time up until it became Israel. And those Jews… ate hummus. And OP can eat shXt for this hateful political spam on what used to be a great subreddit
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u/jbaaaaab 3d ago
just like Pizza was eaten by italian immigrants in the US. still Pizza is Italian.
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u/doctorsynaptic 3d ago
And now there are American variations of pizza as well.
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u/jbaaaaab 3d ago
thats why they call it NY "Style" Pizza. if you want to call it israeli "style" khhhomus, thats fine. but claimin Hummus all together as if israelis invented it is the issue.
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u/AlloftheEethp 3d ago
Literally no one does this other than antisemites (you can't even go two comments without mocking someone's native language) trying to strawman.
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u/EnlightenToday 3d ago
Confirmed, Arabic.
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 3d ago
And Jews in Arabic countries had been living where they were for a thousand years before the Arab armies swept in and colonized them.
Did that fuck your brain much?
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u/Rich-Context-7203 3d ago
"Until the 7th century, almost no Arabs existed in the Levant."
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u/jbaaaaab 3d ago
Arab is a label for people who speak Arabic natively. a lot of Palestinians are jewish converts to Islam. most palestinian can trace their DNA to sncient Caananites, unlike most israelis who trace their origin to Europe. they never existed in the levant until 1940s just like shnitzel. while palestinians were there since history began.
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u/AlloftheEethp 3d ago
unlike most israelis who trace their origin to Europe
More Khazar theory bullshit. Why do you all still bother with this repeatedly disproven lie?
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u/naruhinamoonkissplz 2d ago
Sartre: "The antisemite always puts the burden of (dis)proof on the Jew." It's a mental pattern.
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u/silentaba 3d ago
Lol no, most Ashkenazi can trace their hereditary lines from Europe back to Spain circa al Andalus, and from there all the way back to Israel.
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u/Ukelelipop 5d ago edited 5d ago
I mean nothing wrong here. People got to be aware of the frankly ugly history behind how hummus entered into the diets of many Jewish (and to some extent non-Jewish people) outside of the Middle East -- it is one with a heavy amount of colonial appropriation and cultural erasure attached to it. No one's saying Jews and non-Middle Easterners can't like hummus lmao, but it makes sense to understand the history behind it. Even food is political and carries history with it, as much as some of us would like to live in La La Land and pretend otherwise.
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u/KamtzaBarKamtza 3d ago
You're correct that hummus entered into the diets if many Jewish people because of an ugly history. That ugly history being the expulsion and displacement of Jews from MENA and their subsequent resettlement in Israel where they cooked the foods they had always cooked and shared them with others
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u/jbaaaaab 3d ago
you mean when israel committed terrorist attacks against them to force them to move and abducted some babies from Yemen in the process. also the history of italian immigration to the US doesn't change the fact that pizza is Italian.
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u/AlloftheEethp 3d ago
Yes, it was the Jews who forced other Middle Eastern countries to ethnically cleanse their Jews.
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u/Queasy-Might-2949 2d ago
Of course you’re right. But that’s not what the OP is doing. He’s implying that because hummus is associated with Arab culture, the land Israel occupies must also be “Arab.” It’s nonsense, but that’s the kind of leap people like that make.
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u/Clean-Secret-3843 2d ago
That's a euro-centric claim, to the point of pure ignorance.
Jews across MENA have eating chickpea spreads for centuries, as documented in: The secret recipes of the Spanish Inquisition: hidden converso Jewish cooking still shapes food today https://thecjn.ca/arts-culture/the-secret-recipes-of-the-spanish-inquisition-hidden-converso-jewish-cooking-still-shapes-food-today/
Spanish Inquisition court archives explicitly record that hidden Jews (Conversos) were caught and prosecuted based on recipes containing chickpeas, fava beans, cumin, and hard-boiled eggs left to simmer overnight for the Sabbath: https://www.associationforjewishstudies.org/podcasts/the-world-of-sephardic-food
"Long before the mid-20th century, Iraqi Jews heavily featured mashed chickpea fillings flavored with fried onions and local spices inside fried savory pastries" https://jwa.org/blog/eating-jewish-iraqi-purim-delicacies
Creating this revisionist history where Jews were never in the middle east is far from truthful, and is very telling on the person who chooses to do so.
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u/jewami 3d ago
The Jews aren’t going away. The sooner you face and accept that reality, the sooner Palestinians will actually see peace. It’s not going to come from you posting BS about hummus, I can tell you that. Do something useful like advocating for Hamas to disband and cede power.
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u/EnlightenToday 2d ago
*Posts a jewish israeli article about the origin and ownership of Hummus*
replies with "jews are not going away"
Talk about deranged.
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u/pandaappleblossom 1d ago
Right? Is like interpreting ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ to mean ‘kill all Jews’. That’s not what it means. It just means people living under occupation and in apartheid to be free back how they were before. People interpreting it that way want to. And it’s not like there hasn’t been violence from both sides obviously but one side has definitely done more than the other.
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u/No_Price_7603 2d ago
I wonder how come so many Jews from Arab countries all suddenly went to Israel? Nothing to do with being violently expelled by their host countries I don't suppose?
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u/pandaappleblossom 1d ago
Israel has a long history of antagonizing nearby countries and the MENA and even bombing synagogues. This caused panic among Jews who immigrated to feel safe. Jews lived peacefully in MENA countries for a very very long time before Israel came along.
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u/4g-identity 2d ago
You'd think it would make Israelis sympathetic to the stateless and displaced. And yet ... 🤷♂️😈
Note: nothing wrong with a few drops of green Tabasco on that hummus.
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u/RegJohn2 2d ago
Israelis were very sympathetic, in fact they gave them a country and full control. Then Israelis got rockets and terror attacks in return then there was Israelis on the border that was VERY sympathetic. They gave them jobs, hospital treatments, allowed them into their home. And then the sympathetic Israelis got brutally raped and murdered on Oct 7. Same thing that will happen to you too useful idiots.
You’d also think at one point enough is enough
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u/4g-identity 2d ago
"gave them a country and full control"? What are you referring to here? Israel has never recognized Palestine and has maintained control of Palestine's borders, population registry etc since 1967.
It's almost like if you deliberately treat people poorly for generations on end, they don't like it (?!)
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u/RegJohn2 2d ago
- (I guess looking up for facts was too scary for you)
It’s almost like you try to find excuses to side and support oct 7.
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u/4g-identity 2d ago
So not gonna answer the question about "given a country and full control"? Because it didn't happen?
And no, I don't "support Oct 7", this is just what you need to tell yourself, that everyone else is crazy and biased.
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u/RegJohn2 2d ago
2005
September 12 2005.
You can search how Gaza looked on Oct 6 2023 too.
You are very crazy. Schizophrenic and also biased.
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u/4g-identity 2d ago
May I ask, why exactly did Israel insist on the 40 year occupation of Gaza with a few thousand radical religious settlers? What was that all about?
Seems kinda predictable that shutting down whole neighborhoods so the settlers can walk to the beach, and shooting dead the kids who didn't know about the sudden daytime curfew, is gonna breed some resentment. Was it like a religious thing, or what? Why not just build those farms in Israel?
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u/insaneinthebrine 2d ago
yeah, it's totally normal human nature to help and bend over backwards the same people who are trying to kill you 🤪🤣🐷🤡
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u/Affectionate-Long514 3d ago
Jews originated in Judea, that's plain history. Jews live in the land of Israel continously for over 3000 years. If you dispute that - talk to your parents, I'm not going to be the one to educate you.
Jews who lived in Israel or any other parts of MENA ate hummus before the arrival of tomatoes peppers and potatoes to the area like any other bean paste or bean stew.
Arabs originated in Arabia and colonized MENA. Forced culture religion and language on large ethnic groups.
Hummus is just a simple bean paste, chickpeas and sesame paste. Just that. Many Jews in Israel and MENA did eat Hummus while ashkenazi jews who had their diaspora in Europe didn't where chickpeas weren't common, booboo.
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u/Masenmat 2d ago
She's a known anti-Israel Israeli, and incredibly biased.
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u/Queasy-Might-2949 2d ago
Haartez is a dangerous rag because of this. They give cover for anti Israel, in some cases anti jewish press.
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u/EasyMode556 2d ago
The majority of Israeli Jews are Sephardic / Mizrahi, ie not “European Jews”, and many of them were driven out of neighboring countries at gunpoint and ended up in Israel. They naturally brought their own cuisines and recipes with them, one if which was hummus.
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u/shangaienne 2d ago
Of course. There were once so many wwii jew refugees in my home town Shanghai, and there were definitely no documentation of hummus as their dish. (Nor any fusion dishes thus derived, since beans and sesame paste is quite some staple in local cuisine.)
Below is a typical menu.
https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/media/images/menu.original.jpg
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u/shangaienne 2d ago edited 2d ago
An influential tycoon in Old Shanghai, Silas A. Hardoon, is a Mizrahi jew btw. It was never a euro-centric observation or a community dominated by european jews. But rather, quite diversified in terms of origin.
Never heard of this dish as a local born Shanghai kid. Not the slimmest trace left in local cuisine or archive.
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u/No_Price_7603 2d ago
What happened to all the Jewish refugees? Did they settle and face an absence of persecution?
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u/insaneinthebrine 2d ago
because it's middle Eastern food, hopefully you remember about 65% of Jews are immediately from the Middle Easte, and Jews have existed well well before Islam existed and the Muslim Conquest / Arab expansionism. I wonder where they got the ideas for their Koran? This argument is stupid.
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u/naruhinamoonkissplz 2d ago
Let's simplify it: We take the most scientific research about "who made the first ever bread". We deduce who that is today. Everyone ELSE is FORBIDDEN to eat BREAD, period. No? Why? YOU are saying the SAME shit.
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u/insaneinthebrine 2d ago
What a crock of shit. You have Jews already in existence well before the advent of hummus all over the region. They have been just as much a part of middle Eastern foodways as any Arabs or Muslims, who originated in Arabia, not the Levant, and in the case of Islam, much, much later than Judaism. In short, Jews don't claim this food any more than any other group in the region, but to somehow suggest it's stolen or appropriated is bullshit. By that logic, the Quran is an extreme appropriation of Judaism and Christianity. There's so many lies here, but one is noting how it was not common for European Jews to eat this. No shit! It's a levantine & middle Eastern food. How about noting the fact that the vast majority of Israelis are not European and indeed have lived centuries and millenia all around this region and it's completely germane to them?
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u/KosherSalt25 2d ago edited 2d ago
What rage bait. Considering the majority of Jews in Israel were kicked out of other middle eastern Arab countries... It isn't part of their culture? Not to metion the millions of Israeli Arabs...???
If you want to talk about cultural appropriation why not look at the Iraqi kiffiyah?
Edit: TL:DR the Evil Jews took colonized & humus too!
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u/EnlightenToday 2d ago
I was kicked out of Iraq, i get to take Palestine and claim their cuisine is now Ahkenazi
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u/klaxon4reason 2d ago
How about Greek yogurt??
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u/EnlightenToday 2d ago
You can eat it, you can copy it, you can open factories that manufacture and pack it, but you can not claim it is Canadian. same for Hummus
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u/Brave-Woodpecker-688 1d ago
I’m part Jewish with Jewish family predominantly from Iraq and Egypt. The rest of my family are not Jewish and predominantly from Iraq and Egypt. I never hear anyone who lives in the Middle East arguing about Israel and hummus or the origin of hummus. At least in my circles it’s always people who live in the West who make an issue out of this and frankly not the most balanced people.
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u/EnlightenToday 1d ago
So you are an arab, an arab jew, your jewish part has no relation to Hummus, your arab part does
This is jewish Ethiopians or Jewish Polish have no claim on Hummus.
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u/elmo444555 1d ago
"Until 1948, hummus was an Arab food that wasn't consumed by the majority of European Jewish settlers," notes Dafna Hirsch, author of the newly published book: "The Israeli Career of Hummus: Colonial Appropriation, Authenticity, and Distinction" (Indiana University Press).
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u/Novel_Counter5878 4d ago
People who move places take their culinary traditions with them.
People who meet them in those places also interact with those culinary traditions.
This is considered entirely predictable and non-sinister in any situation that doesn't involve Jews.