A Recipe for Understanding
Grand Challenge Seminar students explore history and culture through food
The long, bright kitchen is alive with noise and activity: onions are chopped into fine crescents, piled into a pot and spiced with purple grains of sumac; labaneh, a creamy strained yogurt, is rolled into balls and dusted with green zaatar spice and small black nigella seeds; chicken poaches on a stove with bay leaf and cardamom. Monitoring it all is . He strides between the cooks, checking their work, instructing as necessary.
This is not the back end of a restaurant. This is the first-floor kitchen of 好色先生TV鈥檚 Fifth and Clyde Residence Hall, and the cooks are first-year students enrolled in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences鈥� Palestinian and Israeli Food Cultures Grand Challenge Seminar.
Co-taught by Michal Friedman, Jack Buncher Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of History, and Nevine Abraham, assistant teaching professor of Arabic studies in the Department of Modern Languages, the class filters Palestinian and Israeli history, culture and conflict through the lens of food. Topics range from regional and culinary history to gender roles in Israeli and Palestinian communities to the ways displacement and military occupation affect the production of produce.
Working with chefs and food scholars is a vital ingredient. This year鈥檚 guests were , a scholar and cook of Canadian-Israeli heritage whose Mizrachi Food Project traces the anthropology of food specific to Middle Eastern and North African Jewish people, and Kattan, a Franco-Palestinian chef from Bethlehem whose new London restaurant, Akub, serves traditional Palestinian dishes with an innovative twist.
Food is Not Neutral
Israel/Palestine is a deeply fraught region with a complicated history and culture 鈥� when there is so much to say, why focus on food?
鈥淔ood is not neutral,鈥� Friedman said. 鈥淚t is a very rich and deep way of looking at Palestinian and Israeli identity and history.鈥�
From ingredients to origins to ownership, food can help decode the complexities of a region.
鈥淲e look at [鈥 different perspectives, how communities blend and impact each other and reshape their understanding of food and identity,鈥� Abraham said.
Before chefs visit campus, Friedman and Abraham work with students to prepare questions. Drafting questions ahead of time helps build students鈥� confidence, and crucially, prepares them to broach potentially sensitive or controversial topics in ways that are productive and nuanced.
And, of course, there is the cooking. As the first guest on campus, Nahman worked with the students to make bourekas, a Sephardi baked hand pie stuffed with cheese and spinach and topped with sesame seeds; fried eggplant served with tahini and pomegranate seeds; and saut茅ed tomatoes with garlic, cilantro, sea salt and chili flakes. The students also competed in a savory/sweet board challenge, during which they had to race to create the most appealing labaneh or tahina board using traditional Middle Eastern ingredients.
Friedman and Abraham believe that the chance to meet culinary celebrities and learn to cook from them is more than just a fun exercise.
鈥淲e hope this will be important to building students鈥� intercultural competence,鈥� Abraham said, 鈥渢o being aware of the different lenses and perspectives that these celebrities offer them [鈥 What they take from them is the importance of what food means to different groups.鈥�
Learning from Each Other
Friedman and Abraham鈥檚 strong rapport and intellectual partnership is evident from the moment the two step into a room. Although they were relative strangers specializing in different fields, they met in 2019 and quickly agreed on how to structure the course.
Friedman brings her knowledge of history, going back to the Middle Ages, moving into the migration of Jews across Europe, and finally the modern history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, to the course. Abraham provides the cultural and literary perspective, introducing novels and memoirs that help students understand the Arab and Jewish diasporas and how they contributed to today鈥檚 culinary culture. The two are at work on a research paper together.
鈥淲e are always learning from each other,鈥� Abraham said.
The professors鈥� parallel experiences growing up in the Middle East also lend an extra layer of nuance to the course. Abraham grew up in Egypt, Friedman in Israel, and the two experienced historical events, including the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, in ways that both intersected and diverged. They are able to bring these personal experiences into the classroom, explaining how pivotal moments in history were understood by people living them in the moment, on different sides of a border.
鈥淚t was important for us, on a topic that鈥檚 so fraught, that we have a Jewish and an Arab voice coteaching,鈥� Friedman said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 more powerful and more meaningful for students to have two instructors [from different backgrounds].鈥�
Students also appreciate this diversity of experience.
鈥淕rand Challenge Seminars are valuable because they give you different perspectives on issues that sometimes it feels like society is afraid of talking about,鈥� said Warisha Khan.
Fellow student Elizabeth McBride welcomed the opportunity to learn about a topic not often taught in U.S. high schools.
鈥淎s an American student, I never really had any knowledge of Palestinian history before the creation of Israel in 1948,鈥� McBride said.
Kitchen As Classroom
The students have finished preparing Kattan's menu and set it on serving platters on the long kitchen island: maqloubeh, lamb layered with eggplant, tomato and rice; musakhan, chicken on flatbread topped with caramelized onions and toasted pine nuts; labaneh balls rolled in spices; freekeh salad filled with herbs and pomegranate seeds; and silky homemade houmous studded with chickpeas, slivered almonds and lemony sumac.
They dig in, scooping up food with flatbread. The room swells with laugher and chatting, the atmosphere easy and happy. For all the course鈥檚 intensive and challenging subject matter, in this moment, everyone is experiencing the same thing: the chance to eat and talk, the special satisfaction that a good meal can offer.
