Read it and weep, people. Here I am in The Atlantic, holding forth on one of my favorite topics: chicken shnitzel.
My contention is, and has been on many occasions, that chicken shnitzel is the authentic Israeli cuisine because it is the only notable dish invented by Jews in Israel that’s culturally accessible to all of us, from all our different backgrounds. More than just an adaptation of a Mitteleuropan food to Middle Eastern reality (most of us don’t eat pork, and veal was cost prohibitive in this poor country), chicken shnitzel is an innovative and daring use of chicken, bread crumbs and frying oil.
And how we love it! We Israelis so love chicken shnitzel that, somehow through affection or laziness, “skinless, boneless chicken breast” was renamed “shnitzel” in Hebrew. That’s right, if you walk into a butcher or supermarket in Israel and want to buy some boneless, skinless chicken breast, you’ll need to ask for “shnitzels.”
Falafel and hummus are both wonderful foods and I love them, but they are regional Levantine fare that belong to a deeper shared cultural heritage of the entire eastern Mediterranean. By no means are they Arab foods: more accurately, Arabic-speakers today have inherited falafel and hummus by virtue of having lived in this region for a millennium and a half, but we Jews are as much a part of that tradition as anyone else.
Update: the question has been taken up in the Jewish Chronicle, which means another mention for me.
Falafel traces its roots, supposedly, to the Copts, an early Christian sect living in Egypt. Of course, they made it with fava beans. Unfortunately, I’m writing a paper this semester about the sociological implications of the growth of the Israeli-owned falafel industry in Manhattan.
The Copts still exist and are I think 10-15% of the population in Egypt. They are the indigenous, authentic Egyptians.
B”H
I heard one opinion recently that when Ruth and Boaz have bread and vinegar (hometz) (Ruth 2:14), it’s actually bread and humous, if one pronounces the tzadi according early sources of letter pronunciation (hard ss), like that of Rav Sa’adia Ga’on.
Balashon also discusses hometz and hummus (don’t miss the comments).