VISITING SCHOLAR FEATURE
Maisa’s Kosher Kitchen
How one woman’s restaurant reveals the intersections of ethnicity, militarism, and nationalism at play in culinary tourism By Lindsey Pullum
M
16
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies - Georgetown University
Image credits: Lindsey Pullum; Maisa's restaurant website
aisa* has turned her modThe relationship between the est home on her sleepy resiDruze people, an ethnic and religious dential street into the most minority of Israel (non-Jewish, nonpopular eatery in the Israeli Druze vilMuslim, Arab), and Israel is often told lage of Daliyat al-Carmel. To get there, with definitive simplicity, but upon tourists take the 672 road out of Israel’s closer investigation Israeli Druze are port city, Haifa, and climb the mouncaught between colonial subjectivities tain north before turning off the main that underpin Israeli society. Since Isroad that leads to the famous Druze rael’s statehood, funding for tourism Saturday Market. Maisa's restaurant is development was granted to “good” part food stop, part cultural museum. minorities, like Druze and Bedouin With a long, bricked parking lot for communities, who demonstrated 40-passenger buses, the neighborhood substantial allegiance to the Israeli transforms daily into a small tourist state. Original efforts to draw tourhub. As you walk in, the enlarged porists to Druze villages hinged on food trait of the late Druze spiritual leader markets and Druze cuisine, as certain Sheikh Amin Tarif hangs directly in Arab-Palestinian spaces for consumfront of the open doors. The coffee ing food were deemed too dangerous stand garners much attention from (physically and ideologically). But by tourists with fabric designed with Isthe mid-1990s—a period of peace raeli flags draped down from a window following the Oslo Accords—Musledge. The fabric is held up by a brass lim and Christian Arab villages were menorah and a miniature metal tank, becoming hubs of Jewish leisure and while a significantly smaller Druze tourism. This shift left Druze to redeflag is off to the side. Displayed with fine and distinguish themselves from prominence next to the Israeli flag fabthe now newly accessible spaces of ric is a certificate of kosher status, imArab food tourism. portant for any Jew who might adhere Druze women now find themselves Top: A display at Maisa's kitchen meant to symbolize to kosher food laws. These displays will Druze brotherhood and patriotism to the state of Israel; operating within this Arab-Israeli soon fade from tourists’ attention once Bottom: Visitors to the restaurant serve themselves discourse of difference, in addition to the food is served, but for the time be- family style navigating the internal norms about ing, their function is unambiguous. The the role of women in Druze society. stand encapsulates the dominant narrative of brotherhood and patrio- Touring Druze villages, specifically for food, opens up an avenue for tism told about a sect within Israel’s Arab minority. Druze women to perform Israeli nationalism that combines Druze cuisine and culture with Kosher cuisine and Jewish culture. Druze women’s generational knowledge of cooking Druze food makes them *Maisa is a pseudonym being used to protect the identity of the particularly well equipped to create new culinary tourism experiences. restaurant owner, per IRB protocol. In the largest Druze village of Israel, Maisa has the only female-
