Food Fight
Forget politics, forget territorial disputes, forget judicial reforms. The region’s real battleground? The cherished chickpea, of course. From our archives (2017)
Originally aired in 2017
Food, it turns out, is a serious business. And as we recently came to appreciate, it can lead folks to embark on all kinds of unlikely crusades. In today’s episode we tell two stories, from almost diametrically opposed perspectives, about the ways in which recognition and pride matter, especially when it comes to what we eat and drink. The first, about a Jerusalemite’s quirky liquid obsession, couldn’t be more local, whereas the second is an outsider’s take – the impressions of a visiting radio icon on her first trip to the region.
In the prologue: Chocolate-Covered Raisins, Mishy Harman goes back to his rowdy tenth grade English class, where he learned more about shelling, blasting and precision artillery, than grammar, vocab and reading comprehension.
Some kids dream of going to the moon. Others want to become millionaires. But as we discover in Act One: The Pitcher, growing up, Ariel Harpaz had a seemingly more attainable goal in mind: to get his picture up on the wall of Pinati, a popular hummus joint in downtown Jerusalem. Many years later, he enlisted his friends Mishy Harman and Shai Satran to help him guarantee that what he calls the, “most important achievement” of his life – introducing the concept of a pitcher of Kool-Aid to Pinati – is never forgotten.
As part of our first ever collaboration with the Peabody Award winning podcast, The Kitchen Sisters, in Act Two: Operation Hummus, Davia Nelson came to the region to discover its “hidden kitchens.” What started off as a straightforward reporting assignment about the Israeli-Lebanese ‘hummus wars,’ quickly turned into a beautiful meditation on food, culture, war and peace. For the Kitchen Sisters’ longer version of the story, click here.
The original music in “The Pitcher” was composed and performed by Ari Jacob. The final song, “Hummus Metamtem” (or “Hummus Makes You Stupid“), is by Yehoshua Sofer (Licensed by Israel Story through Acum). The episode also features music by Yochai Maital, Kevin MacLeod, Bachar Mar-Khalife, Ibrahim Maalouf, Arthur Oskan and Hadag Nahash.
The Times of Israel Community.