Thursday morning, Haifa

The shiny machines of the computerized production line of the chocolate spread Hashahar Ha'oleh (The Rising Dawn) are mute. "For the next few days we will be doing renovations and cleaning, following the peak period of Pesach," explains Akiva Weitz, the company's marketing director. Every year, for about two months around the holiday, the sales of the spread double. The reason, of course, is the classic Pesach combo - matza with chocolate.

"There's no way around it, it's one of those delicious combinations, and it's also an experience that brings back childhood memories and is appropriate for a family holiday like Pesach," Weitz says, smiling. "Besides that, what can you spread on matza, anyway?"

Elite instant coffee. Tnuva cottage cheese. Osem Bamba. Yotvata choco. Maybe Ice Aroma. Like all these products that seem to have a first name and a surname, Shokolad Hashahar, as the public calls it, is one of those Israeli foods that have no equivalent anywhere else on earth and especially not in India. Or in South America. Or anywhere else where

Israelis are longing for a reminder of a taste of home, of childhood, of themselves.

The factory is a Romanian invention. It was established by six brothers and two sisters from the Weidberg family - Yaakov, Shaul, Haim, Alter, Yeshayahu, Shabtai, Rivka and Elka - who immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s from Romania. The family settled in a hut in Kiryat Ata, near Haifa, which the eldest sibling, Yaakov, had organized ahead of their arrival. Among the make-work jobs they did, a few of the siblings specialized in the production of sweets at the Davidovich factory in the Ir Ganin neighborhood.

"They were a poor family and were looking for a way to make a living," says Moshe Weidberg, Alter's son, who today heads the factory together with others from the family's second generation.

In the 1940s the brothers decided to join forces. They found an investor, bought a plot of land in the industrial zone of Haifa Bay and in 1949 opened the factory. At first they made a range of sweets. "They started with candies, chocolate substitutes and boxes of chocolates," Weidberg continues. "But what really caught on was the chocolate spread."

When candy imports increased in the 1980s, they decided to abandon most of their products and concentrate on the main thing. Today the plant, which has 50 employees on two production lines, also makes baking chocolate and cocoa powder, but mainly chocolate spread. It comes in three flavors: classic dairy, parve and nuts. "They are a traditionalist, modest family," says Weitz, who is also connected to the family, by marriage. "They did not want to be an empire and they are not looking for gimmicks."

The factory produces many tons of chocolate spread a month. Sales figures place it first in the chocolate spread market in Israel, ahead of competitors such as Elite and Ferraro. The company also exports goods to Australia, Europe and America. "In the United States our main competition is from peanut butter," Weitz notes. "But recently there is an increased demand there for substitutes, because it turns out that many children are allergic to nuts." Whereas in Israel the absolute majority remains faithful to the classic flavor, in Europe, the homeland of chocolate spread, they like the nut-flavored product. According to Weitz, both Israelis and Europeans are missing out. "The bitter parve one is the spread for true chocolate lovers," he says.