Some Like It Hot. Israelis Like It Hotter

Israeli cuisine doesn’t whisper. It yells. Much like the way Israelis communicate, in high decibels, the noisy reality has migrated from the street to the plate with intense flavors pumping up the volume.

But how did the Israeli diner get so addicted to extremely intense flavors, and how is this related to the masochistic pleasure of eating spicy food?

More often than not, Israeli cuisine expresses our unfulfilled longing for a place. True story: The (Romanian) mother-in-law of one of the authors of this article was invited to dinner at a friend’s house (of Russian descent). She decided to prepare a dish that she first encountered in her 60s: spicy fish (aka Hraime). Since she had never made this dish before, she used an online recipe that included ingredients she had never used before, like coriander seed, harissa and spicy green pepper.

That evening, of course, the purists found the fish not spicy enough, whether because the cook wanted to be considerate of the other guests, or because she wasn’t used to pouring in so much spicy pepper, or because one of the guests suffers from heartburn. All the same, the myth of Mizrahi spiciness was well on display.

Who doesn’t have at least one Israeli friend who loads every dish with black pepper even before they taste it? In Israel, spice is something you add instantly, an ostensibly minor ingredient that actually contains deep significance. Unlike certain Indian, Szechuan, Thai and Mexican cooking, which is based on 50 shades of spice, Israeli cuisine isn’t based on spiciness but rather the final product – fire in your mouth.

How did spiciness become a compulsory Israeli value when most other Jewish cuisines (excluding Libyan and sometimes Tunisian) don’t emphasize spicy dishes, and Palestinian and Levantine cooking isn’t particularly spicy? The answer, it seems, lies in the combustible combination of toxic masculinity, ethnicity, militarism and indigenous authenticity.

Before we take a deep dive into the red sauce of the hraime spicy fish, it’s worth mentioning that spicy food is a relatively recent global phenomenon. The chili pepper isn’t native to Asia, Europe, Africa or Australia (nor are tomatoes or potatoes).

In her book “Chillies: A Global History,” food scholar Heather Arndt Anderson details how the Portuguese imported spicy pepper from South America to provide it to the aristocracy in Goa, India. From there it would spread to Asia and Africa in the 18th century. Even the sweet red pepper, from which we get paprika, was only cultivated in Hungary in the 19th century.

In recent decades, the immigrant societies of the New World have been flooded by spice. A recent study in the United States found that 80 percent of adult consumers prefer their food spicy or seasoned. Over the past half century, per capita spice consumption has tripled in the United States.

Pleasant on the palate

Spiciness is a metaphor for the Israeli condition. It goes beyond ethnicity and even predates the establishment of the state. In 1929, Itamar Ben-Avi, the first native-Hebrew speaker, described the ritual of buying falafel:

“Then I heard a Mizrahi voice suddenly thunder: Falafel! Falafel! That’s the word. I trembled as I bought a pita containing delicious falafel from his hands for a small price, given my empty wallet.

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“Oh, how I savored the clear and fresh morning air, the sweet rays of sunshine rising from the east in the early morn. How I devoured, chewed and swallowed the falafel in a Mizrahi fervor. Because only the Arabs, and their Jewish cousins, the Sephardim, would relish such a spicy dish, so pleasant on the palate. And wishing to share with the reader the delicacies that I relish, I will present to you, on a regular basis, spicy Hebrew exoticisms.”

The anthropologist Nir Avieli claims that the Israeli culinary sphere has undergone “Mizrahization” (a play on the word mizrahi, which means an eastern or oriental Jew). That is, dishes associated with Palestinians and Jews from the Arab world have become hegemonic – in the army, at diplomatic events and at street stalls.

Mizrahi food, which to the Israeli imagination is considered intense and spicy, has become the norm. Even Israeli food popular around the world is a variation on Mizrahi cuisine. If nativism and belonging are the ultimate desires, the Jews who have settled the land have become native through food. They normalize their existence through their cooking.

The yearning for spicy food only intensified once the State of Israel was established in 1948. In 1957, as part of Israel’s 10th anniversary celebrations, (Ashkenazi) playwright and songwriter Dan Almagor captured the Israeli desire for sensory authenticity via the old-new dish that excited Itamar Ben-Avi. Almagor’s “The Falafel Song” is one of the most controversial songs in Israeli popular culture.

Not only does it definitively link pita bread with the national dish, it reverses the social and symbolic hierarchical relationship between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi culture. The song declares the superiority of Yemenite falafel “with lots and lots of spice” over its Ashkenazi counterpart. “The funniest thing, Almighty God, is falafel made by Ashkenazim!” Contemporary Israeli cuisine is a continuation of the witty song by other means.

Mizrahi spiciness, even if imagined, is very real. Even if the dishes weren’t so spicy to begin with, they’re perceived as such due to their rich seasoning. From there, it was a short step for the fantasy of Mizrahi cooking to give rise to a reverse social hierarchy. It was part of an entire mythological construct about the generosity and quantity of Mizrahi cooking, the comforting soul food of the Mizrahi grandmother and of intense and exciting flavors that contrasted with the dullness and blandness of Ashkenazi cooking – and the freshness of the ingredients compared to defrosted Ashkenazi dishes. It’s an entirely romanticized vision based on pure Orientalism.

Spicy Judaism

Zionism was a revolutionary and transformative project from its inception: the ingathering of the exiles, the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language and, above all, the creation of a “new Jew” emblematic of newly acquired sovereignty. In his speech to the Second Zionist Congress in Basel in 1898, Max Nordau referred to it as “muscular Judaism.”

Nordau revived this other type of Jew, embodying an emotional and physical power without which the Zionist project was destined to fail. Muscular Judaism wished to return to the body and ennoble it.

“In crowded Jewish quarters, deprived of air and sunshine, our bodies became weak. ... Let us therefore re-establish the bonds with our ancient past; let us again be wide of body, staunch and strong of gaze.”

Nordau’s brilliant formulation won immediate favor with Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the father of religious Zionism, who tied spiritual redemption to the physical one: “Our return will succeed only if it is – with all its splendid spirituality – also a physical return that produces healthy blood, healthy flesh, mighty solid bodies, a fiery spirit radiating over powerful muscles. With the strength of holy flesh, the weakened soul will shine, reminiscent of the physical resurrection” (translated by Bezalel Naor).

Today we are coming full circle. Having cast out the subservient and intellectual Diaspora Jew wasting his days bent over his books, the Israeli Jew lords over the barbecue and has a new menu. There is no denying that the Israeli culinary world has been quietly revolutionized over the past few decades. Many restaurants provide a dish of spicy condiments (pickles or some kind of spicy sauce) at each table prior to the main meal. Schug, chile and amba – a mango pickle made with fenugreek – are customary condiments at both popular and fine dining establishments.

Israeli cooking pushes the boundaries of Orientalist romanticism’s comfort zone. While the Orientalization of food prioritizes North African and Arab dishes over Ashkenazi cuisine, the search for “local flavors” completes the process of creating a local indigenous identity. Israeliness is a combination of brazen character and brazen taste – breaking through cultural boundaries.

Israeli cuisine perfectly expresses the troubled desire for place. Israeli food is an expression of accommodation to the region. Even if Israeli Jews don’t speak the language of their neighbors, even if they fight them and occupy them, they learn to eat like them and even surpass them by exaggerating the spice content of each dish.

Spiciness is an expression of the traits befitting a Sabra, or native-born Israeli: ruggedness, improvisation, assertiveness, initiative, straightforwardness, testosterone, heroism and a yearning for belonging. Eating spicy food is a rite of initiation to Israeli toughness, and it is not for nothing that eating spicy food has taken on a competitive nature and serves as a military baptism of fire. (What is more Israeli than cottage cheese and spicy hot schug at an army mess hall?)

Among teenagers, mass-produced snacks, innovative in their flavor and spiciness, contribute to raising the bar for stimulation: spicy sour Doritos, extra-spicy McNuggets and Freestyle Bissli, which were all unimaginable only a generation ago.

Cheap thrill

In his book “A Land of Milk and Hummus: A Study of Israeli Culinary Culture,” Yahil Zaban identifies spiciness as an expression of otherness and violence in Israeli society: “In Israel, spiciness is a character in a B movie. In these movies, the desired traits are being a man of the people, being Mizrahi and masculine, and these are acquired or reinforced by eating spicy food. ... Spicy food is a cheap thrill. Those who eat spicy food understand nothing but power.”

Zaban notes that spiciness is originally a characteristic of proletarian food, utilized to cover up the poor quality of the dish. In some respects, people don’t only prefer to eat spicy food, but in fact have no choice, so necessity is interpreted as a preference. In the words of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, spiciness is a “taste of necessity.”

Indeed, spiciness is a unifying flavor that defines a broad social common denominator. Mizrahim who eat spicy food confirm their Mizrahiness, but even Ashkenazim who eat spicy food reaffirm their nativeness. The sadomasochistic struggle between the diner and their dish reflects the war of the Jews among themselves, and the Israeli settlers’ struggle against their rival natives (the Palestinians). In the same way that the State of Israel swallows Arab space, Israelis devour what to them symbolizes the Arab other. Spicy food is a fantasy of imagined indigeneity.

Eitan Vanunu, the former chef of the Hehalutzim Shalosh restaurant in Tel Aviv, suggests that “if you eat spicy food, you won’t get depressed.” Vanunu positions Israeli cuisine as the cuisine of depression-prone adolescents.

“The Jew who arrived in Israel is purportedly reborn. He needs to grow muscles to stand on his own two feet, but when he becomes a teenager he yells, ‘Look at me, I’m special.’ This shout is audible throughout Israeli cooking: self-discovery through cilantro, lemon and chili. There’s a term among chefs: ‘How’s the food?’ ‘It shouts.’ That’s considered a compliment. After all, we lack any cultural mainstays. Muscles are our bread and butter.”

Does the desire for spicy food have an ethnic origin? If so, the answer lies with hraime from Tripoli in Libya. In his book “Shem Mishpaha” (Family Name), Rino Tzror penned a homily to spice:

“For it is known that the palate of Libyans relishes spice, harr in the language of our parents, spicy hot. Especially the fiery red kind. Relishes. And not fearing the flames, it chases after the fire.” Speaking to Haaretz, he explained further: “Obviously spice is part of this place, and there are groups that went with spiciness to feel part of this place. But you won’t see that anymore today. It’s already native. Spicy food is an element of our social cohesiveness. A collective dish. Ultimately it’s you and the spice. There’s a dialogue with this thing. We don’t have a dialogue with schnitzel. Spiciness creates a response and generates discourse here. At the end of the day, it’s we who speak to spiciness and play with it. It defeats us and we defeat it back. It’s an important part of this place.”

In human sensorial experience, spicy food is meant to balance out fat, but often the balance is itself out of balance. If it lacks nuance and the ability to be attentive to the variety of spicy flavors – the aim is quantitative, not qualitative.

Elisha Baskin, food researcher and owner of Le Panier d’Elisha, offers a psychological explanation: “Spiciness takes you to the extremes. In Israel, there’s no sensory regulation, no dosing. Food introduces sensory titillation into everyday life. As Israelis, we are never satiated so we have to go to extremes to feel something. We grew up into this dulling of the senses, and it motivates us to be thrill seekers. Because of this dulling, the food in Israel is rich, bordering on excessive, which is why it excites and provokes emotion. It’s a kind of disorder.”

So the answer to what constitutes Israeli food lies in its form, not in its content – not in what we eat but in the social construction and the cultural amplitude of what we eat. Spicy food is popular in Israel because Israeliness is a combination of the traits that make taming spice possible – controlling it, defeating it and relishing it. Spiciness blends the joy of life with the fear of being burned.

“When you eat hraime and pilpelchuma, Tzror says, “you have to defeat it. It’s passion and deathly fear. That’s the wavelength of the Israeli experience. Fear of the other.”

It is common knowledge that spiciness is not a flavor but a burning pain signal. Vanunu summarizes the meaning of this notion: “Getting burned makes you potent. The point of loading up on spice is to feel powerful, vital and capable. It increases your appetite. Let me go! Let me be free with my food. You put the music on, fist-pump the sky and everything is sweet. And it works. It embarrasses me, but in the United States, they love it.”

Having cast out the subservient and intellectual Diaspora Jew wasting his days bent over his books, the Israeli Jew lords it over the barbecue and has a new menu.