Performing identity through food and music, the case of Iranian Jews in israel

• In Event: Performing Identity

Abstract

The consumption of Persian music among Iranian Jews in Israel is often intertwined with the dynamics of the kitchenspace, the ritual and gendered space of cultural and social production where food is prepared and consumed. In a diasporic society like Israel where different cultures compete to be codified through ritual practice, the music and food consumed at religious celebrations officiated at home like erev Shabat and Pesach blur the lines between public and private selves. However, studies on the multi-sensorial dimension of such celebrations and its impact on the experience of Jewishness and Iranianness are scarce, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of this liminal space of expression and the interactions between food and music. In this paper I demonstrate that these gatherings enable the negotiation and display of multiple aspects of identity, as Iranian Jews find a sense of community in the act of remembering performed through sensorial stimulation and the consumption of cultural symbols. Providing ethnographic evidence from fieldwork conducted in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv throughout 2023 analysed through the lenses of ethnomusicology and anthropology of food, I describe a multi-sensorial kitchenspace that simultaneously reinforces and is created by gender roles, providing women with power and agency as the bearers of cultural tradition. In doing so, I argue that in Israel, whose national identity is defined by ethno-religious belonging, these rituals assume further importance as liminal sites of counterpublic citizenship, as the sensorially elicited images of an imagined homeland inform alternative modes of being Jewish and Israeli.

Author

• Edoardo Marcarini, SOAS, University of London