Breaking Bread (2020) - full transcript

I am Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel.

I'm a Muslim, I'm an Arab,

I'm an Israeli, I'm a Palestinian,

I'm a woman, I'm a scientist, I'm a cook.

I was the first Arab

to win Israel's MasterChef.

It caused a lot of happiness

in the Arabic society that here,

she out of 4,000 people

who applied to the show

did it, and she's one of us.

And it gave me some kind

of a power, a tool,

to use food in order to make

bridges between Jews and Arabs.

I'm making my audition dish,

the one that got me on

the first place to MasterChef.

It's very hard to be

an Arab living inside Israel,

because Palestinians

are considering you Israeli,

and you're not a hundred

percent Palestinian,

because you're living inside

the borders of Israel.

Israelis are looking at you

as if you're an Arab Palestinian,

and you'll never become equal,

and you'll never become Israeli.

You're just stuck in the middle...

and nobody's understanding

that being stuck in the middle

is the best thing.

Because you get to be this and that,

and enjoy both worlds.

If you're just a Jewish person

living in Tel Aviv,

or if you're just an Arab

living your own life in an isolated place,

your universe is very limited.

I get to live my village.

I get to pick up my olive tree

and make my own olive oil,

but I get to go to this super

cool restaurant in Tel Aviv.

My world is more amazing.

Even if you look at food,

when it's one colour,

it does not look good.

But when it's colourful, it pops out,

it's beautiful, it makes

you want to eat it.

Same with people.

When it's variety,

it's just better.

Your world is colourful.

You understand so many things,

and your spectrum

of understanding the world,

understanding the universe,

the people, the humanity, is better.

For me, it was very important

to do something with food,

that also makes a social change.

In 2015, I founded,

together with Arieh Rosen,

the A-Sham Festival.

It was the first Arabic food festival,

located in Haifa.

In the Festival,

we have a Jewish chef and an Arab chef,

together collaborating in order

to bring back to life

an extinct dish from the Arabic cuisine,

or it can be a dish

with a lot of meaning

in the Arabic culture.

Jewish chefs are paired

with Arab restaurants,

and Arab chefs are paired

with Jewish restaurants.

I believe that there is no room

for politics in the kitchen.

I give the restaurants a list

of dishes from the Levant

that are considered extinct

or they have a very important meaning.

Ali's dish is kishek.

The soup is named after

its key ingredient, "kishek."

These dried lumps of bulgur,

soaked with yogurt,

are some kind of food that is

preserved during the winter,

and then you can use it

when you have no yogurt,

to make yogurt soup.

Now listen, it's so funny...

because Syria's just, I don't know,

two hours from here?

But no. I have

to go to Belgium,

to buy kishek in Belgium

from a Syrian shop,

take it all the way with me to Israel,

to cook it here in my village,

and to taste it for the first time.

Why? Because of politics. Okay?

I told Ali over the phone, he started,

"Oh, maybe I should make carpaccio this,

and tabbouleh that."

And I said, "No, Ali,

can you make kishek?"

And he said, "Yes, sure...

but kishek? Are you sure?"

I said, "I'm positive.

Take the kishek,

because nobody knows how

to make kishek in this festival

from all the 70 chefs participating,

but you!"

As someone born as a Palestinian,

and lives here as an Israeli,

this stuff...

It makes you...

a lot of thinking.

It makes you a lot confused

from who you are,

who you want to be,

your identity.

Do you see the white windows to the right?

This is my grandmother's house.

When the kitchen windows are closed,

I know for sure that means

she'd never be at home.

And when it's open, you know that she is.

My family's considered to be

one of the oldest families in Akko,

and one of the royal

family that was in Akko.

The root of the family

is 300 years in Akko,

and we know that there's more!

You see that small island?

We would go swimming to there

and we got some lobsters.

And from there,

we'd swim to here, come back,

call her, she'd actually give us a big pot,

and she cooked it for us

and we continued to swim.

No one almost,

has an opportunity like that.

And the children that come from Akko,

we have this unique

relationship with the sea.

I see myself as a person, as a human being,

who cooks and is inspired

by Arabic cuisine and Palestinian cuisine,

and shows it and shares it

with the Israeli society.

I decided to be

one of the people that can lead the field

in the history about the cuisine of Akko.

To bring old dishes that were forgotten,

and serve it in our day.

Akkoian cuisine depends

90 percent about fish.

After university, I didn't

know what I wanted to do.

I met my wife, and she said,

"You can open a small

restaurant, if you want.

You cook for me all the time,

and I like what you're doing."

I said, "Okay,

it's a good idea. Why not?"

This was my first restaurant that I opened

five years ago almost.

The idea was to go every day

to buy what's fresh and good in the market,

and to serve it to people.

When I need inspiration,

I come back to here.

You can see next to here is a Beit Knesset

and next to the Beit Knesset

there are two churches.

Near the two churches

you can see another two mosques.

This intimacy makes the people closer.

When I moved to Tel Aviv, I was very young.

I opened a restaurant at age 22.

I've never felt an outsider in Tel Aviv.

That's why I consider myself to be

an Akkoian and Tel Avivian

at the same time.

For me as an Arab,

to cook here in Tel Aviv,

and a Jewish person that comes

from Syria, or Turkey,

or even Poland or Germany,

this Syrian one tells me,

"Wow, this reminds me

of my grandmother's food!"

That makes me feel good.

That makes me feel like,

okay, it's possible!

I came to this area four years ago.

It was full of prostitutes,

drugs, violence.

It's a beautiful market,

but it was very neglected.

To show people, they forgot how to meet.

And for me, a market is exactly the place!

When people are walking in the morning,

and they say, "good morning."

They say, "sabah alkhyr."

They say, "Shabbat Shalom."

And they are talking.

Even if they're trying to cheat each other!

My father is Christian,

he's Catholic, alright?

From France.

My mother is a Jew.

Her family is from Livorno.

And what we like to joke

about at home is that

even my godfather is a Muslim.

Being an Arab is a demographic.

Jew is a religion.

You know, in the Middle East,

most of us are Arabs;

the Moroccans, the Tunisians.

If all the Arab countries around us

would understand the economic

potential of the area...

Like, you know, Syria, Jordan, Israel.

You've got manpower, oil, technology...

Everything here.

Everything here!

And if you put aside

all the ego and religion,

you can see that the whole

Mediterranean area

is a place full of money,

full of potential to be

one of the strongest areas in the world,

like Europe and the States.

But every time the people go back to

the demagoguery,

the history, the borders, the lands,

the army, the laws,

the craziness, the madness...

It doesn't go forward.

People will excuse me,

but let's not talk about lands,

and history, and...

it!

I called Osama Dalal

to tell him about the festival,

to ask him to choose one dish.

He said, "Well, we have a dish in Akko,

we make it in octopus season.

It's named maqluba."

I said, "Oh, maqluba,

we all make it."

He said, "Yeah, but only in Akko,

we make octopus maqluba."

Maqluba if you translate it,

it means upside down.

This is a dish that is layers

of rice, vegetables, meat or chicken...

Again, rice, other vegetables,

chick peas, rice...

So you have this whole pot of layers.

This is one of the signature dishes

of Arabic Friday lunch,

after most of them come from the mosques.

People that heard about maqluba,

they have the option to try

a totally different kind of dish.

Osama, the "Wonder Boy?"

Basically he's going to come tomorrow,

and we're going to think.

We're going to create

a new reality, on a plate.

And I don't give a that he's an Arab,

like he doesn't give a

that I'm a half Christian, half Jew.

The only thing we're going to give a about,

is making art and enjoying life, and...

that's the idea.

People forget about the basic stuff

that can connect them.

Food is like one of the basic stuff.

Love is one of the basic stuff.

Sex is one of the basic stuff.

I was born into a Moroccan family.

The Moroccan cuisine is very important

to the social life.

They do everything around food.

They solve problems around food.

They make problems around food.

I did a little apprentice

with Thomas Keller...

What I took from the French Laundry

is actually the ideology.

He was searching for perfection

all the time,

and I like that.

The name of the restaurant is Quando Pasha.

It's kind of a political thing.

There are a lot of sad stories

around this neighbourhood.

During the Independence War, the '48 War,

we call it Independence,

the Arabs call it Nakba,

a lot of people

who lived around this

neighbourhood evacuated,

sent away from their houses

because of the war.

Mustafa Khalil El Pasha

was the Mayor of Haifa.

Quando in Italian means where or when.

And "Quando Pasha" is a way

for us to ask a question

which we actually know the answer for.

So it's like I'm saying

where is Mustafa Khalil?

He's not here anymore.

He's not going to be here anymore.

In 1948, the Pasha Mustafa Khalil

was exiled from here.

The original dish that was

assigned to Quando Pasha

is qatayef.

Qatayef is basically

a half-circle shaped pastry

filled with either cheese or nuts.

So, the festival is happening

in Downtown Haifa.

Haifa is the third-biggest city in Israel,

and the capital of the North.

This is the only place on Earth

which is exercising on a daily basis

full peace between Jews and Arabs

more than a hundred years.

The most important thing about Haifa

is that there is no god in the middle.

It's not really a holy city,

besides the Bahá'í people,

but they don't fight with nobody.

We are celebrating Ramadan, Christmas,

and Chanukah together.

When I opened this place,

I had only this room.

And one night, sitting at the bar,

it was extremely cold...

I had a hooker, two Arab guys,

soldiers from the kibbutz,

et cetera, et cetera,

and two bums from the market.

To keep the heat, everybody

was talking together.

It was amazing!

Most of the economy is a mixed

economy between Jews and Arabs.

The A-Sham Food Festival emerged

from the very fact that

this is a city of peace.

One part of the Festival

is the Hummus Project,

which is basically taking

very famous chefs in Israel

and assigning them to hummus

places here in Haifa.

So cute!

This year we were lucky

to get the chef Haim Tibi,

and we are going to make two dishes.

His version of hummus and lamb ragout.

And the second one is going to be

hummus with Tunisian chraime,

which is a fish dish.

I never believed in love

at first sight, and it was that!

I went into the pub,

and there I saw Shoshi...

- And that's it!

- That's it!

A few years ago,

there was a murder in Israel.

The husband was Arab, the woman was Jewish.

He killed her and the TV show

wanted to interview us.

They were trying to ask us a few questions

before the interview,

"What is going on between you?"

And I told her,

"We are together."

And she said,

"Okay, what about politics?"

I said, "There is no politics between us.

We are not fighting about politics.

It's not coming into our house."

"There are no fights?

There are no curses?"

"No!"

- No!

"No, my husband does not

run after me with a knife,

and I don't run after him."

She said, "Sorry, you're

not interesting."

- "You're not an item."

- "You're not an item."

Fadi's mom is quite religious.

She prays five times a day.

Me and my sister-in-laws are the best

sisters that can be...

You can take Fadi out of the picture,

we'd still be together, the three of us.

We have never had any

agreement or disagreement

about anything that comes to religion,

or what to do with the kids.

Our son, Dean, he is Jewish by religion,

because we are living in a Jewish country,

so it will be easier for him.

We are celebrating whatever comes,

if it's Muslim, if it's Christian,

if it's Jewish, whatever.

My first son is Omer.

He's now 25.

Omer wanted to go to the army...

or, he had to go to the army.

Because he wanted to be a fighter,

not a regular soldier.

- Not a jobnik.

We said, "Okay, you can

be a fighter in the army...

but go to the navy..."

"Go to the navy, because we

don't want you in any barrier."

I don't want you winding

up in the West Bank.

We have relatives in the West Bank.

And they all know him,

and they all love him.

So we don't want any aunt to bring him food

from the wrong side of the barrier,

or check her ID or something like that.

When somebody tags me as an Arab...

Or a Palestinian.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I have my Israeli ID.

I have my Israeli passport.

I was born in Israel.

I'm an Israeli.

I'm a Muslim, this is my religion.

But my nationality is Israeli.

For me, hummus is very symbolic.

It coexists with whatever

topping you choose to put on it.

When I was in the States,

we were watching this football game,

and they had the nachos,

the cheese dip, the salsa dip...

And then, there was a bowl with hummus dip.

For me, it was very interesting,

that hummus is migrating all the way...

sitting next to guacamole,

salsa and cheese dip.

Actually, it's an inspiration.

It has no borders.

Political, geographical borders,

they mean nothing to hummus.

I was born in Baka al-Gharbiya Village.

My father was a doctor.

And my mom, she's a Hebrew

language teacher.

My parents throughout university

met a lot of Arabic and Jewish friends.

They all were welcomed in our house.

We were living coexistence

as a way of life.

It was not just something

that we were saying.

So, I remember when I was young,

I went to Jewish school,

which was not something people

usually people do in my village.

And they were making fun of me

because I don't know Hebrew

good enough,

and I didn't understand their jokes,

and I didn't know their music.

And I remember at a certain point,

I came to my father...

And he said to me, "Racism is always there.

One day when you grow up,

you'll have to go to a supermarket.

You'll have to do paperwork somewhere.

You cannot lock the door

and stay in your house.

So you cope with it,

and you learn to live with it,

and you try to change it.

And you will see that one day,

even if you hear racist comments,

you will know how to make fun of them.

You will know how to change them.

And you will know how

to let them bypass you

and not affect you in life."

There is another thought of,

"Okay, he's racist.

I don't want to talk with him.

I'm not going to change him.

He's an idiot, and that's it."

But no. I try all the time

to change them,

because of their own benefit.

Because they're missing out

so much in life.

Our beauty is in our variety.

I knew that one

of the most important things

that would help me have

more friends and fit in,

because when you're a teenager,

you just want to fit in,

was to learn how to speak Hebrew.

When I said Hebrew!

To speak Hebrew like if

it was my mother tongue.

Because it was my bridge to have friends.

The local Palestinians are bilingual.

The local Jews are not bilingual,

and this is a big mistake,

as far as I see it.

Because a language

is dropping 60 percent

out of the misunderstanding.

Actually after one year,

when my Hebrew really improved,

I was making more friends!

When I went to Jewish school,

I had this friend, and I asked her,

"Have you been ever in your life

to an Arabic village?"

She was like, "This is dangerous.

No, I've never been there.

My parents have

never been there."

And I told her, "Maybe you

should come visit me.

I'm all the time visiting you,

and you never come to my house."

First time she said, "Okay, you pick me up,

and bring me to your house,

and then you take me back home."

I said, "Okay, no problem."

Next time, she took a bus

not far from...

still in a Jewish area,

and then we had to pick her up.

Third time, she was comfortable enough

to come with a bus to the village.

After several times I told her,

"Listen, maybe you should

bring your parents over,

so we can introduce

them to my parents."

She was like,

"No, they'll never come."

They agreed to come.

They saw that it's not

as dangerous as they thought.

Nobody's killing them

or waiting to kill them.

I felt victory.

And this is my way,

at least, of doing a change.

Change has to come from people.

So three people can tell

another three people,

so we're at six.

These six are going to tell six more,

so we're already at twelve.

The change is coming from the public,

it's not coming from the politicians.

I don't believe in politicians at all.

When I named the A-Sham Festival,

I did not want to say

Israeli, Palestinian...

"A-Sham" means The Levant in Arabic.

Before all the division that happened

into individual countries,

there was an area named

Big Syria or The Levant,

that includes the countries

Lebanon, Syria, Jordan,

Israel and Palestine,

that have a lot of common and shared dishes

called Levantine Cuisine.

At the end of the day, you use A-Sham,

and people start finding

the politics in that...

But this is the way how we live here.

Frankly, we're not Switzerland.

What is an Israeli cuisine?

I think there is no Israeli Cuisine.

A lot of people will kill me for that.

We are a young country.

We don't have the culinary

history of the French,

or the Italian, or even the British.

It's a combination

of so many other cuisines,

from the Lebanese, Jordanian,

Egyptian, and Syrian kitchens...

the Russian kitchens, Polish kitchens,

and German kitchens...

all the people who came here

after World War II.

It's based on what we have here.

Cucumbers, tomatoes,

lamb, chicken, olive oil,

yogurt, tahini, of course, hummus...

Lemon, chilis, avocado, and orange.

The relationship between

the Arabic Cuisine and the Israeli Cuisine,

as Facebook says,

"It's complicated."

The Arabic most famous salad

is chopped tomatoes, chopped cucumbers,

herbs and spring onions,

and it's called Arabic Salad,

and it was like that for

the last hundreds of years.

But then when Israelis came here,

and they started making this,

and they write it now

on menus as Israeli Salad...

it's very sensitive

because Arabs are feeling

that the Jewish people...

It's not that they're taking their culture.

They're erasing its identity.

Now we're dealing with the recipes.

Are those recipes Israeli,

or are those recipes Arabic?

If you look at it like a Chinese egg roll,

if you make an egg roll in Israel,

you're not going to call

it an Israeli egg roll,

you're going to call it a Chinese egg roll.

There's no doubt that most of the recipes

are Arabic-based.

That's what they cooked

here for many years.

And when we're talking

about Israeli cuisine,

we should give the credit

to those who invented the recipes.

Sometimes you find yourself thinking,

"What is politically

correct to order?"

Like, what do you say?

I want Arabic Salad?

I want Israeli Salad?

It's funny, sad and complicated.

In the Festival,

we want an Arabic audience,

and we want a Jewish audience.

So if you make only famous Arabic dishes,

like tabbouleh, or labneh,

or stuffed grape leaves,

then we will have only the Jewish audience,

because the Arab audience will not come,

because those are the dishes

they eat every day in their homes.

But if you choose dishes

that even the chefs themselves say,

"Oh, Nof, I've never heard of this dish.

Let me call my grandmother."

So suddenly, you also have the curiosity

also of the Arabic audience,

because it's part of their heritage

that they're not familiar with.

First I read about this recipe

in my grandmother's cookbook.

And there's a comment

at the end, written like this:

"When you flip it,

and you take the pot off,

you can smell history."

That's how it's written

in a book that's 100 years old!

And try thinking right now,

what is the feeling

for us right now to do that?

Ilan is one of the rare

and unique people I know,

who can understand and respect,

and be as excited as me to do that.

If there is one dish

that can solve every problem in the world,

I believe it's mussakhan.

It's a huge pita bread, and above it

you have onions that were caramelized

with sumac and parsley.

And above it is chicken.

So all you have to do is take the pita,

and grab everything in your hands.

And everybody sits together,

around the same table.

So you've got to be friends!

Palestinians and Israelis

have the same palate.

They love the same kinds of flavours

of sour, fresh, a lot of herbs, very spicy.

They have very similar languages.

Arabic and Hebrew are twin languages.

Throughout history they're cousins,

because they're both sons of Abraham.

And, somehow, something went

wrong along the way.

Instead of behaving like cousins,

they're behaving like the worst enemies.

We are bordered with danger.

I think that 90 percent of people in Haifa,

and maybe yes, it's correct

to say it, in Israel in total,

they want to live together.

The ten percent who are

making it to the headlines,

and getting all the attention

of the world...

Next now to Israel where a Palestinian man

stabbed at least nine people on a bus.

Four Palestinians have been

shot dead by Israeli forces.

And we, the 90 percent,

we never get to headlines.

And we asked so many news companies

to come and cover the Festival.

And when it's positive,

who wants to cover it?

Only when it's negative, they will come.

And the ten percent,

they make it to headlines,

they make it to the news.

And then, people outside

and people in Israel start...

You know, because they get brainwashed,

they start thinking, "Hey,

maybe these ten percent are the 90 percent.

We don't know."

Having a wider world

means you have friends on both sides.

So I have my friends going to military

and getting killed.

And I have my Arab friends

also getting killed because of the war.

I can relate to the suffering of both.

I can love them both equally.

They're my friends because of their soul,

because of who they are.

And when I have a friend of mine

going to military and getting killed,

it's not that I'm happy because

he's Jewish and he died.

He's my friend.

He went to military because he has to.

This is his obligation.

If he does not go, he goes

to jail. It's very simple.

And if something happened to him, then...

Then you feel sorry.

You really feel sorry.

You're not happy at all.

And some Jewish people think that,

if a soldier dies or somebody

dies in the military,

then all the Arabs are running parties,

having fun and celebrating the death,

which is not true.

Same with Jewish people.

Almost every house has one family

that he knows from Arabic origin.

And if something happens to them,

I don't think they're happy,

shouting mavet la'aravim,

which means "death to Arabs," or whatever.

I don't know...

sometimes I feel these rumours

were something that

was implanted by politicians

to make this hate grow,

and to distract the public

from what is really going on here.

Two years ago, in my festival,

there were a lot of stabbing incidents

going on in the streets.

And a lot of people said,

"Don't do the festival.

It's celebrating Arabic

tradition and coexistence,

and look what's happening.

No, don't do it."

And I remember, and I highly

respect Mr. Yona Yahav,

the Mayor of the City of Haifa,

when he came and said,

"No, we are not letting a few

incidents of extremists

that are not representing the majority

to control our lives."

Terrorists, their main goal

is to jeopardize the normal

living of the people.

And I'm not going to cooperate with it.

So, if something unusual happens,

this is not a reason

to cancel the festival,

or to change it.

Our victory is to continue and go on,

and to do this festival

because we are living

coexistence no matter what.

We believe in coexistence,

and we are not letting...

Actually, these extremists' victory

was if we cancelled the festival.

The Israeli city of Haifa

is preparing to host

a three-day Arabic food festival.

Oh, from the chef!

If I was to choose

anything else as one dish

that sums up the whole festival...

One example is sumaciya,

which is a wedding dish

served only in Gaza Strip.

It's meat cooked in sumac water,

so it becomes very tender.

Even Arabs here

are not aware of that food

that is typical to Gaza Strip.

I just want people to be aware

of the existence of people here

that are living, are getting married.

They're not only enemies, they're people.

They're married, then they make sumaciya,

and this is its taste.

So when you taste it,

you think immediately

of weddings going in Gaza Strip.

And you have some thoughts in your mind

that are not war thoughts.

They're not news thoughts.

They're pleasant thoughts.

It's another step forward,

to visualize and explain to everybody,

that we are living in one country.

And we are not different.

We eat from the same plate, the same food,

we drink the same thing.

They don't have horns, we don't have tails.

We're all the same.

We are all people.

It's just the way of accepting

people as people,

and not as a religion.

This is the thing that is unique

to Haifa and to us.

Hummus has to be really tasty.

It has to be like velvet in your mouth.

And then you can take the hummus

to which direction you want.

It depends on the topping.

So I served shawarma,

which is a dish from the Arabic culture.

Usually shawarma is made of lamb,

but I made it from roots.

Vegan Arabic food...

I hope the Arabic are okay with what I did

to their shawarma.

I just went to Maayan Habira.

They serve a very special dish.

An amazing dish!

And it's really nice to eat it in a place

that usually serves Polish cuisine,

because it's so not Polish...

or Israeli.

I mean, no, it is Israeli.

No, it's not Israeli.

I don't know.

You know this small village

that the chef came from?

It's a village

that half of it is in Lebanon,

and half of it is in Israel.

And this border is...

a modern world decision

that the border is there.

But food, you can't just

place it on the border.

It can be here, it can be here.

It's the same people.

It's the same terroir, okay?

So maybe I feel today

I had something from Lebanon.

Or maybe I had something from Syria?

But at the end of the day,

I had something from the A-Sham area.

I know it sounds funny.

"You're going to use food

to bring world peace."

No, I'm not. I'm not saying

that this is the case.

But I'm going to use food

to change a few people.

That's it.

And if you change a few people,

and it's only me who's changing them,

but then other people would do the same,

then maybe we will succeed together,

to do some kind of a huge change.

It's a relationship.

And we have the power

to make this relationship

a good one, or a bad one.

Nobody wrote the future.

We can write it.

The United States of Israel?

The United States of Arab?

But it should be a United whatever!

It doesn't matter where you are.

Even if it's in a war zone,

or in a politically sensitive place.

No matter where.

If you cook for somebody

and he eats your food,

that's where politics ends.

I think they should have given chefs

to make peace in the world.

Food can bring us together.

No, I will say,

food can bring the first step.

And from there,

it depends on what we choose.

So this is the only way.

Small steps.

We have hummus with chick peas,

hummus with machluta,

hummus with chicken breast.

Hummus with meat, hummus with tahini,

hummus with ful.

Hummus with mushrooms,

hummus with mashaushe.

Hummus with avocado, hummus with ragout,

hummus with...

Sausages, chraime,

labneh, chicken liver,

fava beans, eggplants,

parsley, without parsley,

lemon juice, no lemon juice.

It's enough, right?

What? Hummus?

We don't have hummus.

We are an Eastern European restaurant.

Subtitling: difuze