A Culinary Celebration of Diversity!

In the early days of modern Israel—from the late 1800s to the late 1940s— almond flour. Those from Northern Africa make charoset truffle balls from most of the immigrants were Ashkenazi Jews from Europe. They came with their own culture, traditions, and adherence to both Torah laws and rabbinic rules. Then, after World War II, Jewish populations fled Northern Africa and Middle Eastern countries due to persecution and expulsion. Israel quickly became a cultural melting pot with the Ashkenazi population falling into a minority in a sea of Mizrachi and Sephardi Jews. It was a very divided community fraught with confusion over modes of dress, styles of worship, levels of observance of Shabbat and Kosher laws, and entirely different traditions—both religiously and culturally. “Mixed marriages” were frowned upon. Each community had their own head rabbis professing Halacha (rules of living religiously and keeping the commandments). The 1990s saw the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union along with Ethiopian Jewry, followed by the Bnei Menashe of India. Each ethnic group had its own unique ways of practicing Judaism according to their culture and that of their host country, although basic liturgical practices and keeping of Torah remained the same.