Trading Jerusalem: Jewish-Arab Encounters in a Middle Eastern Restaurant in Toronto (original) (raw)

Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes

This ethnographic study explores everyday encounters between Jewish Israeli immigrants, Palestinian Arab immigrants, and Canadian Jews in Jerusalem Restaurant, a Middle Eastern dining establishment in Toronto. The article reveals the ways in which these three subgroups relate to each other economically and culturally in the context of a diasporic food business that bases its appeal on the symbolism of Jerusalem. Through the practices and relationships observed in this restaurant, we suggest that these subgroups create a practical foodway community, while each subgroup associates with the notion of Jerusalem in its own distinctive way. Cette étude ethnographique analyse les interactions quotidiennes entre immigrants israéliens juifs, immigrants palestiniens arabes et Juifs canadiens dans le Jerusalem Restaurant, un restaurant de cuisine moyen-orientale de Toronto. L'article met au jour comment ces trois sous-groupes interagissent économiquement et culturellement dans le contexte d'un commerce alimentaire diasporique qui se construit autour du symbolisme de Jérusalem. Les pratiques et les relations observées dans ce restaurant nous permettent d'avancer que ces différents sous-groupes forment une communauté de pratiques alimentaires tout en ayant, chacun, des liens spécifiques et distinctifs avec la notion de Jérusalem. Outside Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Jews and Arabs rarely share physical spaces. In North America, Jews and Arabs live primarily in separate residential areas and, for the most part, rarely do these discrete social communities cross paths. Despite this common pattern of relative social isolation, the two groups often encounter one another in the specific socioeconomic and cultural environment of a Middle Eastern dining establishment in Toronto, Jerusalem Restaurant. The restaurant has two locations in the city. It has a newer branch in the North York area in a predominantly mixed neighbourhood of Asians, South Asians, Canadian Ashkenazi Jews and Arab immigrants from across the Middle East, while its older location is in the almost entirely Ashkenazi Jewish neighbourhood straddling Bathurst and Eglinton streets. Jerusalem Restaurant in Toronto serves as a site of consumption and a meeting point between otherwise disparate communities, physically and conceptually. Yet, do Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the largest Canadian city interact peacefully within this singular context? 1 Or does their century-old conflict in the Middle East replicate itself between the restaurant tables? Furthermore, how do Canadian Ashkenazi Jews fit into this complicated relationship? 2 This study focuses on Jerusalem Restaurant because it represents a lively site of encounter for otherwise segregated communities. Moreover, we argue that while the current discourse on the conflict-either in the news media or in scholarly output, especially in macro-sociological analyses-commonly separates these communities into two opposing camps, 'Jews' and ' Arabs, ' our research uncovers a more nuanced