Hi guys, this video is about what you can learn about the Israeli society from visiting
a normal supermarket in Israel.
Now it's different than the other videos I did until now.
Until now most of the videos were about how to plan your trip to Israel, what to do in
Jerusalem, the Judaean Desert, Tel Aviv, but I wanted to start doing videos about the Israeli
society for a couple of reasons.
First of all, I think it is interesting, and the second reason is that there is a huge
gap between what you see in the media about Israel and how life in Israel really is.
So now I will go to the supermarket in the village where I grew up and show you some
Israeli products and what you can learn from them about
the Israelis.
Okay.
So, the number of people that have nuts allergy in Israel is very very small.
In the UK there are ten times more people that have nuts allergy than in Israel and
the reason for it is this: Bamba.
Bamba is the national snack.
25% of all the snacks that are being sold in Israel are Bamba, and it's basically a
peanut butter-flavoured snack and because small children and babies eat it then they
don't get the nuts allergy.
Because it is so important, the emergency regulation said in 2003 that in case of an
emergency the factory that produces Bamba will keep on working so other factories will
be shut but this one will stay open.
Now most of the Israelis will tell you that Bamba is the national snack but I personally
prefer the Bisli Grill, which is this snack.
This is the reason I went to the birthday parties of children I didn't like: to eat
Bisli Grill and drink Coca Cola.
Now I will just say that the first time my German girlfriend ate it, she said it tasted
like dirt with salt.
But it's great.
Now there are different kinds of Bisli, like pizza-flavoured, and falafel and barbecue,
but Bisli Grill is the best.
And now we will go to the vegetables part and we will get serious.
So, behind me here you can see the cherry tomatoes.
The cherry tomatoes were developed in Israel.
In the beginning they wanted to call them TV tomatoes and market them as a health snack
for people that sit in front of their television and eat it.
But the name didn't catch on, so they changed the name to cherry tomato because it looks
like a cherry.
But there is a bigger story here, and that is that Israel is a leader in agricultural
technologies: the drip irrigation system that was developed in Israel is probably the most
known thing.
And to understand why it is so you need to understand something about Zionism.
Until 150 years ago most Jews lived in towns and cities, Jews were not allowed to buy land,
and because most Jews, all Jewish men, knew how to read and write, they worked in white-collar
jobs, and the Zionist revolution wanted to bring the Jews back to the land, back to being
farmers, and being a farmer, working the land and innovation were connected from the beginning.
Most Israelis don't know it but the first scientific institution in Israel is not the
Hebrew University but the Agricultural Research Organization that was opened in 1921.
They called it the Volcani Center and it is something that is very deep in Israeli, Zionist
culture.
Until 150 years ago all names were names from the Bible - Abraham, Isaac, Jakob, Haim, Shara, Lea and since
then there are many names that are names of trees and flowers, like my name is Oren which
is a pine tree, and I have three brothers and we all have names of trees.
It is also very common for girls to have names of flowers like Nurit or Rakefet.
Okay, so now I'm in the beer section.
And it's quite small.
The alcohol culture in Israel is new and the Israelis don't drink a lot of alcohol.
And the prices are really high so if you come to Israel drink a lot before you come.
The most known Israeli beer is this one, which is called Goldstar and I think it's ok.
I like it.
In Israel you don't cut cheeses, you spread them, and two cheeses that you will find in
every Israeli household are the white cheese Gvina Levana, and the cottage cheese, this
cheese.
Now the price of cottage cheese was under government supervision until 2006, then the
controls were moved to open the market to competition but instead of the prices going
down the prices went, really fast, went up, 50% in like three years.
And in 2011 there was the "cottage protest" and it was part of a bigger protest about
how expensive things in Israel are, and since then the prices of the cottage cheese went
down.
And now it is, let's see, I don't know.
So, now you can see the coffee.
Here I don't have anything interesting to say.
I will just say that many Israelis drink black Turkish coffee or Nescafé.
Now when Israelis say Nescafé they mean basically instant coffee.
If you really are strong and you want a true Israeli Nescafé then you drink this.
If you drink this you can be a teacher in Israel: it's not easy.
One of the biggest crises in Israel, and most people don't know it, was in 1951.
The food almost ran out.
And this was also the time of the big wave of immigrations to Israel from the Muslim
countries.
By the way, in Hebrew we don't say that Jews immigrated to Israel, we say that they did
Aliyah, they came up to Israel.
And when Jews leave Israel, let's say to the US, we don't say that they immigrated to the
US, we say they did yerida, they went down to the US.
Anyway, so food almost ran out and people said to Ben-Gurion, our first prime minister,
that the Jews from Arabic countries liked to eat rice and couscous and there was almost
no rice.
So Ben Gurion asked Osem, an Israeli food company, to produce a substitute to rice made
out of flour.
So Osem, this food company, rose up to the challenge and made the ptitim: what you see
here, which are basically small round pasta balls.
And the name of ptitim in the 1950s and 60s was Ben-Gurion rice, and outside Israel they
are also called Israeli couscous.
And this is one of the things that children like to eat the most when they come back from
school: schnitzel and ptitim.
Right next to the ptitim you can see shkedei marak, another Israeli product.
Now if I will translate shkedei marak back into English then it is "soup almonds", which
makes no sense.
Basically, you add it to the soup like croutons, and it is made out of flour and spices, and
the slogan is a great one: the slogan is ‘HaMarak hu rack terutz’ the soup is only an excuse.
And it came to be a Hebrew idiom.
Okay, here you can see Kellogg's Corn Flakes, of course not Israeli but I will say that
Israelis call all the breakfast cereal corn flakes.
So, everything you see here: corn flakes.
Here you can see a shopping cart, not that interesting, but what you will see is that
the Israelis fill them up.
Israelis try to do shopping once a week, on Thursday or Friday and they buy a lot, like
usually they don't buy for the next meal or the next day but for the whole week.
And usually we do a big meal on Friday evening for all the family.
The Israeli society is a very pro-family society and there is an Israeli obsession with food.
One comedian said that basically all of our holidays are "They tried to kill us, we survived.
Let's sit down and eat".
That's it, guys.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did and you want me to do more videos about the Israeli society then please, first
of all, subscribe to my channel, and write a comment down here below.
See you in the next video and bye for now.