About 35 years ago I came up with a line which encouraged me to think I might be able to hack it as a writer. The line was: “I am a Jew by food; I worship at my mother’s fridge.” It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare, but it was tight and funny and most of all, it was true. As an atheist with no time for ritual or observance, who nevertheless was committed to his cultural Jewish identity, it did the job. Or at least it did the job until hate sprung eternal, for there is nothing better calculated to make you feel Jewish than overt antisemitism.
It came at me courtesy of a section of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. Of course, it was countered with claims that antisemitism allegations were merely a smear by wealthy Jews to stop a leftwing leader gaining power, itself an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Which should be funny, but isn’t. And now we have the horrors of events in Israel and Gaza, inflicted upon civilians on both sides, bringing more unmitigated hate including against the Jewish community.
I now write mostly about food and restaurants. It should therefore be useful that in recent months I have been crossing culinary borders. For a forthcoming book I have been taught how to make a glorious kibbeh by a Lebanese woman called Amoul. I have been taught how to make fesenjan, the famed chicken, walnut and pomegranate stew, by an Iranian man called Mohsen. We are all desperate to believe that through the commonality of food rituals we can come together.
But some events are so momentous they blunt the appetite. Twee homilies about breaking bread just don’t cut it. I want instead to reach for Tim Minchin’s brilliant Peace Anthem for Palestine: “We don’t eat pigs. You don’t eat pigs. It seems it’s been that way for ever. So if you don’t eat pigs, and we don’t eat pigs, why not, not eat pigs together?” Like the very best comedy it works because it’s built on sturdy foundations of truth. But that’s not up to the job either, not least because I do eat pigs.
The fact that I understand the history makes no difference. Although I’ve never called myself a Zionist, I recognise how the wretched darkness of the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews led the world, via the UN, to agree to Israel’s foundation. I know its creation resulted in so many Palestinians being forced from their lands, and to decades of ill-treatment and discrimination by increasingly rightwing Israeli governments who do not represent the values of so many of their people. None of that excuses the murder by Hamas last month of an estimated 1,200 innocent Israeli citizens, so many of whom disagreed with Israeli government policy (not that it matters). It does not excuse the taking of hostages. And the murder of those estimated 1,200 Israeli citizens does not excuse the murderous collective punishment meted out on civilians in Gaza by the Israel Defence Forces.
For the most part I have been struck dumb. I agreed eagerly to sign a letter from British Jews and Muslims condemning all acts of violence and calling for tolerance, but it was abandoned because they couldn’t get enough signatories from one side. I won’t say which. It doesn’t help. We instinctively hunger for grand statements that take the right position. We crave moral certainty. But what do you say when all you really feel is despair? Right now, I desperately want to be allowed to define myself solely as a Jew by food who worshipped at his late mother’s fridge. My fear is that a world in chaos won’t let me.
• This article was amended on 17 November 2023. An earlier version gave an Israeli death toll of 1,400. However, official figures were revised to around 1,200 by the country’s foreign ministry on 11 November, after the piece, written for Observer Food Monthly, had gone to print. The majority of the reported estimate were civilians, but the number includes some IDF casualties.
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