by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

The finger of moral indignation has been raised against Israel once again. This time the finger belongs not to the president of Iran, nor to the head of Hizbullah or Hamas, or any of their allies or sympathizers. This time it belongs to none other than Fadi Abboud, president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association.

His “J’accuse” is about hummus. Abboud and associates claim that this traditional dish—a mash of chickpeas, sesame paste, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic— is of Lebanese origin, and that the Israelis, by marketing it as “Israeli hummus” are robbing them of a national culinary treasure.

Whether hummus has indeed been the Lebanese national appetizer from time immemorial is a matter of conjecture. The true origins of hummus are shrouded in the mists of Middle Eastern cooking down through the ages. Determination of its origins—whether Lebanese, or more likely Syrian, as others think—will have to await a more definitive gastroarcheology than is available at present. But one thing is for sure, the Jews who came to what was then called Palestine in the nineteenth century discovered the indigenous Arabs eating the dish; they did not bring it with them from Vilna or Minsk. Matzo balls, borsht, and a smorgasbord of religious and political ideas, yes. Hummos, no.

In this hummus is really no different than such delicacies of the Diaspora as matzo balls and borsht, also foods which European Jewry adapted from the host cultures in der heim (the old country). There is nothing intrinsically Jewish about them.

If we are to speak of Jewish food, we have to turn to such traditional fare as tcholent and gefilte fish. The former was designed for eating on the Sabbath, when cooking is forbidden by Jewish law. A mixture of beans, vegetables, meat, chicken, and what-have-you, it is cooked before the Sabbath and kept warm on a covered flame for eating on the day of rest. Gefilte fish, a boneless, usually oblong objet d’art of ground carp, pike, whitefish, etc., solves the problem of removing the bones on Shabbos, when separating the wanted from the unwanted food is proscribed.

So, the unmasking of “Israeli chummus” is a cause that even unreconstructed Zionists could feel sympathetic toward. Even your sworn enemy can be right about some things. Didn’t Americans go back to eating sauerkraut after World War Two was over?

The problem is, though, that the chummus agitators are not stopping with chummus. Anyone with even the most passing familiarity with the Arab-Israeli conflict could have seen this one coming: “It is not enough they (Israelis) are stealing our land. They are also stealing our civilization and our cuisine,” said Abboud. Ah, there it is, out in the open. Hummus was just an appetizer for the main course, the latest anti-Zionist rant.

It is at this point that regular synagogue attendance proves its worth in the aggravating arena of contemporary geopolitics. For it is just at this time of year, on the Sabbath following the festival of Sukkot that we read Bereishit, the Torah’s narrative of Creation, in synagogues around the world.

On the immortal words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” Rashi writes that the matter is not of mere cosmological interest, but necessary knowledge for every Jew. And, we might add, particularly for those Jews living through our own period in history: “If the nations of the world will say to Israel, ‘You are bandits, for you have conquered the nations who inhabited the Land of Canaan!’ Israel will say to them: ‘The whole earth belongs to the Holy One, Blessed is He. He created it and gave it to whom it is proper in His eyes. By His wish He gave it to them; and by His wish He took it away from them, and gave it to us.’ ”

Of course, our rivals for the Land do not accept Rashi’s interpretation. But that’s alright. Rashi understood that. His comment was for us, to give us hope and confidence in the promise to be fulfilled. For whatever the political, historical or legal arguments concerning anybody’s rights to the Land of Israel, we are to know that the Land is ours. And that regardless of who controls the Land at any given time in history, ultimately it will revert to the Jewish people, when God wishes it.

Israeli spokesmen have been notably restrained on the hummus issue. Israel’s Food Industries Association and the Foreign Ministry both declined comment when contacted by the Associated Press. Maybe they don’t know the above mentioned Rashi. Or maybe somebody in the Israeli higher echelons knows the saying in Ethics of the Fathers (1:17), “All my days I have grown up among the wise, and I have found nothing better for the body than silence.”

And nothing tastier than hummus.

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