In the last few months, I discovered a major change in the status of restaurants in
northern Israel: almost all of them are closed on Shabbat, Friday night through
Saturday night. In the past, all the great fish restaurants in
Tiberia on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (“the Kinneret” to Israelis) were
open 7 days a week as were the many eateries in my not-very-religious hometown
of Karmiel, in the Galilee. To understand this change, it is vital to
understand the complexity of religious observance in Israel, the matter of
Kashrut and the effects of the events of the last 5 years on the restaurant sector
in northern Israel. In terms of my emotional reaction to this change, my thoughts
are also far from black and white.
To state that Israel is a Jewish country is as meaningful as saying that
the United States is a Christian country, i.e., “yes but”. 73% of the citizens of
the country are Jewish, meaning that the remaining percentage is Muslim,
Christian, Druze and other religions. Even among the Jewish population, 45%
identify themselves as secular; 33% are “masorti” traditional, 10% consider
themselves religious, referred to as national religious or “kippa sruga”, the
knitted kippa; and 10% are ultra-religious, Haredim, of various kinds. The significance of this spectrum
is that there is a wide variance in the attitude of various populations in
Israel to the keeping of dietary laws, to be explained in the next paragraph,
and religious rules in general. Of course, in traditionally religious cities,
including Jerusalem and Tzfat, as well as Bnei Brak in Tel Aviv and Beit
Shemesh, homogenous religious communities, Jewish rules of life and behavior
are strictly followed, as compared to Tel Aviv, which is essentially secular
and western in thought and deed. Thus, the daily reality of Jewishness in
Israel is all over the spectrum.
One of the essential pillars of the traditional Jewish way of life is kashrut,
whose specific details are an extremely complicated subject way beyond my
knowledge. However, in simple terms, “kosher” refers to the nature of the
ingredients of the food, how it is prepared and, most importantly for restaurants,
when it is served. Kashrut laws specifically forbid the use of certain foods,
most noticeably pork and shellfish, possibly originally due to health issues
involved in storing and preparing them. It also specifies the characteristics of animals that can be eaten, whether meat or fish. Kashrut also
relates to the preparation of food in terms of how animals are slaughtered and
the strict separation of milk and meat. Yeah, no butter on steak in kosher
restaurants. Thus, kosher homes and restaurants most have separate dishes,
silverware, sinks and even dishwashers for milk and meat. Finally, as it is
forbidden to light a fire on Shabbat, people keeping full kosher do not cook
food on Saturday but may keep food that is prepared beforehand warm on a hot plate.
Therein lies the dilemma for restaurants: if they are open from sundown on
Friday night to sundown on Saturday, they are not kosher.
The events of the last five years have changed the equation in restaurants’
decision on whether to be kosher or not. Before Covid and the Gaza war, foreign
tourists flooded Israel, including the northern part of the country. In 2018,
4.12 millioin foreign tourists visited in Israel and needed to find a restaurant on
Shabbat. In 2024, only some 800,000 came. They certainly did not visit the
north because rockets and drones were firing off alarms several times a day,
not to mention the fact that most of the nature sites were closed due to the
war. Yet, tourism did not completely die as Israelis, finding it ridiculously
expensive to fly abroad as the foreign airlines suspended their flights to and
from Israel, chose to visit relatively safe places, such as Tiberias on the Sea
of the Galilee. A very high percentage of these people were religious at least
in terms of keeping kosher, meaning that they would not eat a non-kosher restaurant.
The few open restaurants, struggling to survive in this difficult situation,
apparently had to become kosher and close on Shabbat. Thus, today, for secular
people looking to “go out for dinner” on a Friday night, the best option is an
Arab restaurant, which generally offers excellent food and service at a
reasonable price.
I personally have very mixed reaction to this situation. On the one
hand, having had to work weekends in my younger days and knowing how hard
restaurant work is, it may be a blessing for all those in the industry to spend Saturday together with their families. On the other hand, these restaurants lose an important part
of their income in a traditionally difficult industry to survive. Furthermore,
as a secular person, I find it disturbing that Israel is becoming more
religious. By the way, far more Muslims fast during Ramadan than they did 25
years ago. For those that desire an Israel that is more faithful to the
religious laws, I imagine that this change is good news. On the longer term, it
will be interesting to see what happens when the pre-corona tourism levels
return and more restaurants reopen.
In the meantime, it is interesting to watch what kind of new Israel will
arise from the ashes of Covid and war years. It is certain the food, which is
already excellent, will improve even
more. For those that don’t want to cook Saturday lunch, it make take more
effort to find an open restaurant. May that be the least of our problems.
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