TELAWIF — Dinner, Performance

Join us for a dinner and performance in which we consider the role of food in shaping local identity. The evening includes a four-course meal – appetizer, salad, main dish and dessert – based on recipes from Dr. Erna Meyer’s cookbook How to cook in Palestine? (1936). This was the first cookbook published in Eretz Israel in Hebrew, German and English. The meal is vegetarian as well as served with alcoholic drinks and allows diners to experience flavors from the past.

Ann-Kathrin Müller and Julia Schäfer, the duo behind this special evening at Liebling Haus, are visual artists who live in Stuttgart and Tel Aviv and have been working together since 2020. They use archival materials and fresh ingredients as they guide the audience through the evening, questioning how the medium of the cookbook was used to mobilize women for socio-political purposes.

Liebling Haus, home to German immigrants, was built in 1936, the same year of the publication of the book by Meyer, who was born in Berlin and immigrated to Tel Aviv in 1933. Besides examining the construction of national identities through food preparation, the evening explores traces of German-Jewish immigrants in modern-day Israel. “What shall I cook?” writes Meyer, “(...) The different climate and its effects force the European woman to rearrange her whole life, not least her cooking, which is not so easy to cope with.” (Erna Meyer: How to cook in Palestine?, Palestine Publishing Co., 1936)

Event Schedule:

19:30 – Apéritif

20:00 – Dinner and performance 21:30 – Digestif