Food as a source of ethnic pride: online food narratives, nostalgia and hybridity among former Soviet immigrants in Israel

For many years, the common perception in Israel was that “Russian” food was unappetizing, smelly and unkosher. This attitude often expressed by the natives fostered a sense of shame among the children of immigrants about their family food choices. This study draws upon personal interviews and the digital ethnography of food-related posts on two popular Facebook platforms of Generation 1.5 immigrants in Israel to examine their evolving relationship with Russian/Soviet cuisine. These narratives convey a sense of ethnic pride, a positive appreciation by Generation 1.5 immigrants of their cultural origins and thus confers self-assertion. Themes of nostalgic pride and confident hybrid identities emerge in the online narratives of these bilingual immigrants. Rooted in memories of their Soviet childhood, these narratives allow the immigrants to articulate the desire to recreate authentic tastes from home while adapting to their new society. Ethnic pride, however, is not solely about recreating foods from the homeland; it is also about the emergence of new hybrid cultural forms in the receiving society, particularly the fusion of Russian/Soviet/Jewish and Israeli-Mizrahi (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent) cuisines.