Heartwarming Israel Festival project bonds us with the food we eat

Daniella Seltzer wants us to work for our food. She is not suggesting that many of us don’t put in an effort to – pardon the vittles wordplay – make a crust, but she’d like us to go the extra yard, beyond the shelf displays at our neighborhood supermarket or grocery store, to connect with the source.

For the past couple of years or so, Seltzer has spearheaded a heartwarming, ecology- and person-friendly project designed to bond us with the food we ingest and, sadly, throw away, as well as with each other.

Seltzer’s JLM Food Rescuers team works at the wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Givat Shaul. It was recently given a building by the Tnuva dairy company, in addition to last year’s gift of storage space, to help it further its efforts to save – literally – tons of food on a daily basis, and to get at least some of the produce considered by the market operators to be unsellable to Jerusalemites from all over the city.

When I popped over there, the building was in the latter stages of renovation works, and, when completed, will incorporate a kitchen and a space for culinary workshops for schoolchildren and others of all ages, and an area that will house presentations of visual works of art and music shows.

The venture forms part of this year’s Israel Festival’s “Home – Spirit – Hospitality” section, with members of the public invited to take part in daily tours of the market. There is also an exhibition of artistically crafted photographic portraits of market personnel due to be held, on the ground floor of the aforesaid building, on June 17. The Festival runs June 3-19.

“We came here because we wanted to achieve social change,” says Seltzer, setting out her stall from the outset.

That may have been easier said than done. The wholesale market crowd can be a rough and ready bunch who, basically, just want to get their work done – taking in deliveries and apportioning the produce they sell and distribute – as efficiently as possible. Then this intrepid 31-year-old turns up and begins trying to persuade them to allow her and her pals to sift through the food, commandeering items the wholesalers view as aesthetically unattractive and would probably end up consigning to the garbage heap.

But Seltzer and Co. have clearly won the market staff over, and now enjoy a close collaborative relationship.

“We used to have to look for a place to sift through the produce,” she notes. “Now they deposit the crates and pallets here, and we sort through them first. There are around 10-15 of us, who work here, three or four times a week.”

By all accounts they appear to be doing an amazing job, and providing us all with an education in the process.

“We systematically developed a solution to the food waste here,” Seltzer states. “We deal with minimizing the amount of food that would be thrown out, by talking to the farmers and the others. We have an end solution for all of this.”

 

THE SIMPATICO ambiance Seltzer has achieved in Givat Shaul was apparent on the guided tour she gave me of the market facilities. Every minute or so a cleaner, a forklift operator or truck driver stopped to greet her as we made our way betwixt the towering containers of vegetables and fruit shipped to the market from all over the country, from Gaza and further afield, six days a week.

“Is it OK if I take this?” Seltzer asks a worker, picking up a small bunch of bananas which looked like they’d seen better times but which were, apparently, perfectly usable. Later I got to enjoy a scrumptious smoothie Seltzer made from the bananas, a reject avocado she’d found earlier and an unwanted water melon.

That spirit will also come across in the aforementioned exhibition, which takes in portraits of over 150 workers who work at the market: “people who bring food and those who take it – from marketers, truck drivers, accountants, forklifters, security guards, managers, secretaries and cleaners – all holding some of the produce sold at the market, and [who are] part of our mainstream food system,” as Seltzer puts it.

The bare statistics are astounding and horrifying. I recall once meeting a Brazilian couple, on my travels in Austria, who said they had chosen not to have children, because they felt planet Earth was not capable of sustaining the growing population. While that may have been a genuine truistic gesture, considering the volumes of perfectly edible produce summarily dispensed with at the Givat Shaul market alone, that may have been a misguided decision.

“Around 10 to 12 tons of food are thrown out here, every single day,” Seltzer declares. “I wish we could use all of that, but we can’t.”

She says waste is endemic to the whole of the food sector here.

“We offer an end solution for a systemic problem which runs through the entire food chain,” she continues. “We know that 40% of the food that gets to retailers is also thrown out.”

Unfortunately, for now at least, that sorry state of affairs is beyond Seltzer’s control. “We would like to do something about that, but, presently, we can’t do that. At this stage we are trying to set up the food rescue facility in the wholesale market, and then reach out across the city.” 

All told she and her team manage to salvage about 2-3 tons of fruit and vegetables a day, and ensure those mountains of food get to socioeconomically disadvantaged people across Jerusalem. Much of the so-called B grade produce is collected by people from community centers in Wadi Joz and Kiryat Yovel, and offered to local residents for as much as they can afford to fork out.

Seltzer spent much of her formative years in Toronto, living there with her family between the ages of 10 and 23. She says she witnessed ecological ventures there and returned to Israel with an environmental awareness that had yet to take root here.

She started out, on her own, collecting produce that was glibly off-loaded by stall operators in the Mahaneh Yehuda market. It was a chastening experience for her.

“I took a lot of stick and abuse from the people in the market,” she recalls with a wry smile. “They said things like, ‘How come your husband allows you to pick up scraps?’ and ‘You should be ashamed.’ People weren’t aware of the amount of food being wasted on a constant basis.”

Eventually she met some like-minded people who were eager to do something about what they viewed as wanton profligacy. “Around two-and-a-half years ago a group of us got together, people from different backgrounds. But what we all shared was a desire to change the way we consume food, and consume in society in general, and to change the relationship we, residents, have with the earth, with our food.”

Seltzer feels there is a strong social element here, too. “We felt we also needed to change the relationships we have with each other, also through reducing food waste and to raise awareness.” 

That is a core theme that runs through the entire venture.

“We all eat food, and that is something that bonds us,” Seltzer observes, adding that there are social and cultural gains to be had, too. “People can come together, when they take or buy food, and they can exchange recipes and traditional ways of preparing food. That is an important element, too.”

The ingathering of people, including those with disparate personal and social backdrops, has been a staple of the Food Rescuers’ ethic from the get-go. For Seltzer it has always been about more than just the food per se. “There is a community center in Wadi Joz called Sinsilla, and we hooked up with a group of women there who keep beehives and produce honey.

The idea is to put our heads together, with the people there and other places around Jerusalem, about how to set up a facility which is operated by locals. The people come here for the fruit and vegetables, take the produce to their area, and make it available for others from their own neighborhood – by the locals for their neighbors.”

She says the accent is very much on empowerment which, she believes, can be achieved by a hands-on approach. “We want to move away from a mentality of neediness to a mentality of leadership.” And also encourage people to get out there and to meet each other.

“That is especially important now, after all the lockdowns and the Ministry of Health directives which kept people apart,” Seltzer adds.

FOR ITZIK GIULI, the JLM Food Rescuers initiative was a perfect fit for the festival’s socially oriented philosophy, which began to sprout last year, slap bang in the middle of the pandemic mess.

This year’s program is an almost exclusively homegrown offering, as a result of logistics – constraints on non-Israelis coming into the country, financial considerations in light of reduced budgets – but also the desire to showcase some of our very own creative gems to mark the festival’s 60th edition.

Over the past year or so I have chatted with numerous artists who have talked about the benefits of the lockdowns, whereby they have been forced to look inward and to forage for ideas internally rather than seeking inspiration from external sources.

Giuli gets that, and is keen to convey that line of thinking, which, he says, conversely, also leads in the direction of personal confluences.

“Looking inside is not just about local art,” he notes. “That is part of it, but it is also about considering what art can do in the social domain.”

Like Seltzer, Giuli is focused on the human aspect and human interaction. “We need to look at other territories where art can have an impact, and operate in, and to try to create reality and areas for new dialogue.”

There are semantic nuances to be addressed, too. “Looking inward also means taking a look at art itself, what it does and how we consume art, and how we can create new possibilities,” Giuli continues.

The cooperative aspect Giuli feels is inherent to the creative process is a recurring theme in our conversation. He also believes that, taking an inclusive approach to art, we can draw closer to each other and enjoy a shared experience.

“Reality is not just subjective. If we continue living subjective existences, we will live in separate bubbles,” he posits, adding that sharing does not necessarily generate consistency and uniformity. “If we never allow ourselves to absorb other perceptions and realities, we can’t change, and can’t consider other possibilities.”

Giuli is a strong believer in the art feeding off quotidian life, and life reflecting art paradigm. That was at the fore in last year’s festival Routine program rollout, as the pandemic made serious inroads into our everyday lives.

This year’s Routine 2.0 progresses along that social frame of reference and seeks to generate fresh dialogue about how we go about our usual business, and life logistics. The program incorporates artist residencies at Jerusalem institutions and in the homes of a variety of city dwellers. The artists will offer employees and residents new ways of considering their regular professional and domestic practices, while these inform the artists’ own work.

That reciprocal nourishing dynamic is also central to the Inspirational Connections section of the festival, with a broad slew of artists, from different disciplines, presenting original creations inspired by iconic Israeli works of art from across the history of the state.

Rock fans of a certain vintage should enjoy the premiere of New York-based musician, songwriter, producer Rea Mochiach’s take on “The Golden Calf,” from Ehud Banai’s seminal 1987 release Ehud Banai and The Refugees.

And devotees of cross-cultural fare will, no doubt, take note of the Jerusalem East and West Orchestra concert based on the children’s book Waiting for Nissim, by Etgar Keret and Shira Gefen, also featuring the authors.

Sadly, the past year’s lockdowns served to highlight and exacerbate the long-standing pressing problem of domestic violence, predominantly inflicted by men on their female partners, around the world. That is the subject of Spanish theater director Alex Rigola’s “Macho Man.”

The emotive and startling documentary theatrical installation not only focuses on violence against women, it also takes an unblinkered look at how we have allowed this dismal state of affairs to continue for so long. 

For tickets and more information: www.israel-festival.org