How to Cook in Palestine

Inkjet print, lightbox, and screen-based slides on glass, 2025

In 1955, to mark the seventh Independence Day of the State of Israel, the Nutrition Department of the Ministry of Education proposed a new holiday tradition: a festive meal modeled after the Passover Seder. The plan included two rich and symbolic menus, with each dish representing a different aspect of the historic founding of the state. The proposal and a Recipe for a festive cake were published by various means.

The custom never took hold. The menus were out of touch with the reality of the time—an era defined by austerity and scarcity. I discovered the proposal and the photographs featured in this exhibition during a chance search in the Ministry of Education archives. What moved me most were the hopes and dreams threaded between the lines, along with the quiet ambition to shape, guide, and influence, even in minor  and personal ways, how we might celebrate and what we might eat on the national holiday.

Seventy years later, the proposal seems to represent the exact opposite of Israel’s current standing. That contrast is what led me to revisit the document. This reexamination is made possible thanks to the work of Shoshana Hamagid, a photographer for the Ministry of Education and a former  servicewoman for the Israeli security services, who photographed the menus barely two years after they were conceived , with a fresh and forward-looking approach. Through the lens of her life, and through these food photographs—conveying values such as freshness, dietary variety, and a focus on health—a fuller image of the Zionist vision quietly unfolds.