Nostalgia Sunday – Tzena, Tzena, Tzena

January 9, 2011 - 10:32 PM by Rachel Neiman

This winter has been a difficult one, not only because of the extreme weather shifts — heat and cold, rain and sand, fire and floods — but because there’s been no butter on the supermarket shelves for weeks (aside from imports which only strengthens my Tnuva conspiracy theory). Anyway, there are food shortages which, we’re being told, are due to years of drought both local and global.

The shortages and their attendant price hikes have created a wave of misplaced longing for the Tzena or Austerity period of Israel’s early statehood, where people lined up with ration books to collect their daily allotment of goods. Yes, one can see the attraction…

Huh? Have we gone crazy? To counteract the trend, Channel 10 brought in local historian David Sela, curator of the amazing Nostalgia Online site, to clear a few cobwebs and dispel any romantic myths that might have developed over the decades. To paraphrase Sela, “The good old days – They were horrible”! Watch the interview for the pictures. A transcript follows.

Male Host: Pay attention, if you have the feeling that at any moment we’re about to go back to the period of…
Female Host: Austerity? That time when there was no butter?
MH: That we’re going back to… well, prices are going up…
FH: There’s no butter…
MH: We always like to complain but…
FH: I really can’t find any butter…
MH: There’s no butter to be had.
FH: There’s no butter to be had.
MH: Not even in a tub?
FH: [Imported] from Holland.
MH: Ah, well… So we turn to David Sela from Nostalgia Online, the man who rummages through all sorts of pictures that are sent to him and presents all sorts of nice things from the past to show us that in the past, in fact, things really were much worse.
FH: But photographed beautifully.
MH: Good morning, how are you?
David Sela: Excellent, how are you?
MH: What were the days of austerity like?
DS: Bad. Awful. Poor. Sad. Gray… all the things they describe.
MH: Lets go back a few years to a more modest period of time in this country… let’s see a few pictures and tell us what we’re seeing.
DS: So, this was a time when there really was no food and so the State entered into a regime of allocations. A government ministry was set up called the Ministry of Supply and Allocation, wherein every neighborhood grocery store turned into a government agency in that every citizen had to register at the store, after which every family received a ration coupon book. Food changed entirely; one cookbook that became a big hit taught you how to cook without ingredients…
MH: What does that mean? How do you cook without ingredients?
FH: Have you heard of stone soup?
DS: The allocation per person was 1600 calories per day only. There was a strict directive. They brought in an international expert whose guidelines were: decide how the amount a person could consume each day without starving to death. And the allocation was a half of loaf of bread per person, per day, 60 grams of corn, of rice, of legumes, but only 0.75 grams of meat per month. Half a bread loaf was a big hit because…
MH: The motto was, not quality but [quantity]… because it was satisfying and gave you strength.
DS: Quality wasn’t the issue. It just had to be satisfying and make people feel [full]. A tax was imposed to help families that couldn’t afford food. Remember, the State of Israel grew from 650,000 to 1.3 million –
MH: That man was…
DS: That was the Minister of Supply and Allocation. He really was a very strict and severe man, Bernard Joseph or Dov Yosef –
Male Host 2: But the grocers were some of the most important people at that time —
DS: Very true. Very true. These OXO cubes that were similar to chicken soup. Everything was ersatz.
MH: What do you mean “similar to”? What were they made of?
MH 2: Mainly poison.
DS: That’s unclear but it was like it. There wasn’t any fruit so they manufactured a compote that was reminiscent of the taste of fruit. That factory was set up precisely for this purpose. At that time, a significant portion of the population — which had grown from 650,000 to 1.3 million — lived in shanty-towns and suffered doubly. There were always requests for donations. Another example of ersatz: this was milk powder. It wasn’t milk but it resembled, gave the impression, a feeling, a sense, a resemblance…
MH 2: A far cry from Materna.
DS: “Grow vegetables beside your home.” The government asked the citizens to alleviate the pressure on the supply system —
FH: Home farming?
DS: Exactly! Exactly that. Try growing yourselves because we, the government, aren’t capable of providing for you. LaKol — a whole industry developed not only in foodstuffs but also in — they rationed not only food but also furniture, clothing, footwear. They called it LaKol [everyman's] fashion. It was very plain fashion. ATA [manufacturing and retail chain], for example, developed during those years.
MH: What are those tablets?
DS: Chicory, a coffee substitute. There was no foreign currency, no coffee imports so they made-believe with tablets —
MH: What are they made of?
DS: In my opinion, the ingredients are obscure to this very day. There were artificial colorings and flavorings…
MH: And these were manufactured in Israel?
DS: Manufactured in Israel. Ration cards. The grocery store became the most important institution in the State of Israel If you had an argument with your grocer, you were in big trouble.
MH 2: He’d give you the smaller half a loaf.
DS: Exactly. Egg powder. There were no eggs. In fact, the whole matter of protein was problematic because they weren’t imported. So they produced a kind of powder that resembled eggs. Everything was ersatz. It was a period that lasted four years…
MH: And we complain that we don’t have…
FH: …Dutch butter.
DS: We’re spoiled today. We talk about prices rising and maybe reverting to the austerity period. We’ll never return to austerity. At that time, we had a Socialist government, it was okay with the Labor party for everyone to be equal in terms of food allocation. Today, we live in a different world.
MH: Where 2 villas sell for 145 million shekel.
MH 2: There was a black market…
DS: We didn’t get a chance to talk about the black market. A black market developed in which you could buy things under the table. Whoever had a cousin or a relative living on a kibbutz was set for life. “Children of Cream” — those were the kibbutzniks. The expression came into being because if you were a kibbutznik then you had access to cream. All the others… suffered a bit.
FH: All the others were Children of Sour Cream.