Centuries-Old Palestinian Rituals at Risk

The West Bank Matriarchs Keeping Tradition Alive

I visited Battir, a verdant village in the West Bank, to observe women cleaning locally produced cracked wheat together, a centuries-old ritual that is slowly being lost.

Here’s what I saw →

The West Bank Matriarchs Keeping Tradition Alive

When someone is getting married, it is traditional for elderly Palestinian women to clean cracked wheat for a dinner that will feed the village, and to sing and dance to celebrate the bride and groom.

The West Bank Matriarchs Keeping Tradition Alive

Singing and clapping is an important part of the ritual of readying the wheat for use in a lamb dish for the wedding.

The West Bank Matriarchs Keeping Tradition Alive

Samar Hazboun for The New York Times

Such rituals, passed from mother to daughter, are dying out as once rural Palestinian villages and towns become more urbanized, and with the difficulty of access to farmland controlled by Israel.

The West Bank Matriarchs Keeping Tradition Alive

Samar Hazboun for The New York Times

Recipes too are passed down the generations, often infused with a sense of loss and belonging. In Haifa, I met Mariam Sindawi who inherited recipes from her late mother, which she then shared with her granddaughter.

The West Bank Matriarchs Keeping Tradition Alive

Mrs. Sindawi has a family recipe for mussakhan, a Palestinian dish of spice-infused, chicken with ground sumac, which sits on a bed of taboon bread covered with caramelized onions.

The West Bank Matriarchs Keeping Tradition Alive

Samar Hazboun for The New York Times

The trick, Mrs. Sindawi said, is to use organic ground sumac and freshly harvested olive oil from her ancestral village of Jish. Adding spices and Persian lemon helps to get rid of the scent of raw chicken, she said.