בין "זולליה" ו"בולפוסיה" לגן הירק: ייצוגים של אוכל בעיתוני הילדים בתקופת הצנע

The early years of Israel’s statehood were a period of economic shortage and fiscal crisis, to which the government responded with a policy of strict austerity. This policy was vital to the very existence of the young state, in which food was rationed and limited to basic staples. As children’s journals played a major role in the project of nation building, they were called upon to boost the legitimacy of the austerity regime.The journals’ treatment of austerity depicted a rather harsh reality, expressing the explicit expectation that children should join in and do their part in the national struggle for survival. Children were urged to demonstrate restraint and understanding in the face of difficult circumstances and were even asked to play an active role in efforts to help increase the food supply, for instance, by cultivating domestic vegetable plots or replacing adults in queuing for food.Yet, the journals also devoted some space to descriptions of entirely different scenarios which softened their depictions of the harsh reality. Tales and reports of distant or imagined places offered alternative food scenes of exotic abundance,diversity, and luxury, in sharp contrast to the general line of modesty and making-do-with-less that was typical of the journals’ portrayal of the here and now. In these remote or fantastical worlds, young readers could encounter lavish feasts and fancy meals at which people dined like kings and rationing was unheard of. Such descriptions introduced, subversively, and through the back door, a reality in which heaps of delicious, unattainable food were meticulously described and presented as a matter of course, but were always juxtaposed with the immediate reality in which only scanty gastronomic options were available