It’s like a tradition.
Whenever I’m at my old stomping grounds, I pop by my former neighborhood’s falafel joint.
Now I know — everyone claims their falafel place is the absolute best.
But, without getting into the merits of the various amazing falafel joints across Jerusalem, and Israel (yes, I could write a column on that alone), trust me.
This place, legit.
Is the best.
And to boot, it just so happens to be the longest running falafel shop in Israel.
It started as a falafel wagon in 1945.
Today, Shalom Falafel is still a hole in the wall in its original location, just on the opposite side of Betzalel Street in the heart of Jerusalem.
So as I was waiting there in line the other day, someone turned to new customers also waiting in line, reinforcing their good judgement in trying this place out, by telling them they have come to the best falafel there is.
“It really is,” piped up an elderly gentleman on my left, as he cupped the loaded-to-the-max falafel pita he had just been handed, replete with a golden fried fritter cloaked in dripping creamy white tahini, balancing precariously at the top of the open, rounded pita.
“My son worked here decades ago. And every Shabbat I daven next to Shalom’s son Yossi — as he points to the smiling photograph of the original owner on the wall.”
“What shul do you pray at,”
I asked the gentleman.
“Beit Knesset Shai Agnon,” he replied.
“And what is the reason the shul is named for Israel’s Nobel laureate in literature, Shmuel Yosef (Shai) Agnon).”
“Because it’s where he prayed” (duh).
“Yes, Shai Agnon’s beit knesset, synagogue, on Leib Yafe Street.”
“Shalom (Falafel) repaired Torah scrolls. He was a scribe,” as the gentleman points again to the photograph of Shalom frying falafel with a huge grin on his face.
“It’s simply the best falafel,” the gentleman mutters under his breath as he departs the tiny squished space to make way for the next customer.
And that, my friends, is all in the span of seconds, as I awaited my turn at the humble falafel joint. An elevated Jerusalem falafel experience.
When I’m in Israel, I come to the shuk weekly to run errands.
Shalom Falafel is my starting point. (I suppose Ishould mention that there is a prevailing opinion out there that Ayeesha’s herbaceous verdant green falafel fritters over on Tapuach Alley in fact count as the best.) Then I meander down a street or two in or around Jerusalem’s famed, charming Nachla’ot neighborhood for pure pleasure, passing open cobbled courtyards with perhaps a delicate tangled elegance of tiny, open star-shaped petals in luminous white with Jasmine flower shrubs peeking through, or passing doors adorned with blooming magenta plants whose overlapping trio of subtly crinkled tissue-paperish leaves take on the shape of flowers.
These vintage looking streets reminiscent of Old World Jerusalem are a confluence of color, cookery, character and holiness.
There are the shuls, the batei Knesset, and various houses of prayer. Most of them, transplants from their Middle East or North African communities, where treatment of Jews began to sour, and so, in a combination of fleeing the emerging persecution combined with a pioneering spirit of returning to the land that the Jews had been exiled from, fledgling groups began to arrive in the Holy Land. And so, these shuls were erected decades before the founding of modern Israel.
To name just a couple.
There’s the crown jewel in this neighborhood, Adas. Founded in 1901 by the Jewish Aleppo Adas family from Syria.
Around the corner, on the primary path to the Mahane Yehuda Souk, or “the Shuk,” the market, as it’s called, is the Lovers of Zion synagogue in the middle of the road, founded in 1906, 120 years old.
Characterizing both shuls are arches of ancient Jerusalem-looking stone, engraved with biblical verses and Hebrew lettering indicating the year of their founding. As well, there are perhaps turquoise or cobalt blue shuttered windows or stained glass windows, and hand-painted ceramic tiles indicating an address.
Artistic art-studio shingles hang outside some of the crammed red roof houses on the lamp lined streets in the the rest of this charming little shuk-adjacent neighborhood.
Students are also part of the landscape, often renting little studios until they graduate. It’s common to see piles of books for the taking on a stoop at the edge of one of the alleyways, indicating a student has completed his or her studies and is moving out.
On this day there was a small pile of books in French.
As I get closer to the shuk, often plastered on the street walls are black-and-white mourning signs, notifying — poetically and endearingly, I might add — a saintly tzaddik’s recent passing. For just at the threshold of the shuk is a study house for mystics. A slit in the wall allows for slipping through money for charity, anonymously.
On the other side of the threshold to the shuk is a little traffic roundabout called “Kol Yisrael Chaverim, All of Israel Are Friends,” its acronym being KY”(a)CH — it’s called KY”CH Square. Many other street names and alleyways on that side of the shuk are indeed very special too (but that will have to be for a different column).
This is all the prelude to the shuk, part of the experience of arriving there from the Agrippas Street entrance.
Such is the compressed Jerusalem feeling that imbues the air, even before you take one step and cross into the stimulating and colorful world of this Middle Eastern market, whose alleys bare names like “Strawberry,” “Peach,” “Plum” or “Walnut,” a grid of alleyways that replete with a melange of sights, sounds, scents and flavors. Hundreds of people jostle for their bargains, treats or wares.
There is a “basta,” literally a market stall, in homage to their beginnings — a shop for nearly anything you can imagine.
Aside from the abundant produce, dry goods, cooking and kitchen wares, aside from spices and cones of deep red paprika or turmeric gold, aside from barrels upon barrels of olives in a spectrum of shades of green and even purple, all accented with preserved lemons, roasted hot peppers or garlic confit — aside from the towering halva cakes, the ginormous pots and pans of piping hot kubbe meat wrapped dumplings side by side with Kurdish chamusta in yellow and beet-infused, fuschia-colored Iraqi ones — never mind the platters displaying the art of stuffed vegetables — aside from all that and so much more are the beloved shuk vendors and characters you come to know.
The foodie aspect has definitely been cultivated at this food capital within the capital.
There are still many of the original stalls that are synonymous with the shuk, such as Hummus Rachmo, the original “mis’a’dat poalim, blue collar joint, where the original menu had only three items on it. Hummus. Rice and beans. Meatballs. That’s it.
Today there’s a bit more on offer, but Rachmo, who hailed from Urfa — between Turkey and Syria — and whose grandchildren continued with the family business, has been faithful to preserving its original simple character. And recipes. To go there is to grab a bite of 1954.
Across from Rachmo is a Georgian place, specializing in khatchpuri (khatch meaning cheese and puri meaning bread). Hence, a baked khatchpuri cheese bread. The wall is painted with a map of Georgia, indicating the source of the different types of khatchpuri. For example, the megruuli (was that the one with a sunny- side-up egg) hails from Samegrels and Zemo Svaneti.
Mousseline, a dainty ice cream shop where you can enjoy the lovliest grapefruit basil sorbet, plus all the classic flavors, serves scoops of Middle Eastern saffron ice cream and black sesame flavor too. Actually, they are delicious.
A sense of Jewish history can be found within the culinary here at The Etrogman (a column unto itself) with his healthy “Maimonides Drink,” the recipe drawn from Maimonides’ medical writings.
There are the honey drenched knafe pastry merry-go-rounds in heated round pans; at the center a silver teapot sits on a blue gas flame.
There are the baklava pastry formulations, which at times their aesthetic presentation is reminiscent of an Incan Machu Picchu complex.
Pyramids of scarlet crowned pomegranates bursting with seeds are ubiquitous. Distinctly scented guavas with their elusive floral and musky edge that signal autumn here, have arrived. So too has the elegant uniformity of ripened purple and green stemmed figs, uncluttered in their linear presentation, making for stunning visual and olfactory joy.
Marzipan bakery is legendary for its oozing pull apart moist and soft chocolate rugelach, tucked into pans by the half dozen, glossy as can be from the sugar syrup they are painted with.
Even the popular Parisienne trend (which I have never tried) of molded fruit-shaped ice cream, where you bite into say a huge looking pink raspberry for raspberry flavored ice cream (or, think mango, coffee bean, etc) has reached the shuk.
But underneath all that nouveau and fancy tier, the core shuk remains.
The ubiquitous Turkish coffee shops (and artisinal ones too), the guys sitting around playing sheshbesh, backgammon, the ultimate treat still being the simplicity of a luxury kind of large plump Medjool bon bon date snuggled into a gold box delineated by tessellations, creating an art all its own.
This time, I noticed a large group of men — more than usual — sitting around shooting the breeze. It wasn’t at a coffee shop, though, so it caught my attention.
“We’re waiting for Bibi.” (This day at the shuk was before the election.) “He’s bound to come any day.” Camera equipment was on the table before them.
Ah. The media. As it turned out, the international media too.
“Him. He’s been waiting here since last Sunday,” one of the men grins as the photojournalist in question, who grins back.
So you also just never know who or what adventure you’ll come across at the shuk on any given day.
More than anything, though, there’s that shopping and preparing for Shabbat vibe here, like no other. Sure, during the week is the nurturing and creative shuk market element, the meal prep shopping for cooking tasty meals for loved ones. For non-Jews, too. I passed two Armenian priests outfitted in their black clerical vestments. As well as Arab Israeli women. Ultimately, though, Thursdays and Fridays — even starting on Wednesdays — for young and old alike, for religious or secular, Sephardi or Ashkenazi, the shuk transforms into an intense, at once both frenetic and laid back — a grand central Shabbat prep like you wouldn’t believe.
KY”CH.
At the shuk, even within this very tense election season where each element of society feels the future of Israel hangs in the balance and her future depends on this election, All of Israel Are Friends.
Around here, at the shuk in Jerusalem, it’s tradition.
© IJN 2026
