Artisanal Israeli Products at Your Doorstep
Artisanal products from Israel can arrive once a month, courtesy of Blue Box. Image by Courtesy of Blue Box
You could fly back and forth to Israel to keep up with the food and design scenes. But Emily Berg might have a better idea.
Emily Berg, founder of Blue Box, at Levinsky spice market in Tel Aviv. Image by Courtesy of Blue Box
She’s the founder of Blue Box, which delivers hand-picked gift boxes every month with goods sourced from artisan businesses in Israel, from kibbutzim to factories to home-based companies to collectives.
Along with familiar products like olives and hummus, Berg has also dug deep to find rarefied goods like fair-trade organic olive oil, soaps and za’atar from Sindyanna of Galilee, a women-led NGO that promotes coexistence between Jews and Arabs, She’s also sourced handwoven baskets made by Kuchinate, a collective of African refugee women in South Tel Aviv.
Berg says she visits each vendor and curates each box herself; she’s shipped more than 1,000 boxes so far.
Michael Kaminer is a contributing editor at the Forward.
