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Food

Artisanal Israeli Products at Your Doorstep

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.

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