Miznon, the night after: joy, support and good Israeli food

“Let’s go to Miznon!”

On Saturday, after that Friday night on Shabbat when Israeli restaurant Miznon was attacked – the same night the beautiful East Melbourne Shule was targeted – those words felt like a rally cry.

After so much violence, so much noise, that simple invitation was a kind of defiance. A way to say: We are still here. We show up. We eat together.

And people did. Miznon was full by early evening. There were big tables of Jewish families and friends, yes — but also so many others.

Diners of every background, joyfully eating the cauliflower and playing with the tomatoes that, just the night before, had been thrown as weapons. The night before, when a group of about 20 people, some wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh, upended tables, smashed glasses and a window, and terrified customers in Melbourne's Hardware Lane.

But tonight, the restaurant was alive with the hum of many languages, the clatter of plates and the sound of laughter that felt almost like healing.

As someone whose identity is stitched together from different cultures — Jewish, biracial, migrant — I felt the power of this moment deeply. I’ve lived in those tensions. I’ve seen how easy it is to fracture, to turn against one another. And yet here we were, in a restaurant known for its messy abundance, remaking the broken pieces into something nourishing.