Spreading Peace
When she moved from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv in 2010, Cecilia Sibony introduced tahini into her kitchen. She was just looking for a healthier alternative to mayonnaise and sour cream, but little did she know that the sesame paste would one day be at the center of her business venture—and a possible synonym of peacemaking in the Middle East.
Back home, in California, Sibony had tasted tahini in her parents’ house—her father is an Israeli, so the family was no stranger to it—but the quality of this one, in Israel, was so much better, she thought. She started experimenting with it, using it as a dip, as a dressing for roasted vegetables and grain bowls, as a spread on sandwiches, as an ingredient for baba ganoush, and even as an ingredient for cookies. Since then, tahini (tahina, in Arabic) has never left her kitchen. But when she moved back to the States to attend graduate school a few years later, she struggled to find it in the supermarkets, and when she found it, it wasn’t as good as the one she used to eat in Israel.