Shavit is the popular face of this no-animal-products dietary revolution in Israel, with her website Vegans on Top, articles and media appearances. But the change is driven by growing challenges to long-held assumptions about health, environmentalism and animal welfare.

“For Israelis, it’s very important to know that no one is bluffing you,” Shavit tells ISRAEL21c.

“If you have been told all your life that you have to eat three dairy products per day, and then you see an exposé about what’s really going on in the dairy industry – or in slaughterhouses or the egg industry — you will realize the lies you’ve been told about your health and animal treatment. Then you can make a real choice.”

Shavit is one of an estimated 200,000 vegans in Israel, out of a population of eight million. Recently, the Israeli organization Vegan Friendly led a successful campaign to persuade Domino’s Pizza to add a vegan option to its Israeli stores’ menu. Other chains, from ice-cream shops to cafés, are following suit.

The year of the vegan

Vegan Friendly’s Omri Paz recently stated that “Israel is leading the vegan revolution around the world.”

That’s not to say most Israelis, or anybody else, are likely to give up eggs and steak forever. But Antonia Molloy, in the UK newspaper The Independent, writes: “2014 could be the year that veganism – often viewed as the preserve of hippies, animal activists and health obsessives – stops being a niche dietary choice and gains new followers.”

In Israel, this means not only more vegan restaurants such as Tel Aviv’s Vegan Shawarma and Buddha Burger, but a mainstream cultural shift.

“Israel is a young country, and we come from all different cultures, so people are more open-minded,” says Shavit. “They are looking for something new, in technology and in food. So this revolution landed in the right place.”

She pinpoints the breakout of this revolution – and her own switchover — to about three years ago, when two Israelis translated the widely viewed YouTube lectures on veganism by American animal-rights activist Gary Yourofsky.

“That started the momentum,” she says. “The vegans were on the fringe of Israeli society until then. People like me suddenly became vegan, and I am the mainstream of the mainstream. I wanted to stay normal and choose to live a normal life but still be vegan. I discovered a lot of people want the same thing.”

Vegan tourism

Shavit fields frequent requests to help restaurants develop animal-free options. The vegan breakfast at Aroma, Israel’s largest coffee chain with 130 branches, includes a chickpea-flour-and-tofu “omelet” that Shavit had a hand in creating.

“This is not just a Tel Aviv trend for rich people,” declares Shavit, the featured speaker at a January press conference announcing the new vegan menu at the 30-branch Landver café chain.

“Restaurants are putting vegan dishes on the menu and marking those dishes so they’re easy to find, so as a customer I will feel welcomed and normal. What is going on here is really remarkable. I don’t think this took hold so quickly and intensely in any other place in the world.”

Café Greg spokeswoman Anat Davis says the chain introduced vegan (in Hebrew, “tivoni”) dishes at many of its 86 branches due to demand. “Our priority is that everyone can come here and find something to eat and enjoy,” she tells ISRAEL21c.

Shavit appears frequently on Israeli TV to show how tasty vegan cuisine can be. Photo by Lenny Ben Basat

Follow this link for the rest of the story: Israel21c

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