Yael Raviv is the author of Falafel Nation: Cui­sine and the Mak­ing of Nation­al Iden­ti­ty in Israel. She will be blog­ging here all week as part of the Vis­it­ing Scribe…

Ear­li­er this week, Par­naz Foroutan wrote about her child­hood deter­mi­na­tion to learn Eng­lish after see­ing a girl who looked just like her on the cov­er of Anne…