Tamra, Land of Amazing Dairy

Last week I bought a liter of yogurt that really blew my mind. It was a little sour, but not overwhelmingly so. It had a great consistency - not too thin or thick. It comes in a large jug. Since a lot of food here comes with the phone number of who made it, I called up the Rajab dairy and asked to come on a tour of the factory. So at 9 AM on Friday I got off the bus at the entrance to Tamra, a Muslim town of 26,000 about 20 minutes away from the city of Akko in the north of Israel.


The factory is a bright teal building topped by a massive white sign in Arabic and Hebrew at the entrance to Tamra. The factory floor is downstairs, where workers in blue suits and white rubber boots take milk and turn it into yogurt, labane and cheese. In one area of the factory, giant yellow bags hung, dripping whey onto the floor as labane hardened inside. In another, a machine spun plastic sheeting into little bags to hold the labane, which is a white spread between cream cheese and yogurt.

Labane in large cloth sacks, which are washed and reused.

Eyal Hen, a truck driver, showing the scale of the bags.

Labane goes into bags on the factory floor; the workers spend a lot of time horsing around.

Rajab is owned by seven brothers who inherited the plant from their father, Mustafa Abu Rumi. The dairy was founded around 50 years ago, and grew from a local outfit into a national brand. Rajab is the largest dairy run by Palestinian-Israelis, and it's also one of the biggest businesses run by Palestinian-Israelis, according to Hashem Abu Rumi, one of the dairy's owners.


Umaima, the wife of Mahmoud Abu Rumi (another brother/owner), makes lunch for the workers each day. They plowed into hummus, ful, cheese, pitas and vegetables.

Mahmoud holding the labane and brinza he gave me as a sample to take home.

Mahmoud and Umaima fight over whether she should be in the picture or not at the factory's entrance.


Like the factory, the town of Tamra is also warm and friendly.


I walked around for an hour before going to Rajab and asked a family if I could photograph them drinking coffee. "Come and join us!" they insisted, and poured me Turkish coffee, then brought out zaatar-covered pita and olives. Here are Ahmed and Musa. Ahmed's mother declined to be photographed.

The buildings are different colors like blue, pink and orange.

Tractors drive through the streets in the morning.

These are blankets printed with the face of Fulla, the Islamic barbie doll.

And Tamra, just like most Israeli cities, has cats digging in its trash cans.