The smell of jacket potatoes fills the air as students walk back onto the campus of Tel Aviv University to start the semester.
For the first two weeks of each semester, stands and tents line the walkway along a sculpture garden.
Roey Mantzour, the owner of the potato stand, smiles at his customers as he quickly and efficiently fills out their potato orders.
“The students who came here for the first week—it will be something nice,” Mantzour said.
After the first two weeks, the market opens only once a week.
Mantzour comes for the start of the semester, once in the middle of the semester and for Student Day when the university is filled with concerts, exhibits and stands.
Other business owners set up shop more regularly.
For the past nine years, Marom Gur has opened his jewelry stand at the market almost every week.
Gur attributed his interest in jewelry to his father who worked as a diamond cutter. He and his wife, along with three other people, own jewelry shops nearby. They have been in the jewelry business for about 17 years.
Mantzour’s potato business is also family owned. He works alongside his brother, whom he said is the more business-minded one.
The brothers used to own a restaurant before deciding to do something more mobile.
“We’re like gypsies,” Mantzour said. “We can see Israel every day.”
Daniela Schumiachkin is a more recent face at the market.
Her collection of bags and cases were designed with students in mind, and she has found that in the three years that she’s been at the market the students respond well.
Schumiachkin is currently studying interior design at a nearby school, Holon Institute of Technology.
She said that pop-up markets like this are important because she knows that students do not have the chance to go shopping for all the items available at the market.
“It is to give students more Israeli handmade art,” Schumiachkin said.
~Giana Han
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