Embodying Hebrew Culture: Aesthetics, Athletics, and Dance in the Jewish Community of Mandate Palestine

Notes

| 187 | Notes Introduction 1. The dancing in the streets in celebration of the Declaration of the State of Israel can be seen in the film The Day Came, directed by Shmuel Schweig. 2. Regarding terms for the area, Palestine is the official name for the region in the Mandate era. The Jewish community used the term Eretz Israel, which literally means the “Land of Israel” and stems from Jewish tradition, connoting sacredness without defining specific borders. In adjectival form, Eretz Israeli is a term the Jewish community used to describe itself at this time. See Shapira, Land and Power, ix. 3. Arieh Bruce Saposnik’s seminal work on the development of Hebrew culture in the Ottoman era uncovers critical foundations set during the decade before World War I. Nonetheless, Hebrew culture solidified during the British Mandate era. Saposnik, Becoming Hebrew. 4. For further discussion on the significance of—and debates over—creating national communities in European nationalism, see, for instance, Anderson, Imagined Communities; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism; and Hobsbawm, Nations. 5. For a further discussion of Herzl’s attention to symbols, see Mosse, Confronting the Nation, 124–25. Herzl’s wishes were also expressed in his diary when he wrote about his desires for folk and national festivals throughout the country. Y. Shavit and Sitton, Staging and Stagers, 21–22. 6. For instance, the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901 featured the first visual arts exhibition. Concerts and communal singing were important components of the congresses, 188 | Notes to Introduction including the singing of “Hatikvah” (The Hope), which was to become the national anthem of the state. Jewish sports presentations were also a significant feature. At the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1903 there was an international Jewish Gymnastics Day. Cultural components continued to expand at the congresses and incorporated new activities, such as a movie and a play by the Eleventh Zionist Congress in 1913. See Berkowitz, Zionist Culture, 20–23; Presner, Muscle Judaism, 122; and Schmidt, Art and Artists, 2, 7. 7. Mosse, Confronting the Nation, 7; and Mosse, Nationalization. See also Ozouf, Festivals; and Roshwald, Endurance of Nationalism. 8. Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 5–6; Petrone, Life. 9. See, for instance, Saposnik, Becoming Hebrew; Helman, Or ve-yam hikifuha; Helman, Young Tel Aviv; Mann, A Place in History; and Y. Shavit and Sitton, Staging and Stagers. Although there have been some important studies investigating the role of the body in both contemporary Israel and the Yishuv, they have focused primarily on literature and health. See, for instance, Gluzman, Ha-guf ha-tsiyoni; Sered, What Makes Women Sick?; and Weiss, The Chosen Body. 10. See, for instance, S. Almog, Zionism and History; Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct; Mosse, Confronting the Nation; and Presner, Muscle Judaism. 11. For an important new study on Jewish lives during the Mandate era, see Divine, Exiled in the Homeland. 12. Shaffer, Public Culture, xiv. For a further discussion on public culture in a variety of societies, see Walkowitz and Knauer, Contested Histories. 13. For a discussion on the relationship between the urban landscape, the natural environment , and the moving body in the development of Tel Aviv and its culture, see Spiegel, “Constructing the City of Tel Aviv.” 14. Although I am dealing with the concept of socialist Zionism here as a unified whole, I want to clarify that there were different competing strains within this broad grouping. 15. O. Almog, The Sabra. 16. See, for instance, Bernstein, Pioneers and Homemakers; and Fuchs, Israeli Women’s Studies. 17. See, for instance, Chapter 4 and the case of Gurit Kadman. Many choreographers lived in urban areas but choreographed in the kibbutzim, such as Yardena Cohen, who is discussed in Chapter 3. 18. The National Dance Competition has not been addressed before. The first Maccabiah Games have been largely overlooked. Some studies have mentioned the first Maccabiah Games in passing or have mostly focused on the second Maccabiah Games. See, for instance, Helman, Or ve-yam hikifuha; and Helman, Young Tel Aviv. A doctoral dissertation by George Eisen and a piece by Chaim Wein contain data on the first Maccabiah Games but do not provide the detailed and extensive analysis or context provided here. See Eisen, “The Maccabiah Games”; and Wein, The Maccabiah Games. Although there has been some material on the first two Dalia Notes to Introduction | 189 Festivals in 1944 and 1947, most of it has focused on the later Dalia Festivals after...