Hebrew Folklore and the Problem of Exile

He had a typical Jewish countenance, even more typically Jewish eyes, but his head was held high, his movement was free, and on his face an expression of pride and calm assurance. In his entire figure, no trace of exile! I have never seen such freedom from exile among the assimilated Jews in Petersburg.

—S. An-ski, describing his first meeting with I. L. Peretz, 1909 (Gezamelte Shriftn [Warsaw, 1928], Vol. 10, p. 155)

Critics of Zionism have devoted considerable attention to the notion ofnegation of exile (shelilat ha-galut). Whether they deconstruct Zionist myths or construct new foundations of Jewish collective memory grounded in notions of exile, these observers share the view that the negation of exile is the defining element of Zionism. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin begins his much-discussed on article on shelilat ha-galut with the following observation:

The concept shelilat ha-galut embodies within it the essence of the predominant trend in Zionist ideology, and from it are derived different aspects of Israeli cultural existence. This concept comprises a central axis in an all-embracing worldview, which defines the self-consciousness of the Jews of Israel and forms their notion of history and collective memory. From it are derived various cultural practices which form Zionist/Israeli identity and reflect it.¹

Ella Shohat echoes this sweeping judgment: "The Leitmotif of Zionist texts is the cry to form a 'normal civilized nation,' without the myriad 'distortions' and forms of pariahdom typical of the Diaspora."²

If these critics are correct in arguing that Zionists viewed Jewish existence in the Diaspora as "flawed, partial and abnormal—a reality in which 'the spirit of the nation' could not come to full expression," what are we to make of Hebrew folklore and ethnography?³ Beginning just before the outbreak of World War I and continuing well after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, leading Hebrew cultural activists in the Diaspora and in Palestine set out to gather the jokes, fables, songs, and customs of the Jewish people and transform them into folklor 'Ivri (Hebrew folklore). This project necessarily entailed an encounter with contemporary Jewish life in the Diaspora, with Jews who did not speak Hebrew—in sum, with the very exilic culture they hoped to transform. Moreover, by revealing an enormously diverse array of customs and traditions among far-flung Jewish communities, folklore collection posed a serious challenge to the Zionist impulse to create a unified Hebrew nation.

Hebrew folklorists themselves recognized the ambivalent position of their field of research within the Zionist movement. In the first volume of a Hebrew folklore journal published in Palestine in 1946, the editor rebuked the Hebrew-reading public for its obsession with the glories of the ancient past and consequent neglect of contemporary Jewish mores and customs.⁴ Even the frequent use of the modifying adjective 'Ivri (Hebrew) rather than Yehudi (??Jewish) to describe their object of study is significant, testifying to a desire to gain distance from the Jewishness of the Diaspora. Though 'Ivri is often translated to mean "Jew," the two have different, perhaps even opposing, meanings within the universe of Zionist discourse. The former is undoubtedly a conscious allusion to the 'Ivrim (Hebrews) of the biblical past, at a comfortable remove from the Yid/Jude/Yehudi of the degraded present. Hence, folklor 'Ivri refers to both folklore in Hebrew and folklore by "Hebrews."⁵

This preference for the timelessness of Hebrew over time-bound Yiddish has its parallel in the Zionist denigration of the concrete here and now of life in the Diaspora. Rejecting the passivity and rootlessness that afflicted Jews as a consequence of 2,000 years in exile, activists in the movement looked to antiquity—to the kings and warriors of ancient Israel, the Maccabees, and the defenders of Masada as models for a new Hebrew nation in the Land of Israel.⁶ They sought to transform passive victims of history into active makers of history and oppressed, weak Jews into strong, independent Hebrews. A. D. Gordon, one of the spiritual fathers of Labor Zionism, believed that it was necessary to create...