How to Dress up in Eretz Israel, 1880S–1948: a Visual Approach to Clothing, Fashion and Nation Building

INFS 6 (2) pp. 217–237 Intellect Limited 2019 International Journal of Fashion Studies Volume 6 Number 2 © 2019 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/infs_00006_1 svenja BethKe University of Leicester, United Kingdom how to dress up in Eretz Israel, 1880s–1948: a visual approach to clothing, fashion and nation building aBstract Keywords This article provides a methodological approach to the integration of Zionist photo- Jewish migration graphs into research on the pre-state Jewish community in Eretz Israel from the nation building end of the nineteenth century until the foundation of the Jewish state in 1948. By Eretz Israel focusing on dress, and drawing on visual culture and fashion studies, the article Yishuv highlights the role of the individual in nation building and foregrounds the influence Zionism of various migrant groups in the emergence of a national project. While scholarship male dress has largely ignored the role of dress, and especially male dress, in pre-state settings, visual culture the article takes the example of Eretz Israel to show how examining dress in Zionist photography photographs sheds light on the experimental and transnational character in search of a new Hebrew culture. By examining three photographs of socialist Zionist groups of the second Aliyah, the article shows how male Zionist settlers integrated transnational dressing habits and fantasies about their imagined homeland. They created a new way of dressing as an expression of political agendas that were interconnected with the reinvention of a new image of the male Jew. Looking beyond the case study of Eretz Israel, the article stresses the broader relevance of dress in the nego- tiations and power struggles at the micro level of a pre-state community and the emergence of national clothing ideals. It concludes by outlining ways of refining the 217 06_INFS_6.2_Bethke_217-237.indd 217 10/10/19 11:00 AM Svenja Bethke methodological approach, and suggesting future research avenues at the intersection of fashion studies and nation building by shifting the focus towards case studies prior to the existence of national fashion systems. Introduction There is a striking black-and-white photograph taken at the beginning of the twentieth century in one of the Jewish settlements in Palestine, Moshav Ein Ganim, established in 1908 near Petakh Tikva. A group of people standing in a field are looking at the cameraman who captured them (Figure 1). Everyone in the photograph is dressed differently: a woman lying on the ground in front of the group, one arm propped up to hold her head, is wearing an elegant bright dress with quilling. Some of the men wear the fez, the official headwear for men in the Ottoman Empire, and bright Russian peasant shirts. Other men have bright scarves as keffiyehs on their heads, as was common among Arab Bedouins. Some of those photographed are holding tools, as if they comple- mented their outfits. The people pictured were part of the large-scale migration movement that took place between 1882 and 1914; about 70,000 Jewish people from Eastern Europe came to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, or as they saw it the ‘Land of Israel’ – Eretz Israel. Having escaped anti-Semitic pogroms in the Russian Empire and hoping for a better economic future, they were influenced by Zionist ideas, which advocated the return of the Jewish People to what they thought of as their historical homeland. The majority of them had worked as artisans and in small businesses, often in the textile industry and sweatshops; some of them had experience in agriculture (Frankel 1981: 3). While they were united in their aim to settle in Palestine, the diversity of the Zionist movement was reflected in a broad range of parties and youth groups, with differing religious and political agendas. The immigrants of the first Figure 1: Jewish settlers in Moshav Ein Ganim, after 1908. The Oded Yarkoni Historical Archives of Petakh Tikva. Sign. 002-002/2514. 218 International Journal of Fashion Studies 06_INFS_6.2_Bethke_217-237.indd 218 10/10/19 11:00 AM How to dress up in Eretz Israel, 1880s–1948 Aliyah (‘immigration wave’) between 1882 and 1903, as part of the so-called Hibat Zion groups, established the first agricultural settlements, often with the financial support of large capitalist plantation owners. However, immigrants of the second Aliyah between 1904 and 1914 were largely influenced by socialist ideas (Neumann 2011; Shapira 1992; Frankel 1981; Mendelsohn 1993; Penslar 1991; Vital 1987a, 1987b). Disappointed by the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, the settlers were aiming to realize a Zionist version of socialism in Eretz Israel. The Zionist movement in the second half of the nineteenth century was inherently transnational in character. The many different Zionist groups that existed in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe, all aimed to mobilize Jews across national boundaries in order to build a new national homeland in Palestine. In his monograph Prophecy and Politics (1981), historian Jonathan Frankel portrayed this migration movement as resulting from the failure of emancipation. The migrants had shifted their focus towards what the influential Zionist thinker Lev Pinsker called in 1882 ‘self-emancipation’, which was national and socialist in character: ‘the conviction that the Jewish question could not – and would not – be solved by the grant of equal rights from above nor by a return to the status quo ante of traditional Judaism, but had to be won by total change, collective action, political planning, and organization’ (Frankel 1981: 2). Scholars like Frankel have conducted crucial research into political consid- erations, organizational skills and networks of the socialist Zionist settlers, and innovative research on Zionism has started to emphasize the importance of cultural practices in nation building (Saposnik 2008; Campos 2011; Jacobson 2011; Almog 2000; Halperin 2015; Berkowitz 1996, 2004; Presner 2010; Spiegel 2013). Yet the role of clothing and photography has received little attention. In scholarship and beyond, the notion seems to be prevailing that socialist Zionists, especially men, had more important things to worry about than what to wear. This article will argue otherwise. While the Zionist settlers discussed dress only to a limited extent, one of their major aims was the creation of political and social cohesion. Dress, expressed in an emerging Zionist visual culture, played a key role in realizing this ideal. While this visual culture also included expressions such as painting, printmaking, architecture and design, this article will focus explicitly on photography (Berkowitz 1996; Arbel 1996; Silver- Brody 1998; Oren 1995; Sela 2003). As the popularization of photography at the beginning of the twentieth century correlated with the strengthening of the Zionist movement, it is possible to investigate how the Zionist settlers made use of this new medium in the creation and anchoring of their (sartorial) ideals, not only in a local, but in a transnational dimension. We do not know who took the photograph of the variously dressed migrants. Yet, given the time period, we can assume that taking the picture required some preparation and a person who knew how to take a photograph. When the photographic process was invented in 1839, taking photographs was marked by long technical preparation for the photographer and the sitters in photographic studios (Gernsheim and Gernsheim 1969; Newhall 2009). Subsequently, various inventors endeavoured to improve and accelerate the process, but it was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that cameras became available to the wider public. However, photography was mainly practised by the upper middle classes in North America and Western Europe; the invention of the Brownie range of Kodak cameras allowed them to take snapshots outdoors, at an affordable price (Pasternak 2015, 2013). With companies focusing on the Western European market, access to cameras in Eastern Europe was far more www.intellectbooks.com 219 06_INFS_6.2_Bethke_217-237.indd 219 10/10/19 11:00 AM Svenja Bethke 1. While throughout the limited (Dobroszycki and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1977). It is thus unlikely nineteenth century, small groups of that ordinary Eastern European immigrants to Eretz Israel had brought such Maskilim in Eastern cameras with them. It is fair to assume that the picture from Moshav Ein Europe had already Ganim had been planned in advance and that the photographed knew before- aimed to modernize the Hebrew language, hand that a picture would be taken that day. Despite our limited information expressed in secular about the picture, it seems as if the photographed gave some thought to what literature as part of the to wear and were choosing clothes and poses with care. Yet they had different enlightenment era, it was the Zionist groups ideas on what the ideal dress for the occasion was. at the turn of the This article highlights the relevance of early photographs of Zionist groups century that linked the revival of the language with a focus on dress to bring to the fore a subtle and yet very personal dimen- with their new national sion of nation building. It will suggest how to apply approaches from visual agenda and the call culture and fashion studies to explore how Jewish immigrants to Eretz Israel for immigration to Palestine. from the 1880s until the foundation of the state in 1948 used dress in visual representations to express feelings of belonging and the search for a new Hebrew culture1 (Glinert 2011) in the creation of a national project. It focuses on the socialist Zionists of the second Aliyah to investigate how they integrated previous experiences and political ideas from their countries of origin to anchor visual and sartorial expressions of their new ideology. The article focuses specifically on men, arguing that the creation of a new male Jewish identity was crucial to Zionist ideology.

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