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A 'Coat of Many Colors' investigates Israel's first seven years as
a sovereign state through the unusual prism of dress. Clothes worn
by Israelis in the 1950s reflected political ideologies, economic
conditions, military priorities, social distinctions, and cultural
preferences, and all played a part in consolidating a new national
identity. Based on a wide range of textual and visual historical
documents, the book covers both what Israelis wore in various
circumstances and what they said and wrote about clothing and
fashion. Written in a clear and accessible style that will appeal
to the general reader as well as to students and scholars, 'A Coat
of Many Colors' introduces the reader both to Israel's history
during its formative years and to the rich field of dress culture.
With a light touch and many wonderful illustrations, historian Anat
Helman investigates "life on the ground" in Israel during the first
years of statehood. She looks at how citizens--natives of the land,
longtime immigrants, and newcomers--coped with the state's efforts
to turn an incredibly diverse group of people into a homogenous
whole. She investigates the efforts to make Hebrew the lingua
franca of Israel, the uses of humor, and the effects of a constant
military presence, along with such familiar aspects of daily life
as communal dining on the kibbutz, the nightmare of trying to board
a bus, and moviegoing as a form of escapism. In the process Helman
shows how ordinary people adapted to the standards and rules of the
political and cultural elites and negotiated the chaos of early
statehood.
Practical Zionism in the Mandate era (1920-1948) is usually
associated with agricultural settlements (kibbutzim), organized
socialist workers, and the creation of a formal high culture. This
book fills a gap in historical research by presenting a different
type of practical Zionism in Jewish Palestine--urban, middle-class,
and created by popular and informal daily practices. While research
on Tel Aviv has so far been confined to "positivist" historical
description or focused nostalgically on local myths, Helman's book
reconstructs and analyzes the city's formative decades on various
levels, juxtaposing historical reality with cultural images and
ideological doctrines. Topics include the city's physical portrait,
major public events, consumer culture, patterns of leisure and
entertainment, and urban subcultures.
For many centuries Jews have been renowned for the efforts they put
into their children's welfare and education. Eventually,
prioritizing children became a modern Western norm, as reflected in
an abundance of research in fields such as pediatric medicine,
psychology, and law. In other academic fields, however, young
children in particular have received less attention, perhaps
because they rarely leave written documentation. The
interdisciplinary symposium in this volume seeks to overcome this
challenge by delving into different facets of Jewish childhood in
history, literature, and film. No Small Matter visits five
continents and studies Jewish children from the 19th century
through the present. It includes essays on the demographic patterns
of Jewish reproduction; on the evolution of bar and bat mitzvah
ceremonies; on the role children played in the project of Hebrew
revival; on their immigrant experiences in the United States; on
novels for young Jewish readers written in Hebrew and Yiddish; and
on Jewish themes in films featuring children. Several contributions
focus on children who survived the Holocaust or the children of
survivors in a variety of settings ranging from Europe, North
Africa, and Israel to the summer bungalow colonies of the Catskill
Mountains. In addition to the symposium, this volume also features
essays on a transformative Yiddish poem by a Soviet Jewish author
and on the cultural legacy of Lenny Bruce.
Food is not just a physical necessity but also a composite
commodity. It is part of a communication system, a nonverbal medium
for expression, and a marker of special events. Bringing together
contributions from fourteen historians, anthropologists,
sociologists, and literary critics, Volume XXVIII of Studies in
Contemporary Jewry presents various viewpoints on the subtle and
intricate relations between Jews and their foodways. The ancient
Jewish community ritualized and codified the sphere of food; by
regulating specific and detailed culinary laws, Judaism extended
and accentuated food's cultural meanings. Modern Jewry is no longer
defined exclusively in religious terms, yet a decrease in the role
of religion, including kashrut observance, does not necessarily
entail any diminishment of the role of food. On the contrary, as
shown by the essays in this volume, choices of food take on special
importance when Jewish individuals and communities face the
challenges of modernity. Following an introduction by Sidney Mintz
and concluding with an overview by Richard Wilk, the symposium
essays lead the reader from the 20th century to the 21st, across
Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and North America. Through periods
of war and peace, voluntary immigrations and forced deportations,
want and abundance, contemporary Jews use food both for demarcating
new borders in rapidly changing circumstances and for remembering a
diverse heritage. Despite a tendency in traditional Jewish studies
to focus on "high" culture and to marginalize "low" culture, Jews
and Their Foodways demonstrates how an examination of people's
eating habits helps to explain human life and its diversity through
no less than the study of great events, the deeds of famous people,
and the writings of distinguished rabbis.
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