Relativism of Authenticity: Consumption and Production of Israeli National Dances Outside of Israel

Abstract

Relying on historic and ethnographic fieldwork, this article traces the development of the Israeli folk dance movement in Israel and the United States over the last century. Israeli folk dances are consumed worldwide and especially by American Jewry precisely because they are perceived as an authentic expression of national Israeli culture, even as their authenticity is continuously contested and re-evaluated in different historical and cultural contexts and by various actors who engage in their preservation and re-creation. The result is an intricate articulation of an ideological and rhetorical debate on authenticity, which reveals its relativistic character and sheds light on the cultural negotiation of identity between Israeli and American Jewry.

Keywords:

• Nationalism
• authenticity
• dance
• folklore
• Israel
• American Jewry
• globalization

Notes

1. Grose, Israel in the Mind of America; Klutznick, The Relations between Diaspora Jewry and the State of Israel.

2. O’brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel; Cohen, Israel – Diaspora Relations.

3. Waxman, Religion and the State in Israel; Tabory and Lazerwitz, Americans in the Israeli Reform and Conservative Denominations.

4. O’brien, American Jewish Organizations.

5. Liebman and Cohen, Two Worlds of Judaism.

6. The ethnographic work of Moshe Shokied is an example of such an effort; see Shokied, Children of Circumstances.

7. Liebman and Cohen, Two Worlds of Judaism; A. Gal, Envisioning Israel.

8. Liebman and Cohen. Two Worlds of Judaism: 1; Urofsky, We Are One! American Jewry and Israel.

9. Leibovitz, Nation, Land, State, 92; Shokied, Children, 35–54.

10. Leibovitz, Nation, Land, State, 90.

11. Friesel, On the Complexities of Modern Jewish Identity.

12. Steinberg, Nationalism and Ethnicity on their Way to Israel; Feldman, How ‘Mifgashim’ May Miss.

13. Liebman and Cohen, Two Worlds of Judaism, 2.

14. See www.israelidances.com, the most comprehensive website currently documenting Israeli folk dances (data collected in November 2014).

15. Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition.

16. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage.

17. I use the name ‘Israel’ to refer to the country after 1948. To designate the region prior to statehood, I use the names ‘Palestine,’ or ‘Land of Israel’.

18. Appadurai, Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination, 5.

19. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture.

20. Ibid.

21. Appadurai, Grassroots Globalization; Appadurai, Modernity at Large; Hannerz, Ulf Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places.

22. Calhoun, Nations Matter; Young, Nationalism in a Global Era.

23. From the programme of the first Hebraic dance festival in 1944. The Israeli Dance Archive, Tel Aviv.

24. The modern dance choreographer and performer Baruch Agadati (1895–1976) settled in Palestine in 1919.

25. For a list of various dance expressions in the Bible see Hermon, The Biblical Period, 3–16.

26. Brin Ingber, Shorashim: The Roots of the Israeli Folk Dance.

27. Arab dances were included in the second dance festival held in 1947, and remains so to this day. On the incorporation of Arab dances in the Israeli folk dance movement see Roginsky, Nationalism and Ambivalence.

28. Brin Ingber, Vilified or Glorified.

29. Kadman, Memories.

30. The head of the FDS, published a special guide for Israeli folk dance emissaries. See Hodes, A Booklet for the Emissary.

31. With the exception of changes that affect the exportation of dances, other changes are not the focus of the present article. For a discussion of other changes and their meanings as a reflection of broader political, economic and social changes that took place in Israel see Roginsky, Structural Changes and Cultural Meanings in the Israeli Folk Dance Movement.

32. Ronen, Fiftieth Anniversary of Folk Dances in Israel.

33. These figures were calculated using material from the website rokdim (‘dancing’ in Hebrew), which publicises Israeli folk dance activities and keeps a registry of Israeli folk dance instructors and choreographers: www.rokdim.co.il (data collected in January 2011).

34. Bitton, My Scholarly Sir.

35. Kaschl, Beyond the Nation in Israeli Folk Dancing.

36. Berk, Israeli Folk Dance in Israel and in America, 22–8; Brin Ingber, Victory Dances: The Story of Fred Berk; Jackson, Converging Movements.

37. Berk, Jewish Dance Activities in America, 1. For artistic Jewish dance development in America see Jackson, Converging Movements.

38. Berk, Jewish Dance Activities in America.

39. Berk, Jewish Dance Activities in America.

40. Jackson, Converging Movements, 183.

41. Berk, Jewish Dance Activities in America.

42. Beliajus, My Encounter with Gert Kaufman, 7. I would like to thank Helen Winkler, an Israeli and international folk dance instructor, for introducing me to this source.

43. Berk, Jewish Dance Activities in America. In the Lincoln Center Dance Archive in New York one can find the book ‘Dances of Palestine’ from 1947. The book includes dance and music notations for 10 ‘Palestinian Dances’: Hava Nagila, Tscherkessia, Mayim, Zivchu Zivchei Tzedek, Histovaivee, Dundai, Sham B’eretz Yisrael, Ki V’simcha Tetsayu, Ari Ara, Pa’am Achat. Cited from Delkova and Berk Dances of Palestine.

44. Kline, Jewish Dance.

45. Almog, Globalization of Israel.

46. Ashriel, Israeli Dances Made in USA.

47. Ofer, undated archival document, probably late 1970s: Ofer, undated (probably late 1970s) Israeli Dances Made in U.S.A.

48. A unique example of a creator who is neither Israeli nor Jewish is Roberto Haddon, an international folk dance instructor from England who became deeply involved with the Israeli folk dance scene. He created the dance Beini Leveinech [Between you and me] to Hebrew lyrics. In an interview he remarked: ‘I would say that Beini Leveinech is my first dance to Israeli music – I’ll leave the deliberations about whether as such it is an Israeli dance to the scholars [….] For me the most important consideration for any of my dances is how well they fit into Israeli dance sessions in terms of style and feeling’. http://www.israelidances.com/choreographer.asp?name=robertohaddon

49. Lipson, Dance of the Month.

50. The Israeli folk dance instructor Yaron Meisher founded it in 1987 in Tel Aviv as a Hebrew magazine. Since July 2004, it has been a Hebrew-English magazine and is supported by the Israeli Dance Institute in New York, which is directed by Ruth Goodman and Danny Uziel.

51. Another interesting example of the globalisation is a circle dance that was choreographed to the theme song of the movie ‘Borat’ in May 2007 by Ira Weisburd, a Jewish dance instructor based in Florida. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=188lKJOA5gw. It cannot be considered as an Israeli folk dance since the lyrics of the song are not in Hebrew, but it does use typical Israeli folk dance steps and gestures. I would like to thank Professor Judah Cohen from Indiana University for bringing this example to my attention.

52. For more on the structural changes in the Israeli folk dancing field and their symbolic meanings see Roginsky, Structural Changes.

53. Berk, American-Israeli and Israeli Folk Dance.

54. As opposed to the early days of the Israeli folk dance movement, when women were the leading figures, present-day composers are mostly men. For a discussion of the relation between gender, culture and nationalism see Roginsky, Nationalism and Ambivalence.

55. Asor, How a Dance is Created?

56. Some of the results of this work were presented in a conference paper: Roginsky, Diasporic Dance Encounters.

57. Roginsky, Folklore, Folklorism and Synchronization.