‘Something from nothing’—constructing Israeli rurality

Abstract

This paper analyses the debates regarding native versus non-native plantings in the Israeli kibbutz and their role in the reinvention of the Israeli rural landscape. Based on the assumption that the representation of landscape is always tied to larger questions concerning culture and identity, the genesis of the landscape that has by now become fully naturalised as the new local rural landscape is examined through an analysis of the cultural and ideological roots of its planting design. The Israeli debates reflected the paradox at the heart of a culture that sought to be both ‘new’ and ‘native.’ The ethos of ‘something from nothing’—expressed as the creation of a new green landscape ex nihilo—as well as the advocates for the use of native plants, will be examined in relation to their respective constructions of a landscape narrative.

Keywords:

• Kibbutz
• native plants
• rurality
• Israeli landscape

Notes

1. Alfred Weiss (1909-1971) was a graduate College of Horticulture at Oranienburg near Berlin. He emigrated to Palestine in 1937.

2. The journal was first called Alon Le-ganan (1943-45); it then become the bi-monthly journal Hasadeh Le-gan Ve-lanof (1945-56). In 1956 it became a monthly journal Gan Ve-nof.

3. In 1944 Yaakov Schwartzmane (Shur) translated an excerpt from Christopher Tunnard’s Gardens in the Modern Landscape (‘Towards new ideas in landscape architecture—as presented by Christopher Tunnard.’ Alon Le-ganan, 13-14, pp. 4-5). In 1946 Shlomo Oren-Weinberg translated an excerpt of Willy Lange’s Nature Garden. (‘The Character of the Natural Style,’ Hasadeh Le-gan Ve-lanof, 1, 3 pp. 42-43).

4. Yaakov (Jakob) Schwartzmane (1903-1977) later known as Ya’akov Shur, was the kibbutz gardener at kibbutz Ashdot Ya’akov.

5. The German Templar movement was a fundamentalist messianic movement which separated from the Lutheran Church. The sect was founded in 1861 by Gottlieb Wilhelm Hoffmann and his son Christoph Hoffman and was based on a belief that the Second Coming could be hastened by building a spiritual community in the Holy Land. The first of a number of Templar colonies in Palestine was founded in Haifa in 1869.

6. These were the Ilanot arboretum, near Netanya, and the Farm for the Demonstration and Acclimatisation of Ornamental Plants in Emeq Hefer. See Burmil and Enis (2011).

7. Azaria Alon was a leader of the Israeli environmental movement and the co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Nature, Israel’s main environmental organisation, founded in 1953.

8. Ruth Steiner-Benjamin (1923-1976) was the director of the Farm for Demonstration and Acclimatisation of Ornamental Plants in Emeq Hefer established by the Department of Agriculture.

9. Hanka Huppert-Kurz (1901-1998) emigrated to Israel in the mid-1920s. She designed the gardens of a number of kibbutzim, including Alonim, Hazorea and K’far Hamaccabi.