The Bedouin Museum in Israel's Negev desert aims to
preserve the rapidly disappearing culture of the region's nomadic
people. Among the many visitors who come to learn about desert
life and admire the spectacular artwork are thousands of Bedouin
children.
by Lili Eylon
In the last six months, some 2,000 Bedouin children were among
the thousands of visitors to the Joe Alon Bedouin Museum, located
in Israel's Negev desert, to learn about their own - now slowly
vanishing - culture. They learn about the history of the various
tribes; see exhibits about traditional medicine, family customs
and holidays; and admire the intricately woven carpets, embroidered
dresses, silver jewelry, sculptures and paintings, as well as
the wood-, bead- and leatherwork of Bedouin artists and artisans.
The word Bedouin comes from the Arabic badawi - man of
the desert. Nomadic men of the desert have been a constant phenomenon
on the arid fringes of the Fertile Crescent since the beginnings
of civilization. They were known by different names in the past
-they may have been the Amelekites of the Bible or the Sarkenii
of the Romans.
Many of the Bedouin rites, customs and artifacts are becoming
scarce, because these nomadic people, who for some six centuries
have been roaming Israel's southern desert, are now gradually
settling down to life in villages and urban centers. The result
of this move from tent to house, to a new and different lifestyle,
is that much of the old ways and the material civilization are
disappearing.
The Joe Alon Bedouin Museum, probably the only Bedouin museum
in the world, was established in 1985 near Kibbutz Lahav. Its
goal is the preservation of the traditional Bedouin culture. The
core of the museum's rich collection was assembled by its curator,
Orna Goren, archaeologist, anthropologist and museologist. Originally,
the museum had been planned for a spot in the Sinai desert near
the Monastery of Santa Caterina. But when Israel withdrew from
Sinai following the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, a new venue
was sought - and found - near Kibbutz Lahav, whose members had
had a similar idea. One of the kibbutz members, Uzi Halamish,
who had developed a close friendship with the Bedouin of the area,
had begun, many years ago, to collect Bedouin folk art and homemade
tools, displaying them in the kibbutz. The two collections combined
to create this special museum. When the Bedouin in the area learned
of the newly-constructed repository of their culture, they came
and donated thousands of items. One such gift is a spectacular
face veil of silver Ottoman coins interwoven with various beads
and colored stones, each meant to protect against some kind of
harm: pain, barrenness, the evil eye.
Very unusual among tribal embroidery is that of the Jabbalia tribe,
whose ancestors are believed to have been brought to southern
Sinai from Romania by the Roman emperor Justinian to serve the
monks of the 6th century Santa Caterina monastery. Their embroidery
patterns, exhibited in the museum, contain unmistakable Balkan
elements.
"Because this is a living civilization," explains Orna
Goren, "the idea is not a showcase museum, but an attempt
to approximate life as much as possible." One incident Goren
recounts illustrates this: "One day, in the early days of
the museum, an old Bedouin working on the kibbutz came to look
at the exhibits. I left him to prepare a cup of coffee, but when
I came back, I did not see him. Then I spotted him: he was peacefully
asleep on the pillows set in the sand, stretched out in the exhibit
of the Bedouin tent. Then I knew our exhibits were realistic."
Each of the tribes living in the Negev and Sinai deserts has its
own characteristics, depending on whether they roam in the mountains,
near the sea coast or among isolated oases. The Bedouin of the
Negev, where there is enough rainfall to sustain grain crops and
domesticated animals, live quite differently from the Bedouin
of the south-central Sinai, who subsist from hunting and fruit
trees in mountain oases, or the Bedouin of the eastern Sinai coast,
who survive by fishing. One of the themes of the museum is the
comparison of these various lifestyles and of the ways in which
the Bedouin adapt to their harsh surroundings.
Taking up the whole bottom floor, one exhibit stresses the scarcity
of raw materials in the lives of the nomadic Bedouin, and shows
how this is overcome by raising domestic animals and the many
ways in which these animals serve humans. In addition to meat
and dairy products provided by the camels, goats and sheep, the
animals' wool is used to create blankets, carpets and material
for clothing and tents; their horns and hooves are turned into
children's toys; and their skin is transformed into clothes, saddles,
canteens and kitchen and storage utensils, including honey jugs
made from the lining of a camel's stomach.
The camel, for which the Arabic language possesses more than a
dozen names, is shown here with its various riding and packing
saddles, decorations and riding equipment. One of the attractions
of the permanent exhibition is an exact replica of a ghitar
- a fully decorated wedding camel. The guide explains that the
animal has room for two: the bride, often a 13-year-old, and a
girlfriend who sees to it that she does not run away.
The Bedouin traditional place of habitation is likewise illustrated
here: it is a tent set up in desert sand. The Bedouin call their
tents "houses of hair" because of the different animal
hairs from which they are woven. A winter family tent, for example,
is made of goats' hair that keeps the inside of the tent dry.
Regular museum activities include lessons and demonstrations by
a Bedouin woman of the age-old method of weaving on ground looms,
the ritual of coffee making, the baking of pitot, and embroidery.
The museum also organizes visits to the new Bedouin townships
to learn about the problems and processes of changing lifestyles.
After the visitor ends the tour of the museum, he is invited to
sit on the pillows of a Bedouin tent set up in the backyard, where
Salim, a Bedouin from a nearby tribe, grinds and brews fresh coffee
and answers questions in Hebrew, Arabic or broken English about
Bedouin life. He also plays a rabbaba, the one-stringed
Bedouin violin made of the hair of a horse's tail. "Once,"
recounts Goren, "a Bedouin visitor tried to play the instrument,
but said, "The rabbaba is thirsty." It had gotten
dry, so he went outside and found the sap of a pine tree and rubbed
it on the string, the way it's traditionally done."
The museum, located about an hour and a half drive from Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv, and half an hour from Be'er Sheva, is named after
Colonel Joe Alon, one of Israel's first fighter pilots, an air
attaché at the Israel Embassy in Washington who was assassinated
in July 1973 only a few days before completing his tour of duty.
At the museum, thousands of annual visitors can view the life-like
tableaux of Bedouin existence, showing tent life, farming practices,
women at work and children at play - with toys made out of tin
cans and pieces of wood and rubber. The museum also reflects the
conjunction of ancients and modern life in the Bedouin civilization,
showing, for example, beaded covers for portable transistor radios
found in a tent alongside the mud-and-straw household vessels.
For further information please contact:
Joe Alon Center - Museum of the Bedouin Culture
(Near Kibbutz Lahav)
D.N. Negev
85335
Tel: (972)-7-991-8597
Fax: (972)-7-991-9889
e-mail: joalon@lahavnet.co.il