Three years ago, in the hundredth edition of the magazine, we published a round-up of the current state of the arts and culture in Israel. This year, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the nation, the beginning of a new millenium is also showing itself over the horizon.
This seems the perfect occasion to present another, amended look at the cultural life of this country. We therefore asked each of the eight authors of the original articles to update their work so that we could present an accurate representation of the current scene.
Culture is the volatile and fluid expression of any people or nations creative needs and ideas: how much more so then in a nation fired in the crucible of ongoing political and sometimes military conflict and one where the population has grown in those same 50 years from 640,000 people to nearly six million, each of them bringing with them the cultural milieu and concepts of scores of countries and as many tongues.
In music and dance, in poetry and prose, on canvas and in stone and metal, in the theatre and on the screen, Israel has become a cultural force to be reckoned with alongside countries and peoples twenty and a hundred times larger. One is just as likely to come across Israeli creative and artistic activity on the stages and in the galleries of London, Buenos Aires, Tokyo and Washington, as in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa.
"And I commend enjoyment, for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat, and drink, and enjoy himself, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life which God gives him under the sun". (Ecclesiastes 8:15)
"Culture may be described simply as that which makes life worth living." (T.S. Eliot, 1948)
Jerusalem, August,1998
Asher Weill