At the end of the 19th century, while the western world was enjoying a period of accelerated development, Jewish settlement in Palestine was sunk in poverty, culturally backward and lagging far behind modern world trends. The land was largely deserted and neglected. The few roads that were paved ran only between the major towns for the passage of the diligences (stage coaches) that were the form of transport used by those with means. In the rural areas, people journeyed from one place to another on dirt roads, either by foot or donkey. At the onset of the 20th century, the population of Palestine numbered about half a million inhabitants, Jews and Arabs, living beside each other. The Jews, who amounted to no more than ten percent of the population, were concentrated mostly in the main towns, with a small number in the Jewish agricultural moshavot (villages).
The largest city in the country was Jerusalem, where about half the Jewish population lived, mainly within the Old City walls. In 1860, construction started on Mishkenot Shaananim, the first of the new Jewish neighbourhoods outside the walls, which developed very quickly, strengthening the Jewish presence in the city. Jaffa Road was the citys busiest commercial street. Small shops, mostly owned by Jews and Christian Arabs, did business next door to each other to supply Jerusalems residents with all their needs.
Jerusalem was also the centre of the countrys cultural activity. The Bezalel Acadamy of Art, founded by Prof. Boris Schatz in 1906, was the hub of cultural life, initiating social events, including Hanukkah, Purim and Lag Baomer celebrations, Shabbat ceremonies and gymnastics demonstrations, as well as plays, concerts and literary parties.
Jaffa was second in importance to Jerusalem as the main port city and train terminus. Most of its residents lived in very crowded conditions. The shops on its main streets sold household equipment, sewing goods, fabrics, shoes and a limited selection of imported clothing. At the start of the century, Jaffa had some 30,000 residents, of whom 5,000 were Jews. According to a census carried out in 1905, ten Jewish hostels, seven restaurants and one coffee house operated in Jaffa. Most of the towns inhabitants were engaged in trade, while a substantial number were employed in sewing and knitting. In addition, there were three enterprises producing machine tools, four barbers, three musicians, six doctors, two dentists, one lawyer and ... 26 beggars!
Jaffa also boasted a school for music and another for drawing and architecture, and sewing and cutting lessons were given free of charge. Outside Jaffa, new Jewish neighbourhoods were starting to be constructed, the first being Neveh Zedek and Neveh Shalom. Then, in 1909, Ahuzat Bayit was founded, which in the course of time became Tel Aviv.
The Second Aliyah (wave of immigration) started at the end of 1903. It put Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel on a more firm foundation, by adding some 35,000 Jews to the population. But the First World War, with its ensuing decrees, hunger and expulsions from the country, dealt a hard blow to the momentum of development. New immigrants ceased arriving, the community suffered hunger and disease, and the Jewish population, which on the eve of the war had numbered 85,000, was greatly depleted, so that by 1918, only 56,000 Jews remained.
Between the last quarter of the 19th century and the end of the First World War, there were not many changes in the way the countrys inhabitants dressed the various population groups were recognizable by their traditional apparel. In describing the clothes that its residents wore, it must not be forgotten that it was a time of contrasts and opposites. The land was home to different ethnic groups, each one radically different from the other, not only in their economic status, but also in religious faith, countries of origin, way of life and philosophical outlook. Great poverty, the result of the decadent and feeble Turkish regime, existed side by side with modern innovations and enlightenment brought from Europe by the Jewish newcomers, while centuries-old traditions conflicted with the new progressive cultural values.
At the time, the largest cities in the country Jaffa, Ramle, Tiberias, Haifa and Jerusalem had a thin stratum of affluent people, Jews and Arabs, whose women could afford luxurious items of adornment such as high-heeled shoes of gleaming satin, specially ordered from Beirut, expensive silk materials imported from Europe and gorgeous parasols for the summer, brought from Paris. In contrast, the inhabitants of the Arab villages and the great majority of town dwellers (both Jews and Arabs) lived in poverty and want. For them, clothes were no more than a protection against the sun and cold, and not for luxury and pampering.
In some of the moshavot supported by Baron de Rothschild, the residents enjoyed relative prosperity and well-being while others were in a constant state of distress. The richest of all was the small village of Zichron Yaakov which, at the start of the century, was the focal point where all the residents of the surrounding area bought clothes and materials. "The department store aimed to provide every item desired by those in the moshava as well as to sell everything that a city dweller wanted even cloaks of silk and rich satin could be found there" (David Yellin, "From Dan to Beersheba").
Poorest of all the countrys inhabitants were the pioneers, who had established the first communal settlements. They were truly destitute, lacking everything. They therefore turned their poverty into their banner, vaunting their ragged, worn-out clothes and bare feet. These pioneers considered themselves natives of the country and wanted to blend into their new environment. One of the ways they did so was by combining items of eastern dress in their clothes: "The kibbutz sent us all the same shirts, the same trousers, the same kaffiyah1 and the same abbayah2" (Yitzhak Tabenkin, "Here On the Ground").
Adopting Middle Eastern dress and amalgamating it into the clothes of the Jewish population also matched the philosophical outlook of Bezalel, the arts academy in Jerusalem. Bezalel contributed its part towards fashioning the image of the Jewess in Eretz Israel. As Bezalel viewed her, the woman would have an eastern appearance, would wear exotic oriental clothing and be laden with jewellery. She was usually depicted as a shepherdess, looking as though she had just stepped out from the pages of the Bible. According to the same concept, the typical Eretz Israel man had an eastern appearance, usually originated in Yemen, had long side-locks, wore a striped cloak and had a turban wrapped around his head.
The Bezalel vision found its expression in the paintings of Ephraim Lilien and Abel Pann, whose pictures depict womens exotic eastern beauty. This beauty, it should be noted, was far removed from the real appearance of the young woman pioneers who had immigrated from Russia, and was equally remote from the appearance of the women of Little Tel Aviv, who were proud of their modern western lifestyle and clothing.
In contemporary studio photographs taken by Krikorian and Raad in Jerusalem and Sabonji in Jaffa, women in the early years of the 20th century are shown garbed in an embroidered Arab dress and bearing a clay jug or wicker basket on their head. The men in these photographs appear in Arab garments, with a kaffiyah and the black akal3 cord on their head and a shabariyeh4 (dagger) by their sides.
There were two attitudes to fashion in the Eretz Israel of this period. On the one hand, there were those in the established moshavot, who dressed according to the latest dictates of Paris fashion. These settlers, affluent and financially secure, were greatly influenced by the clothing of the Baron de Rothschilds officials who enjoyed regular trips to the great and only Paris, returning with gorgeous fabrics, well-cut suits and up-to-date fashion magazines in their saddle bags. On the other hand, there were the barefoot pioneers, scorning the refinements of bourgeois clothing which symbolized the opposite of all their ideology. "I hid my silk dresses in the bottom of the suitcase, and changed my elegant shoes for simple slippers. My clothing was a plain cotton dress and a kaffiyah with an akal on my head" (Haya T., "Here on the Ground").
This duality was expressed in the in the very first article on fashion in the Land of Israel, written by Hemda Ben-Yehuda (the second wife of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who revived the Hebrew language)5, "This is the first time during my lifetime that fashion will have been discussed in the Hebrew press. I write these lines with real fear and trepidation. Who will not sneer? Who will not laugh at me? Who will not condemn me? And who knows whether they might not also ostracize me?" (Hemda Ben-Yehuda, Hashkafa, 1904).
The question was already being asked: What is the proper dress for the Jews in Palestine? Baron de Rothschild considered that the proper clothing for Jewish farmers in the Eretz Israel was the abbayah. He therefore purchased from Elhanan Bulkin (who had set up a factory for the production of traditional clothing at the end of the 19th century) 300 abbayahs for the farmers in his settlements. To his chagrin, it was adopted in only one of them, Ekron. There the 11 founding farmers changed their European clothing for abbayahs, as a result of which they were given the nickname "The Eleven abbayahs." In all the other settlements they adamantly retained their European clothing, refusing to comply with the Barons caprice.
In surveying the characteristics of clothing in Palestine between the end of the 19th century and the end of the First World War, one has to take into account the different groups within the local population at the time: the Arabs, living in both towns and villages; the different types of Jews those in the old-established cities Jerusalem, Jaffa and Tiberias; residents of the moshavot (the Barons villages); the pioneers of the Second Aliyah (founders of the communal villages and kibbutzim); and lastly the first residents of Tel Aviv.
Clothes in the Old Yishuv
The "Old Yishuv" is the comprehensive name for the Jews living in Palestine, both Ashkenazi and Sephardi, who at the turn of the century lived mainly in the holy cities Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed. They worked mostly in a variety of crafts and professions or trade, while some lived off halukah (charity from overseas). Because of their close links with the local Arabs, their clothes usually combined elements of east and west. They were not an economically homogenous population, as their clothing testified. Those who were financially better off, such as the merchants, lawyers, pharmacists and doctors, dressed European-style, in clothes made of fine fabrics that were sewn for them by the best tailors or the most acclaimed local dressmakers. However, most of the women of the time had basic sewing skills and made most of the clothes needed for themselves and their families, only ordering from the seamstress clothes that were more complicated or needed for a festive occasion. Such a seamstress was Issa Tourjeman of Altabuna Street in Jerusalem who had a great reputation for her sewing. She was known as La Mograbia ("the Moroccan woman") because of her country of origin. Issa sewed wedding dresses that were the height of contemporary fashion, as well as elegant kumbaz6 robes for both Arabs and Jews.
In Yaakov Yehoshuas book "Childhood in Old Jerusalem" there is an endearing account of clothes in the Old Yishuv. "In those days Jerusalem was tolerant and its inhabitants of different ethnic origins went around in the characteristic clothing of their country of origin. The Sephardim, especially, made a big thing out of it, and really stood out in the distinctive garments of the countries they had come from... but the residents of Jerusalems new neighbourhoods, Jews as well as non-Jews, were more European and introduced European dress into their lives. The teachers, men and women, of the citys Alliance Israëlite School and the Evelina de Rothschild School served as an example and a symbol. The fashion journals also, which arrived several seasons late, served as a sort of guide to fashionable dressing for our mothers and sisters." Le dernier cri of Paris actually arrived in Eretz Israel two years after it was all the rage in the French capital.
The women of the Old Yishuv customarily wore long dresses whose closely fitting bodices, with the assistance of clever styling, showed off the bosom and accentuated the waistline. The upper part of the dress was very intricate, usually an amalgamation of gathers, pleats, lace, buttons, ribbons and complicated hand embroidery. "Even though the dresses of our mothers and sisters were simple, they were wonderfully embroidered. The girls started learning to embroider when they were just six or seven years old. They started by learning simple embroidery and carried on until they mastered complicated embroidery" (Yaakov Yehoshua, ibid).
The dresses had long sleeves, with a lot of gathers in the wide upper part, gradually narrowing towards the wrist where they were finished off with buttoned tucks. These "leg of mutton" sleeves were known by their French term, gigot. The collar was high, fitting closely around the neck and embellished with gathered lace or with an additional collar. The skirt was wide, reaching to the ankle, and finished with two or three rows of tucks. Skirts were flat in front with the fullness drawn back over padding formed by several frills. The skirt reached the ground in front and continued into a small train at the back. Beneath the full skirt, five or six petticoats were worn over a tight corset. The back of the dress was accentuated by its slanting shape as it had more material. Fuller at the back than in front, the effect of the standing silhouette was based on the shape of the letter "S". It was customary to accentuate the waist with a belt made out of the same fabric as the dress, or of leather. Fashionable dresses such as these were worn by the women of the Old Yishuv, Sephardi and Ashkenazi alike, from the last quarter of the 19th century until 1910, and changes in dresses only started taking place in the second decade of the 20th century.
It should be mentioned that most Jewish women in the Old Yishuv were religiously observant, and their clothes were therefore conservative and modest. In the summer they wore light colours, mostly white, and in the winter they wore dark colours in different tones of brown and blue. The colour of her clothing also indicated the womans age and family status. Some of the particularly daring women wore red or green, while older women wore grey, beige, or blue-grey. Black clothing indicated mourning. The usual fabrics for dresses were mostly cotton weaves such as batiste or thin poplin for the summer, and duchess satin, taffeta or heavy silk for the winter.
Women of this period also wore skirts with blouses. The blouses were made of the finest white cotton batiste, in a romantic style that used lace and embroidery and required a great deal of hand work. They were worn with dark skirts that called for a great deal of fabric, cut from pieces or on the bias, and adorned with fashionable details such as ironed pleats, buttoned tucks, asymmetrical buttons or satin ribbons. Most of the skirts widened out towards the hem. "Our mothers loved clinching in their waists, and so they wore a blouse which could be made narrow and wide skirts with folds and pleats". (Yaakov Yehoshua, ibid). The blouses and dresses were fastened with buttons, in which the right flap (signifying wisdom) covered the left flap (the evil spirit), as a guard for their modesty and morality: the right hand is the "Strong Hand" which is also the name of a work by Maimonides, while the left side is the "other side" the Kabbalistic sitra ahara or "Satans Camp" the side of evil desires.
Usually an apron was worn over the dress or skirt which, in addition to its practical purpose, was considered to be a guard against the evil eye. On Sabbaths and festivals the women always wore a starched and ironed white embroidered white apron, which indicated that its wearer was an excellent housewife. Shoes were ankle-high, tied to the top with laces, and usually black. Stockings were black or coloured, hand-sewn with thin cotton thread. They reached up to the knees where they were held on by rubber bands, which were concealed beneath the long skirts.
And what was underneath the outer garments? The womans underwear included lace-edged underpants, on top of which she wore a sort of sleeve that was tightly laced around her hips and down to her ankles. On top of this, she wore two or three petticoats made of silk or of white (occasionally coloured) batiste. For a brassière she wore the mitaniko which was a sort of buttoned camisole. Her corset was made with balliances, thin metal hoops which fastened tightly down to the thighs. At a later stage, these metal hoops were replaced by pieces of flat whalebone which were implanted inside cloth strips. This corset cinched the waist to look small and exaggerated the size of the bosom and, by its very nature, made breathing difficult. The petticoats were straight in front and cut on the bias in the back. With the assistance of several cushions which padded the area of the thighs, the petticoats added volume to the womans silhouette.
One has to remember that at that time thin women were not considered attractive, and their clothes had to "fatten" them, in order to help them find a husband. ""How did our mothers manage to get married when they were so small and thin? A solution was also found for that... beneath their skirts, there were all sorts of padding and cushioning while the area of their bosoms was stuffed with cotton wool, in order to make them look really gorgeous that is to say, that they should protrude like rifle barrels." (Yaakov Yehoshua, ibid). Old women in Jerusalem still tell of a voluminous skirt, known as a melakko, which was padded out with cotton wool.
Underclothes were invariably white, from which the Hebrew term levanim ("whites") is derived. Underclothes were an essential item in the dowry of each young girl of marriageable age: their quantity and quality testified to her parents financial status. The nightdresses they wore at bedtime were extremely modest, with long sleeves and a closed collar, made out of fine batiste, embroidered and decorated. These nightdresses were cut very generously, not at all close to the body. They were always white and the dainty pink or pale blue ribbons that ornamented them gave them a romantic look.
In winter, the women wore a dark cape over their dresses. These were usually grey, ankle length, with a small collar, and slits sewn at the edges to let their hands out. Occasionally the women would dress up elegantly in a woollen coat sewn by the local tailor from patterns brought by women who had arrived from Europe.
The Jerusalem Sephardi women typically wore a long black coat and covered their heads with a fichu, a lace head-dress which was arranged over their forehead and reached to the shoulders. When the women were guests at the home of relatives or friends, the mistress of the house would remove the fichu with her own hands, and keep it by her. When the guest wished to leave, the hostess would try, out of politeness, to retain her guest for a while longer, "threatening" that if she didnt agree to stay for another cup of tea, she wouldnt return her fichu. The Sephardi women would also wrap themselves in a large, woollen shawl, in boldly coloured flowered or geometric patterns, measuring 120 x 120 cm., and edged with fringes. This shawl served both as a fashion accessory and to keep her warm when it was chilly.
The eastern influence in clothes of the time is recognizable in several traditional clothing items worn by women in the Sephardi community. For instance, the lizar, which was a kind of wrap similar to a small sheet, decorated at the edges with embroidery. The woman draped it around her shoulders and head. Then there was the imaliyah, also known as the habra ("girl friend,") which was a two-piece black dress. Its top part was sewn in the shape of a cape, and its wide skirt reached to the ground. It was only worn when walking through the alleys of Jerusalems Old City, and the women also covered their faces with a thin black kerchief. This outfit was to save themselves from being bothered by strangers.
At the beginning of the century, the women usually wore their hair long, gathered up in a bun, chignon, on the top of the head. The hair was not stretched tight but rather was gently gathered, giving a soft and feminine look. This hairstyle was particularly popular among the young women, and was even adopted by the ultra-orthodox women in their wigs. This coiffure originated in Europe, where it was known as "the Marie Antoinette."
Married women usually covered their hair for reasons of religion and tradition. Ashkenazi women wore small hats, perched on top of their heads, and fastened on by hatpins or tied on with a ribbon. The hats were made out of felt or straw and decorated with lace and ribbons, fruit and flowers.
The Sephardi woman used various types of kerchief to cover her head. For instance, the mandil, measuring 70 x 70 cm., was of thin cotton or silk. Its edges were decorated with crochet or needlework, or sometimes there was a hand-printed pattern around its borders. There was a special mandil for festive occasions, called a yazmeh. A fringed, flower-patterned yazmeh was typical of Jerusalem woman. Before marriage, the young girls wore a sharfah a kind of light head-dress under which their locks were plaited with different coloured ribbons. The young married women wore either a mandil or a yazmeh in bright shades, while the older women preferred dark colours.
Another kerchief was usually worn on top of the mandil. It was bigger and knotted behind with its ends hanging down in front, on both sides of the face, or occasionally it was tied in front. Women from the Balkan states wore the nakolka on their heads. This was a large colourful kerchief, folded into a triangle, which they attached with a hairpin. When it was raining, they wore rubber galoshes over their shoes and carried an umbrella over the wrist. There were also gloves, knitted from wool using five knitting needles.
The gold and silver jewellery that adorned the women indicated their economic status. Typical jewellery of the period included chains, bracelets, brooches, rings and different kinds of medallions sometimes embedded with precious stones. "Our fathers loved to spoil their wives with such gifts, which were also a kind of deposit against a rainy day. When nearing death, our mothers passed on the jewellery to their daughters and daughters-
in-law" (Yaakov Yehoshua, ibid).
The girls had their ears pierced as soon as they were born, and the midwife was responsible for this task. Into the tiny holes was inserted a white thread which was exchanged some time afterwards for small lentil-shaped gold earrings.
And what did the men wear? The men of the Old Yishuv were divided into two groups: one group wore eastern-type clothing, influenced by the Turkish government of the country, while the second dressed in European fashion, copying the new immigrants from Europe as well as the Baron de Rothschilds representatives and the Zionist officials who were in close contact with western countries.
Most Sephardi men in the Old Yishuv dressed eastern style. They were the descendants of families who had lived in the land for generations and whose lifestyle and culture closely resembled that of most other Middle Eastern men. This style combined the western jacket with the eastern kumbaz, narrow European trousers and the Turkish tarbush (fez). It is interesting to note that this style became more popular after 1914 when it was decreed that only those with Turkish nationality could remain in the country. As a result of this regulation, Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv, started appearing in public with a tarbush on his head. And so, the clothes worn by the Sephardi man comprised the shako a kind of jacket similar to the European jacket but cut longer and buttoned higher, so that the neck opening was shorter. The shako was worn over a striped or plain kumbaz, and when the weather was cold, he wore a long woollen coat, called a jubah, on top.
Men who dressed in the western style wore a European three-piece suit: a waistcoat, long trousers and a jacket which was shorter than the shako. The suit was in one colour, using shades of grey, dark blue or brown, or with thin pin-stripes on either a light or dark background. Sometimes they wore light coloured trousers with a dark jacket. A white shirt was the norm with European dress, with various types of collars. There were rounded collars, upright collars and collars that stood up around the back and then folded down at front. The shirt cuffs always extended beyond the jackets sleeves. The trousers were held up by braces, not by belts. They were cut narrow, without any folds or pleats at the waist, and the very narrow legs were often finished with turn-ups (mangettes).
It was customary to keep separate clothing for everyday wear and holidays, and ordinary folk reserved their clean clothes for Shabbat and festivals. "On Saturday nights they brushed their clothes, folded them and stored them in cachets (wooden boxes) until the next Shabbat" (Yaakov Yehoshua, ibid).
Sephardi Jews "used to wear a white tunic and cotton trousers that served as underwear and outerwear. Over the tunic they wore the "small tallit" (prayer shawl) and over that a waistcoat (mantian) and then a kaftan, which was in fact the typical kumbaz of the region, secured by a sash. The topmost layer of clothing was a damarr (or farmalia), a short coat reaching to the hips. This was the regular wear at home. When going out in public, they wore a long, beautifully sewn coat (juba) and a tarbush on their head" (S. Avizur, "Everyday Life in Eretz Iisrael in the 19th Century").
An additional description of mens clothing in the Old Yishuv, in Tiberias, is given in Dr. Hillel Yaffes book "A Doctor Comes to Tiberias": "Dozens of visitors would walk around the walls, dressed in their festive clothing or long silk garments with white cotton trousers, and all their clothing was remarkable for its cleanliness. Their side-curls and beards were long ...every Saturday night dozens of Jews would gather in their turbans and their Shabbat clothes light coats in every colour of the rainbow."
All the men, without exception, wore hats. There was a large range: the wine-red Turkish tarbush with a black tassel, felt hats from Europe (burnetta), or straw hats with wide brims in various styles an upraised brim on one side, upraised brims on both sides, or brims that were not raised up at all. The dandy, who preened himself on his clothes, wore a flat French boater (canotier) straw hat and gloves, even in summer.
The hat was also a reliable indicator of the mans social affiliation. The tarbush loyalty to the Turkish government; a felt hat association with the moderate "westerners"; a straw boater, the dandies; a peaked cap (the French casquette was the common term) anti-establishment; a solar topee (cork hat) affiliation with the cosmopolitans; while those who wore no hat whatsoever were thereby making a public declaration that they were pioneering revolutionaries.
The neck ties of the period were the regular mans tie (known locally as "the herring" because of its fish shape), either wide or narrow, the bow tie and various versions of the looped tie, constructed of strips of material that were wide in the centre and narrow at the ends, looped twice around the neck and tied in front in a papillon ("butterfly" still the term used in Israel today for a bow tie). The tie was usually of silk and there were various patterns, usually stripes or checks. Mens shoes were mainly black (sometimes white) and tied with laces. Known as mashis, an Arabic word signifying walking shoes, they were available with their uppers cut either high or low. To complete the picture of masculine elegance, the man carried a walking cane and had a watch on a gold chain in his waistcoat pocket.
The men groomed their hair fastidiously: after applying brilliantine, they combed it with great care. Most of them grew moustaches, and beards became more and more popular. This is how Hemda Ben-Yehuda described mens hairstyles in her fashion column in Hashkafa: "There are changes in mens hairstyles: the hair is parted on the side of the head into two. The beard is arranged in the King David shape while the moustache is grown in the toothbrush style. However, it is lately becoming more and more fashionable to shave the beard and the moustache off altogether. This only suits a man with a round face and does not look good on the bony and thin."
Clothes in the Moshavot
Following the pogroms in Russia in 1881, many of the Jews left to seek refuge elsewhere. Of the few who chose Eretz-Israel as their destination, the majority were Zionists or, as they were called then Hovevei Zion ("Lovers of Zion"). They were mostly people in the prime of their lives, married with families, and religiously traditional. Among them there was also a small group of unmarried students, free thinkers who wanted to bring about social change.
Among those who arrived in this "First Aliya" were a significant number who arrived with their families and all their belongings. Life was not easy in those days and the new moshavot immigrants fell upon hard times. Baron Edmond de Rothschild, who had undertaken the goal of encouraging Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, took several of these villages under his patronage (including Rishon Lezion and Zichron Yaakov), providing financial support and establishing productive enterprises. One of the first of these enterprises was a silk spinning mill, using locally-grown raw material. Founded in Rosh Pina in 1882, it employed some 80 people. The mill operated until 1906, providing silk thread for the countrys textile industry.
During the period of economic depression, the Barons settlements were mired in poverty and distress. But in the years of plenty, the situation changed entirely and life became luxurious. When the baron visited Zichron Yaakov, he made it clear that the settlers lavish life style angered him. He instructed his officials to remove all the luxury items from the shop and replace them with simple, cheap goods. The residents had grown accustomed to the abundance and were not willing to give it up, so they hit upon a "solution." Each time they heard that the baron was about to visit the village, they emptied the shop of its luxury goods, and as soon as the visit was over, returned the expensive items to the shelves.
If there was something considered necessary and it was not available in the moshava, it would be ordered from the coachman who travelled several times a day to Jaffa in his diligence. "The settlers would surround the coachman, plying him with their requests to bring them from Jaffa the things that they couldnt get in the village....you would find a woman asking him to get her a dozen buttons and another asking for sewing threads of various colours or needles of different sizes" (Eitan Belkind, "Thats How It Was").
The settlement committees made every effort to conceal the affluence, so as not to arouse jealousy. For example, the Rishon Lezion Settlement Committee published the following rule in 1882: "Moshava residents must make every endeavour, as much as possible, to avoid silk clothes as well as all manner of jewellery, even on Sabbaths and festivals, and all costly indulgences and luxuries." Shlomo Zemah, in his book "First Year," is critical in his description of how women dressed in the Barons settlements: "The women look truly remarkable and very glamorous, as though dressed for a party. They are tightly corseted and enveloped in long, heavily pleated dresses, which are fashioned according to the dictates of Hemda Ben-Yehuda, who decrees in the pages of Hashkafa, from the heights of Jerusalem, what is fashionable."
Rishon Lezion and Zichron Yaakov apparently competed with each other for the title "Little Paris," as Mordechai Rafaelowitz describes in his book "Eretz Israel and the Moshavot," published at the end of the 19th century. "There is no moshava among the moshavot that is larger or more beautiful than Zichron Yaakov. Everything that is available in a big city is available there, and the lifestyle of its farmers is like that of city dwellers. A French atmosphere prevails and everyone who visits there calls it the Paris of Eretz Israel."
The case for Rishon Lezion is presented by Lifsha Segal-Zalmanson in her book "Childhood in Rishon Lezion," "Not for nothing was Rishon Lezion known as Little Paris. The women were very elegant on festive occasions in wide dresses trimmed with net and lace, accentuating their tightly corseted waistlines. Their heads were adorned with elegant, ornate hats and with high hairstyles in which little glittering combs and gold and silver hairpins were scattered to attract the eye and catch the heart. In the summer afternoons, when they went for a stroll along the moshavas boulevard, they would shade their faces with white lace parasols."
Indeed, many of photographs preserved from the period show the women of the moshavot wearing elegant dresses acccording to fashions latest dictates. The bodices were very skilfully worked, with tiny seams and tucks combined with strips of lace and complicated hand embroidery. The sleeves, as was customary in Paris, ballooned in the upper part and gradually narrowed towards the wrist. Collars were high, closely fitting around the neck and trimmed with lace. The skirts of the dresses contained a lot of material, mostly cut on the bias or in strips, while the "wasp waist" testified to the major role played by the corset.
Sarah Aaronsohn, the heroine of "Nili," the Jewish secret intelligence movement which helped the British in the war against the Turks, was also accustomed to dressing in the latest fashion, and was among the first to dispense with the corset. The garments which she prepared "for a change of clothing" when the Turks came to arrest her, before she committed suicide (and which today can still be seen hanging in the bathroom of the Aaronsohn house in Zichron Yaakov)*, were indeed the last word in Parisian fashion. One of the dressmakers in Petah Tikva at the time was Hanna Orloff, who had been professionally trained in Paris, no less. While training there, she had reached the conclusion that iron and stone appealed to her more than needle and thread, so she decided to study sculpture and leave the sewing profession.
We learn about the elegant clothes of the men in the moshavot from Lifsha Segal-Zalmansons description: "The men would come to meetings of the moshava committee in ties and three-piece suits, with a handkerchief peeping out of the breast pocket. Their glasses also met the requirements of the latest styles, while a walking cane was always part of the ensemble" ("Childhood in Rishon Lezion").
From photographs of the period, one gets a strong impression that the men were in no way backward to the women in elegant dressing. Their suits were meticulously tailored according to the latest dictates from Paris, with wide lapels trimmed round the edges with bias-cut strips. The shirts had high collars with rounded openings and fastened on to the shirt with two studs. The men in the moshavot loved dressing up in elegant white suits and solar topees, with dotted or checked neck ties. Shlomo Zemah, in his book, "First Year" gives us an idea of the enormous difference between the clothing worn by the "peasant" farmers and that worn by Jerusalemites. "Around the table, several Jerusalemite Jews were dining, dressed in robes of vertical stripes in pale blue or silver. At the other end of the table were some farmers from Ekron and Gedera and there were silken threads woven through the material of their suits and tunics, and the fastenings had two small tassels in the shape of acacia flowers at the end. They wore white cork hats with the two rounded peaks shading their faces."
In another part of his book, Zemah describes how one of the settlers looked in his fashionable riding clothes, "The trousers ballooned out over the thighs and were tight from the knee down." In photographs from the period we indeed see examples of similar trousers, known as breeches, or jodhpurs which finished below the knee with a buttoned cuff. In other contemporary photographs, we see men wearing elegant dinner suits with a black or white bow tie, highlighted by fine jewellery, including a gold watch and chain and a gold ring. The mens hair was carefully combed and most of them grew a beard and long moustaches which curled downwards.
The clothing of the Pioneers
The pioneers (halutzim) immigrated to Palestine from Russia after the Kishinev pogroms of 1903 and 1905. They were young, Zionist and idealistic, and came in order to build a new society in the land, a society of equality and justice. In this second Aliyah, which lasted ten years from the end of 1903 until the summer of 1914, approximately 40,000 Jews reached the country, of whom only a few thousand were pioneers. However in Israels national ethos, a special place of honour is preserved for the pioneers as the standard bearers of the new Jew in Eretz Israel, though it should be noted that they were never more than a small percentage of the populace. Many of them came from affluent homes, with a broad education that influenced their social ideology. They believed in Jewish labour, in working the land, in making do with little, and in equality between the sexes and they were convinced that with all the ardour of their faith they had the power to change the world.
The girls of the Second Aliyah, well educated and the products of good homes, had absorbed the new ideas of freedom for women from the revolutionary ideas of their time and from Russian literature, and when they came to Palestine they were determined to implement those ideas. When they arrived in the country these young women pioneers carried in their luggage the fine fashions they had worn at home: tight-waisted long dresses with long sleeves and high collars, blouses trimmed with delicate lace, full-skirted petticoats, and corsets to mould the body to the fashionable silhouette. There were also carefully packed walking shoes and silk stockings, items considered essential in the wardrobe of European girls from good families.
However, within a very short time they realized the urgent necessity of altering their European clothes to fit their new way of living. Hard work both in the fields and the houses and they wanted to be equal partners in the work called for clothing that was completely different from what they had brought with them. So their fine clothes underwent "vocational refitting": the sleeves were cut off above the elbow, the high collar was altered into a rounded neckline, the tight belts came off their waists, and an apron, either full or half-length, was worn over the dress or skirt. At a later date, not just the sleeves were shortened, but the actual dresses were also shortened and fitted with a flat collar or a mans collar.
The pioneer womens new clothes were a reflection of their social philosophy which decreed giving up the ornamental for the practical. Corsets and other feminine frippery were banished and in their place appeared items of apparel that were entirely masculine, such as trousers, a tie and peaked cap (casquette). The changes evolved gradually. The longer their time in the country, the stronger their identification with the mission of settling the land, and the greater their desire to be like the men in everything, including the way they dressed. One interesting detail of the time was the habit of the more "daring" among the women pioneers of wearing a mans neck tie. They were in fact marching, in their own way, hand in hand with the suffragettes in the western world who were fighting for equal rights for women.
The necktie was not the only masculine item worn by the women pioneers. In Alexander Zaids writings we learn of the process by which trousers became womens wear: "We arrived at Sejera at ten oclock in the morning... no-one recognized Zipporah who was wearing a mans trousers... after they realized that it was indeed she who was standing there, they implored her to stay in those clothes, and they were all so pleased with this original way of dressing, that eventually Zvi Becker sewed work trousers in the same style for all the women and they all proudly showed themselves off in them."
So in fact, the advantages and comfort that women experience from working in trousers did not begin in Europe during the First World War, as is usually thought, but originated with Jewish pioneers in the Land of Israel at the start of the 20th century.
For work, a woman wore a wide-brimmed hat, with the practical purpose of shading her from the burning sun, and during her leisure time she wore a peaked cap which until then had been considered strictly a masculine item of clothing in order to emphasize her equal rights. The hairstyle of the time, long hair arranged in the Marie Antoinette style, was not suitable to the practical woman pioneer and her belief in equality. So in this too, the women pioneers preceded the universal fashion when they cut off their tresses in favour of a boyishly short style a hairstyle which became fashionable in Europe only at the start of the 20s.
In one of the photographs taken at Kinneret (a farm based entirely on womens work), the girls are wearing dresses whose bodice is very like the rubashka (a Russian blouse with an asymmetrical neck opening, fastened vertically with buttons and decorated with hand embroidery along the edge). The rubashka was the typical garb of the male pioneers and it is no coincidence that it was later also adopted by women.
The pioneers clothes were simple and useful, comprising several items. The rubashka was worn in several ways: tucked inside the trousers with a wide sash (as worn by the Arab peasants); or outside the trousers, either with or without a sash. Sometimes instead of a sash, they wore a wide brown or black leather belt. Instead of the rubashka, they sometimes wore a shirt with pockets in front, somewhat similar to what is now known as a safari shirt, or a mans shirt with a round collar which was worn over the trousers.
The shoes worn by Second Aliyah pioneers were cut high, from rough leather, and their typical boots were knee length but only a few of them could afford boots. Most were so poor that they were forced to share one pair of shoes with five other people, and those who went barefoot improvized various solutions. For instance, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who was to become the second president of the State of Israel, cut sandals for himself out of a rubber sole tied on to his ankle with straps.
During the winter, they usually wore a short coat or some sort of jacket, left over from the items they had brought with them from their parents home. On a particularly festive occasion, or when acting in a representative capacity, they would wear a necktie. The doctrine of communal living decreed the transfer of clothing from the individual wardrobe of each group member into a common pool for use by other members. Thus, clothes were passed on from one to another and with constant wearing they were always shabby, torn and faded. This in itself became a fashion statement, as a way of demonstrating identification with a lack of means. The guidelines of their dress code was deliberate negligence. This was a social declaration of revolt against the accepted norms and the establishment.
Fashion in the early days of Tel Aviv
On April 11, 1909, an official ceremony for the lottery of the first plots in Tel Aviv was held. At that time, the whole area was a large sand dune, with no trace of any previous habitation, nor could any tree or house be seen in its emptiness. By 1918, only nine years later, there was already a large neighbourhood on the site, with many of the buildings one or two storey houses. There were paved roads, a water tower, the Shulamit Music School and the Eden cinema-theatre.
Most Tel Aviv residents were secular and middle class, leading a comfortable life in spacious homes equipped with the latest contemporary innovations: taps with running water, a charcoal stove, a tin primus cooking stove, and an air box (which served as a kind of refrigerator). Elegant furniture was imported from Europe and porcelain tableware filled the glass-fronted sideboards.
Tel Avivians led a bourgeois life style, with large family meals, strolls at dusk along Rothschild Boulevard and the occasional viewing of a film at the Eden cinema. The children studied at the Herzliya Gymnasium (high school) and the Shulamit Music School and played in the neighbourhoods streets. Tel Aviv residents were not standard bearers for socialism and were not interested in improving the world. Their aspirations centred on establishing a pleasant, comfortable place where they and their children could enjoy the good life.
Tel Aviv women dressed in the latest fashions and, judging by the photographs of Avraham Soskin, the photographer of Little Tel Aviv, white was their favourite colour. Whether at festivals, parties or ceremonies, or on an evening stroll along the beach, Tel Aviv women liked wearing embroidered and trimmed white dresses; a parasol with matching gloves was indispensable to the outfit.
In photographs from the period, Tel Aviv women appear very relaxed and at ease perhaps because they had abandoned tight corsets and some of the heavy underclothes, in order to move about more comfortably.
In addition, Tel Aviv women gradually gave up their large hats decorated with fruit and flowers, as Hemda Ben-Yehuda had written, "Decorations for hats: feathers and whole birds and amazingly large bows." First the women finished with the birds and feathers, then afterwards they did away with the actual hats, emphasizing that they were secular, had a liberal philosophy of life, and supported the idea of womens liberty.
Another item of womens wear that made its first appearance in Tel Aviv was the womens suit the "costume" as it was known. Comprising a rather long skirt and a jacket with a lapel collar, it was inspired by the mans suit and symbolized the struggle of women against the restrictions and restraints of the accepted womens clothing.
Their dresses and suits were sewn for Tel Aviv women by local dressmakers, using materials ordered from Beirut or Paris. One of the stores selling imported fabrics was Scheinbergs which opened in the German Colony. Buttons were bought in Jaffa. Hemda Ben-Yehuda attached great importance to this fashion detail: "One must pay attention to the buttons, because a great deal of a dresss full effect depends on them..."
Young girls wore white, lace-trimmed, knee-length dresses, with knitted stockings in a matching colour. On their feet were open shoes with straps that buttoned. On the Shavuot festival they wore garlands of flowers on their heads and strung their clothes with necklaces and belts of greenery. For school, the girls dressed in a uniform which included a black alpaca apron with very wide shoulder straps attached to the front. This apron was influenced by Russian clothing and was very similar to the Ukrainian sarafan (a pinafore dress) which was the symbol of modest girls of the generation.
From 1918, dresses and skirts were shortened and, for the first time, shoes, which previously had been completely hidden by the long skirts, were revealed. This brought about great developments in the shoe industry and shops started selling shoes in a variety of colours and styles. The shoes of Tel Aviv women were just like those of the women in Jerusalem and the moshavot, as they all followed the fashion decrees published in Hashkafa: "The most acceptable shoes today are in green or red, but grey shoes, in leather or fabric and trimmed with deep indents of shining black leather, make a lovely impression. They look very beautiful on the feet and make them appear slim and fine."
In keeping with the times, Tel Aviv men wore three-piece suits: long, straight trousers (with or without turn-ups) with a high waist-band that fastened with two buttons; a European style jacket with wide lapels, either single or double breasted; and the collarless waistcoat (known as a "vest" or by the French word gilet), whose front part was very elegant. The suits material was superior quality English wool, plain coloured or striped. In summer, suits were tailored for men in white or beige cotton or linen. Braces were attached with bone buttons to the trousers. The white shirts were starched and ironed with great care and detachable collars were used.
Hats were an essential part of the outfit, and apart from straw hats and felt hats trimmed with coloured grosgrain ribbon, Tel Aviv men used to wear peaked caps, solar topees, and even high top hats (tsilinder) imported from England for balls and weddings.
There are photographs from about 1914 onwards showing men in knee-length riding breeches with dark stockings or knee-length boots. The men were in the habit of carrying a cane, more for making an impression on passers-by than for actual support. The hat and the cane were responsible for a considerable amount of the regular etiquette of the period raising the hat on greeting an acquaintance in the street, or lifting the cane sideways in order to let the ladies go first.
It appears that in spite of its proximity to Jaffa, eastern dress had little influence on Tel Aviv men who, apart from getting dressed up in eastern clothes for a special portrait in the local photographers studio, dressed strictly in European fashion.
It has to be emphasized that most of the people who dressed in western style did not wear elegant gala attire, but simple clothing according to their means and their possibilities. While it is true that their clothing was inspired by creations from Paris or St. Petersburg, what they actually wore was only a modest copy of the original.
A National costume Fact or fantasy?
"Is there a need for a national costume in Eretz-Israel?" This question arose frequently in pre-state newspapers, both in the fashion pages and in letters to the editor. Citizens sent in their suggestions for an original costume, and these were published widely in the press.
The first person to raise the issue of a national costume, back in the first decade of the century, was Hemda Ben-Yehuda, who even put forward her own ideas. Her costume was based on the tallit (prayer shawl) but it remained an idea only and never reached implementation.
In the womans magazine Laisha of 1926, Julia Auster wrote: "The time has come for the Hebrew woman in Eretz-Israel to devote some attention to the style of dress. We, women of the east and also women who have decided to make their home in the east, continue to this day to copy the west. We blindly follow the fashions that come from Europe, without reflecting that these styles are not right for us, not for the climate of this country nor for its unique atmosphere." The writer suggested that the national dress be a high-collared, long-sleeved tunic, decorated with embroidery around the collar. She adds that the same dress can be worn, without sleeves, for a house dress or a party dress.
The writer even addresses the issue of footwear, suggesting, "The sandal must serve as the basis, but without stockings." Likewise she proposed "consulting Hebrew artists, who know the countrys climate and atmosphere." She suggested that the proposed national costume be published in the press, with drawings and explanations, in order that everyone should know about it. In the newspaper Shulamit of 1935, Yehudit Zentner discussed a national costume for Eretz-Israel: Seeing new immigrants from Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria wearing the national dress they brought with them, one is jealous...we need an Eretz-Israeli creation made from local materials."
The desire for a national dress was even reinforced by the national poet, Chaim Nahman Bialik: "With the redemption of Hebrew land, there are aspirations to give the people of Israel its own life style. One of the external means of doing so is the manner of dress. One should not be surprised, therefore, that many have raised suggestions for an original Hebrew costume (Haaretz, 1937).
The first practical step towards consolidating a national costume was taken at the Levant Fair of 1936. During the fair there was a competition, with prizes, for an original design for a Hebrew costume, "that amalgamates eastern culture with western culture and symbolizes the renewal of the Jewish heritage in Eretz-Israel." The contests organizers called for two national costumes: one for typical eastern everyday wear, based on the Yemenite style; and the second a dress for festive occasions. The dress chosen in the everyday category was called Bat Ami ("Daughter of my People"), while Pnina Riva won the prize for her festive dress design. Called Bat Zion ("Daughter of Zion"), it combined eastern elements with traditional Jewish motifs. The newspaper Haaretz wrote about it in 1937, "On her back the woman wears a sort of cloak that is similar to the Arab abbayah, covering the head and wrapping around the dress. By the use of gold embroidery the abbayah is also reminiscent of a tallit." This dress, which was made from the finest local materials, was intended to be the national costume, but in actual fact it was never widely accepted. The only use made of it was 13 years later when it was put into the wardrobe of the first Israeli beauty queen, Miriam Yaron, for her journey overseas to the Miss Universe competition.
The issue of a national costume did not cease to be of interest to public opinion and went on doing so after the establishment of the state. The matter was raised from time to time in the 1950s when Israeli missions were sent to represent Israel overseas.
However, it is a fact that to this day there is no national dress and it is doubtful if there ever will be. A national costume is not the fruits of one persons or many peoples deliberate invention. It is not enough for some fashion designer to come up with an idea. The national dress of a people evolves through many generations. It is not the result of plenty and well-being, but very often the result of poverty and shortages. It reflects the peoples past, its heritage and way of life. It is not subject to a timetable and is not touched by times changes.
Translated by Chana Stern
1 Kaffiyah. The head scarf habitually worn by Arabs.
2 Abbayah. Long cloak or outer garment worn by Arabs.
3 Akal. The (usually) black cord keeping the keffiyah on the head.
4 Shabariyeh. Arab dagger.
5 See Jack Fellman: "Eliezer Ben Yehuda", Ariel No. 104, 1997.
6 Kumbaz. The typical Turkish loose robe of the country, a kind of kaftan which opened in the front.
* See Harold M. Blumberg: "Beit Aaronsohn," Ariel no. 52, 1982.