Letter from Israel: Culture and Leisure

Four thousand years of Jewish heritage, a century of political Zionism and six decades of modern statehood have contributed to the development of an Israeli culture which reflects worldwide elements while striving for an authentic identity of its own. Cultural expression through the arts in Israel is as varied as the people themselves, with activities for every taste, offering professional talent of international standard alongside a wealth of opportunities for aspiring artists and amateurs.

Theater in Israel is composed of many different elements - contemporary and classical, indigenous and imported, experimental and traditional - with playwrights, actors, directors, and producers of many backgrounds merging the foreign with the local and thereby gradually creating a distinctive Israeli theater. The theater scene is very active, with many professional repertory and other theaters, and dozens of regional and amateur companies performing throughout the country to large and devoted audiences. In recent years, a number of Israeli companies have toured Eastern and Western Europe and the United States, and have participated in international festivals, including the Edinburgh and Berlin Festivals, and appeared in major theater events in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. A number of semi-professional and amateur groups perform in English and Russian. The major professional companies are located in the country's four largest cities.

LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

The concept of 'popular' entertainment began in pre-state Israel during the 1940s but its major impetus occurred during the 1960s with the formation of entertainment troupes attached to different military units. While television and radio are the main outlets for popular entertainment, live performances by comedians, singers, musicians, bands, and groups take place regularly throughout the country. Certain artists have made a name for themselves abroad, including Dudu Fisher, the late Ofra Haza, Rami Kleinstein, Aviv Gefen, David Broza, and Noa (Ahinoam Nini). In 1998, Israeli transsexual Dana International won the Eurovision song contest and become a global star.

The contemporary music scene in Israel is hugely varied and often audacious. Many of the newcomers to Israeli music's pop scene have emerged through the TV program Kochav Nolad (A Star Is Born), Israel's answer to the US's American Idol. Increasingly popular among all Israelis is a Mediterranean musical genre deriving primarily from Arabic and Greek influences. Grand-scale musicals in Hebrew translation, including "Les Miserables" and "The Sound of Music," have been revived to enthusiastic acclaim. A new generation of stand-up comics is beginning to command substantial followings.

Popular Israeli music

Filmmaking in Israel has undergone major developments since its inception in the 1950s. The first features produced and directed by Israelis tended, like Israeli literature of the period, to be cast in the heroic mold. Some recent films remain deeply rooted in the Israeli experience, dealing with such subjects as Holocaust survivors and their children and the travails of new immigrants. Others reflect a more predominant trend towards the present Israeli reality, whether dealing with the Israel-Arab confrontation or set in the context of a universalist, somewhat alienated and hedonistic society.

Israeli films and filmmakers have won numerous international awards in recent years. Cinema exports are growing as more Israeli-made films become successful abroad and more dollar-earning foreign and co-productions are filmed on location in the country. The Israel Film Center, a division of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, promotes filmmaking in Israel by both local and foreign producers and provides services from arranging professional contacts to offering financial incentives. Such major events as the Israel Film Festival at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, along with similar events in Haifa and Sderot, combined with Israeli film festivals abroad, all help to promote awareness about Israeli film.

The recently renovated Jerusalem Cinematheque consists of an archive of thousands of films, a research library, viewing halls, and exhibition space. The Spielberg Film Archive at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the world's largest repository of film material on Jewish themes as well as on Jewish and Israeli life. Run by the university together with the Central Zionist Archives, its main activity is collecting, preserving and cataloguing Jewish films, and making the material available to researchers, film and television writers, and producers throughout the world.

Music began to occupy an important place in the cultural life of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel after World War I. Music on a professional level, however, became a major activity only in the 1930s when hundreds of music teachers and students, composers, instrumentalists and singers, as well as thousands of music lovers, streamed into the country, driven by the threat of Nazism in Europe.

The Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra (today the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) gave its first concert in Tel Aviv in 1936. It immediately became one of the pivots of the country's musical life and over the years acquired the reputation as one of the preeminent orchestras in the world. Soon after, a radio orchestra was established (today the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra), whose broadcast concerts attracted tens of thousands of listeners. Additional musical organizations were founded at later dates, including the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the Be'er Sheva Sinfonietta, and orchestras based in Haifa, Netanya, Holon, Ramat Gan and Rishon Lezion, as well as the Israel Kibbutz Orchestra. In the early 1980s, the New Israeli Opera began mounting productions on a high professional level, reviving public enthusiasm for operatic works.

During the early 1990s, Israel's musical life underwent a transformation with the massive influx of over one million Jews from the former Soviet Union. This immigration brought with it many professional musicians, including instrumentalists, singers, and music teachers, whose impact was felt with the formation of new symphony and chamber orchestras, as well as smaller ensembles, and a dynamic injection of talent and musical vitality into educational frameworks in schools, conservatories, and community centers throughout the country. The chamber music tradition, which also began in the 1930s, includes a number of internationally acclaimed ensembles and choral groups, which have expanded in range and variety since the immigration of the 1990s.

The 50th International Harp Contest in Israel 2009

Zimriyia - World Assembly of Choirs

In the communal and religious life of the Jewish people, dance has been regarded as an expression of joy and sorrow since biblical times and is today an integral part of religious, national, community, and family celebrations. Israeli folk dance emerged as an amalgam of Jewish and non-Jewish folk dance forms from many parts of the world. While in other countries folk dance is fostered to preserve old rural traditions, in Israel it is a constantly developing art form which has evolved since the 1940s, based on historic and modern sources as well as on biblical associations and contemporary dance styles. The early pioneers brought with them native dances which were adapted to their new milieu. Among them, a Romanian dance, the hora, typified the new life being built in the Land of Israel: its closed circle form gave equal status to all participants, simple movements enabled everyone to take part, and the linked arms symbolized the new ideology. Since 1988, a three-day international folk-dance festival has been held annually at Karmiel, a town in central Galilee, with the participation of troupes from Israel and around the world.

Dance as an art form was introduced in the country in the 1920s by newly arrived teachers and devotees of dance from the cultural centers of Europe. After the establishment of the state, it was developed to a high professional level by a number of ensembles, each based on a different orientation and style. Today more than a dozen major professional dance companies, most of them based in Tel Aviv, perform a varied repertoire throughout the country and abroad. Israel's contributions to the field of movement education include the methods of Moshe Feldenkrais, which are taught all over the world, and the Eshkol-Wachman movement notation system, one of the three best-known systems of recording dance and movement in written form.

Ballet 2007


Karmiel Dance Festival

Basic to the development of literature in the country is the century-long revival of Hebrew, both for everyday use and as an expressive literary language. Authors and poets deal extensively with local images and events as well as with universal themes, reflecting the changing nature of the country's concerns and the development of its complex, multilayered society.

Some 2,500 titles are published annually, which, in addition to republications of classics and imported books, may be found in the many bookshops of every town and city. About 1,000 libraries provide reference and lending facilities, including several bookmobiles serving outlying districts. The biennial International Book Fair draws thousands of visitors to Jerusalem, and every spring Hebrew Book Week turns city squares and parks into crowded book markets.

In addition to the prolific body of Hebrew literature, a significant amount of writing, both prose and poetry, appears in other languages, including Arabic, English, and French. Since the immigration of over one million Jews from the former Soviet Union, Israel has become the largest center of literary creativity in the Russian language outside Russia itself.

Bar Kokhba letters, 134 CE

Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, and other art forms, while reflecting international trends, are also influenced by the specific Israeli temperament and landscape. Art in all its forms enjoys wide exposure at museums and in the many galleries spread throughout the country. Old neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Safed have been restored as artists' quarters, and the artists' village of Ein Hod lies nestled in the Carmel mountains, near Haifa, for those seeking art in a rustic setting.

MUSEUMS. Some 200 museums, covering subjects from archeology to zoology, are maintained in cities, towns and kibbutzim throughout the country and receive millions of visitors annually.

The Israel Museum, the country's national museum, devotes areas to archeology, Judaica, Impressionist and Israeli painting, as well as special collections such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, includes a new museum that documents events of the period through dozens of video screens as well as the traditional glass-encased exhibits. Ha'aretz Museum and others feature exhibits specific to the development of the country, from prehistoric times onwards. Unique in concept, the Museum of the Diaspora (Beit Hatefutzot), traces the history of world Jewish communities by means of scale models, dioramas and audio-visual displays.

Frontispiece of the Schocken Bible 1290, World Stamp Exhibition 1985

The link between the country's past and present is substantiated by some 20,000 recognized sites of antiquity in Israel that are protected by law, representing thousands of years of history. Every year, dozens of sites from every period of history and in all parts of the country are excavated.

Finds attesting to the long connection of the Jewish people with the Land of Israel include Solomon's stables at Megiddo, houses from the Israelite period in the City of David (Jerusalem), ritual baths at Masada, numerous synagogues throughout the country and the Dead Sea scrolls, containing the earliest extant copy of the Book of Isaiah in still-readable Hebrew script.

Excavations have also revealed the vestiges of other civilizations which have left their imprint on the land over the centuries. All finds are recorded, and historical sites are carefully preserved and marked, for scholar and visitor alike.

Archeology in Jerusalem, Reliefs from the 12th-13th, 16th and 18th Centuries


The Biblical Tels

The tradition of a free press, an integral part of Israel's democracy, is expressed by the publication of seven Hebrew-language dailies and eleven in other languages, including Arabic, as well as a large number of periodicals. Two television channels, cable and satellite TV (local channels as well as dozens from around the world) and several radio stations present a wide variety of programs, including news, interviews, panel discussions, game shows, films and entertainment, in addition to educational and cultural features. Programming in Arabic is geared to the interests of the Arab population, while that in other languages caters to the needs of immigrant groups and tourists. Shortwave broadcasts are transmitted regularly for listeners abroad.

Soccer and basketball are Israel's most popular sports, with swimming, tennis, volleyball, gymnastics, track-and-field and other activities gaining additional enthusiasts every year. Local teams participate regularly in league competition before large crowds of loyal fans, while national teams represent the country in international championships. Israel's major sports organizations (Maccabi, Betar, Hapoel and Elizur) sponsor local teams in various sports as well as programs for youth in which the country's future champions are trained. Jewish athletes from all over the world come to Israel to compete in the Maccabiah and Hapoel Games, each held at four-year intervals.

Special events such as the annual marathon run around Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and the swim across it, as well as the Jerusalem March, draw thousands of participants. Camping and hiking are becoming increasingly popular, with about 6.5 million visits registered annually at the numerous national parks and nature reserves across Israel. For those with a taste for adventure, off-the-beaten-track hikes are organized in some of the world's most spectacular scenery, scuba diving expeditions explore themagnificent coral reefs in theGulf of Eilat and opportunities for horseback riding along the forest trails of Galilee,on the Mediterranean beaches and in other parts of the country range from an hour's outing to trips of severaldays' duration. In recent years, participation in bicycle and automobile racing, hang-gliding, rappelling, sailing and windsurfing has also been growing.

The 18th Maccabiah 2009


Sport for All