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E24 Conclusion: Radicant Optimists, or Optimist Radicants A wave of German-Jewish immigration arrived in pre-State Israel in the 1930s, in the wake of the Nazi's rise to power. Emigration from Germany encompassed over 300,000 of the 523,000 German Jewish population counted in 1933, 20 over 160,000 of whom immigrated to Israel. 21 Forced, by intensifying antisemitic harassment, to leave the country that they had considered their homeland for centuries, German-Jewish émigrés clung to a culture that they saw as their own. In this way, their German habitus was transmitted beyond the first generation of immigrants. 22 Micha Ullman's parents belonged to the German-Jewish strand of the evolving Israeli society, which has been credited with significant contributions to the onset of Israel's industrialization, in addition to their foundational role in the fields of medicine, academia, art, and culture. 23 In a meaningful coincidence, Sharabani currently occupies a studio space in Tel Aviv owned by a German-Jewish entrepreneur and former textile manufacturer, who arrived in Israel in the 1930s as part of the aforementioned generation of immigrants. A massive German weaving loom, which might have been cutting-edge technology at the time, still occupies a central space in the studio. It inspired Sharabani's interactive installation Conductors and Resistors (2018; figure 17, see p. 22). The installation draws on the rows of spools still extant in the studio, forging a direct connection between the artist's prowess in digital media and the textile manufacturing technology that ensured a German-Jewish immigrant's livelihood back in the 1930s. First presented at the 2018 SXSW media art festival in Austin, Texas, Conductors and Resistors features a video of an actor tangled in virtual yarns issuing from serried rows of disproportionately large spools. Visitors could interact with the installation via their phones: By pointing their phones toward the screen they could create new threads and further entangle the writhing actor. As the artist remarked in private conversation, the presence of the loom in his studio recalls the relentless efforts of German-Jewish immigrants to industrialize Israel, which was then a relatively neglected Middle Eastern district under the British Mandate. At the same time, the now–disabled machine calls attention to the decline of 20 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2019. German Jewish Refugees, 1933–1939. Holocaust Encyclopedia. Online encyclopedia entry. Available online: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-jewish- refugees-1933-1939 (accessed 7 October 2019). 21 The Jewish Agency for Israel. 2014. Modern Zionist Aliyot to Israel. The Story of Zionism. Webpage, posted November 13. Available online: http://archive.jewishagency.org/historical-aliyah/content/28841 (accessed 2 December 2019). 22 Hansen-Glucklich, J. 2017. "Father, Goethe, Kant, and Rilke: The Ideal of Bildung, the Fifth Aliyah, and German-Jewish Integration Into the Yishuv." Shofar , 35(2): 21–53. 23 Ibid.

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