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Staging and Stagers in Modern
Jewish The Creation of Festive Lore in A
New Culture, 1882-1948 Yaacov Shavit & Shoshana Sitton |
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This case study
describes the work of the people responsible for creating festive lore and
its system of ceremonies and festivities - an inseparable part of every
culture. In the case of the new modern Hebrew culture of Eretz
Israel (modern Jewish Palestine) - a
society of immigrants who left behind most of their traditional folkways -
the creation of festival lore was a conscious and organized process guided by
a national ideology and aesthetic values. This creative effort in a secular
national society served as an alternative to the traditional religious
system, adapted the ceremonies and festivals to a new historical reality, and
created a new festival cycle that would give expression and joy to the values
and symbols of the new Jewish society. Staging and Stagers in
Modern Jewish Palestine claims that the system of ceremonies and
festivals, in general, and each separate ceremony and festival were staged
according to the instructions written by a defined group of cultural
activists. The book examines three main stages - the educational network,
rural society (particularly the cooperative sector), and urban society (most
notably Tel Aviv) - and looks at the stagers themselves, who were school
teachers, writers, artists, and cultural activists. Though cultural systems
of festivals and ceremonies are often researched and described, scholarly
literature rarely identifies their creators or studies in detail the manner
in which these systems are created. Staging and Stagers in Modern
Jewish Palestine sheds important light on the stagers of
modern Jewish Palestine and also on the processes and mechanisms that created
the performative lore in other cultures, in ancient
as well as modern times. Yaacov Shavit is a professor in the
Department of History of the Jewish People at Shoshana Sitton is a senior lecturer
at the Levinsky College of Education in |
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