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Pag* 14 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE April 28, 1978
tly during a radio
interview the following question
arms put to me: “It is easy to think
of Israel as a country beleaguered
on all sides—down in the trenches,
in the bunkers, and one wonders if
there is time for such a thing as an
artistic life in a country that has so
many other problems?” I was
anxious to respond, for the
question reflected how little is
known about ongoing creative
activity in Israel.
One supposes that the sheer
magnitude of the events in the
political arena has somewhat
detracted from Israel’s vigorous
cultural image—from the fact that
the muses are alive and well and
even thriving in our country. In the
midst of our struggle for survival
the arts have flourished.
Perhaps part of this artistic
activity is the result of what
Hemingway termed “grace under
pressure”. A personal experience
may serve to dramatize the point.
I’ll never forget a benefit concert I
attended in Jerusalem during one
of the tense days of the 1973 war.
Isaac Stern had especially come
from the United States to play with
Israel Philharmonic under the
baton of Zubin Mehta.
With sons, brothers, husbands
and friends away at the front,
hundreds of people flocked mid
day to the Jerusalem Theatre to
attend the concert. There wasn’t a
seat in the house; people were
sitting on the steps, on stage
surrounding the musicians, deeply
involved in the music; it was truly
an incredible experience to listen
to the applause at such a moment
of crisis when one would expect
thoughts to be elsewhere. The
gathering was an act of
affirmation, which 1 believe so
much characterizes the art scene in
our country.
As we begin to celebrate Israel's
30th anniversary, let us note a few
concrete achievements in the arts.
The works of Israel poets and
prose writers have been widely
published and translated.
To cite an example. My
Michael, a novel by Amos Oz, has
been translated into at least eight
different languages, including
Japanese, Finnish and Catalan.
Our foremost writer, the late S.Y.
Agnon, received the Nobel Prize in
1966, thus being the first Jewish
writer to receive the coveted prize
for a body of work written in
Hebrew, our ancient-modern
language.
Now for some statistics: Israel
rates second in the globe in the
number of book titles published in
relation to population.
A* theater-goers, Israelis have
the highest per capita attendance
in the world. We have five
repertory theater companies:
Habima. the Camcri, the Haifa
Municipal Theater, the Khan
Theater in Jerusalem, and the
Beer-sheva Theater. In addition
there are some smaller groups
which present avant-garde plays as
well as Arabic and English
companies.
In dance, our foremost company
is the Balsheva Dance Company.
which was the first ensemble to
perform a Graham ballet outside
of the U.S. Martha Graham was
instrumental in helping to create
the Balsheva Company. Other
prominent dance groups include
Bat-Dor. Israel’s largest dance
company, Inbal Dance Theater.
which has sought to preserve
Yemenite traditional dance, the
Israel Classical Ballet and the
newly-formed "Demama" Group,
the dance company of the deaf and
mute.
Our outstanding musical
institution, the Israel Philhar
monic Orchestra has 32,000
subscribers, a world record
percentage of the population.
All of this points to the popular
appeal of the arts in Israel. One
always feels that there is such a
close contact between the artist
and his public. Our celebrities
don’t seem to inhabit ivory towers,
but they are really out there in the
streets, reflecting the pulse of life in
the country, part of the people.
Mostly I would like to stress the
involvement of our young people
in the arts both as spectators and
active participants. Young people
attend concerts in large numbers.
In the field of music, violinists
head our list of distinguished
cultural exports: Isaac Perlman,
Pinhas Zuckerman and Miriam
Fried, who was in Atlanta recently,
are joined by the renowned pianist
and conductor, Daniel Baren
boim, as well as a number of other
conductors who have made names
for themselves in the various
orchestras of the world.
In the plastic arts, several
outstanding contributions have
been made by Israeli artists.
Ya’acov Agam is perhaps most
well known for his pioneering
ventures in kinetic art. And then
there is painter Mordechai Ardon,
a major figure in Israeli art who is
also well known abroad. The fact
that Ardon was appointed to an
official post as art advisor to the
Government may speak for itself.
Few people know that Marcel
Janco, an Israeli painter was one of
the founders of the Dada
movement, a major movement in
world art, prior to his immigrating
to Israel from Switzerland. As one
traces the history of art in Israel
one becomes aware of the rich and
diversified resources we draw upon
as well as the extent of the
achievement, which may be out of
proportion to the size of the
country and its economy.
Prospective travelers to Israel
call the Israel Government Tourist
Office for information on some of
the major arts festivals held in the
country so that they may schedule
their trips accordingly. First and
foremost is the Israel Festival of,
Music and Drama, which is held
annually in the summertime; this
festival presents outstanding
soloists from around the world, as
well as ensembles. The Festival has
presented everything from the
Preservation Hall Jazz Band of
New Orleans to the Stuttgart
Ballet and a variety of famous
soloists.
The Ein Gev Festival, which has
been incorporated in the larger
festival, has featured the Martha
Graham Company, Rostropovitch
and Arthur Rubinstein—all
performing on the shores of the
Sea of Galilee.
Speaking of Rubinstein, one of
our finest cultural events is the
Arthur Rubinstein International
Master Piano Competition with its
distinguished international jury
headed by the maestro himself. It is
truly amazing to see contestants
from all over the world, the finest
young musicians, assembled in
Jerusalem for the competition,
which was initiated in 1974.
The first prize winner that year
was the American Emanuel Ax,
who has since performed with the
Atlanta Symphony and is
scheduled for another appearance
later this year. My husband, Dov,
and I met with Ax after his concert
in Atlanta. We were present at his
triumph in Jerusalem in 1974 since
Dov had served as the legal advisor
both to the Israel Festival and to
the Rubinstein Master Competi
tion prior to his coming here. In
Atlanta, we asked Mr. Ax what the
competition had meant to his
career, and he responded,
“Everything, just everything!”
The unique International Harp
Contest, one of its kind in the
world, is also held in Jerusalem,
the city of King David, who
according to the Bible—was (also)
a master harpist.
A question that is often asked in
surveying the various accomplish
ments of Israeli artists is. Is there a
distinctly Israeli style evolving in
any of the arts? For a country that
Artist Yaacov Agam's “Beating Heart”
The arts in Israel
by Ruth Kolani
is only 30 years old, the question
may be premature, yet we must
remember that the roots of our
culture are so much older. We are
fortunate to draw upon a richly
diversified cultural heritage. The
Bible, the Talmud and the Zohar
have deeply affected even our most
secularly oriented artists,
musicians and writers.
We must constantly remind
ourselves that we are an ancient
people in a new country—an
ancient country—who have come
together from 2,000 years of
experience in the diaspora, a
people of mixed immigration.
Here we were coming to Israel
after being exposed to a 100
different cultures, bringing with us
an assortment of languages and
traditions, suddenly confronting a
new way of life and learning to
speak a revived ancient language.
Much of present day Israeli art
derives from the pre-State
pioneering experience. The
experimental efforts of the
legendary artist-dancer, Baruch
Agadati, at the beginning of the
century may be most representa
tive of the on going quest for a
new idiom. Early in the century,
Agadati came to the Bezalel Art
School in Jerusalem, which had
just been founded by Boris Schatz,
a recent immigrant from Bulgaria,
who had distinguished himself as
court painter to the Bulgarian
King.
What Agadati (the Hebrew
word for legendary), painter an
dancer was attempting to do was to
blend the experience of Eastern
Europe the Chassidic experience
The modern Jerusalem Theatre
Batsheva Dance C ompany
with what he found in the Middle
East. The former member of the
Odessa Opera Ballet was trying to
come to terms with the Oriental
environment.
Agadati, often called "the first
Hebrew dancer,” engaged in dance
research. Reportedly, the prolific
choreographer would spend hours
observing the movements of
Yemenite Jews working in the
citrus groves of the Yishuv and
would later incorporate their
gestures as well as the traditional
dances he had learned from them
into his own dance compositions,
such as the ballet “Abraham and
the Three Angels," which reflected
the influence of three major
sources of the incipient creative
endeavours in Eretz Israel: the
Bible, the life of the Chalutzim in
the new land and the cultural
experience of the various ethnic
groups.
To this day we dance the
popular “Hora Agadati,” a “folk
dance” choreographed by the
pioneering dancer. Incidentally,
the folk dance known as the Hora
is of Rumanian origin, but it has
somehow become the national
dance of Israel.
To painters, the landscape itself
was suggesting various directions.
Once the newly arrived artists were
able to overcome their tendency to
depict exotic scenes populated
with decorative cartels resting in
the shade of proverbial olive trees,
they could focus their attention on
such purely aesthetic matter as
the quality of light unique to the
country. The well-known Israeli
painter, the late Reuven Rubin,
The Israel Philharmonic at the ancient amphitheatre in Caesarea
once recalled his seeing an olive
tree for the first time as a new
immigrant. He said that all his
attempts to render the tree on
canvas proved abortive until he
realized in a flash of insight that
the tree was “a body of light.” His
numerous landscapes, including
those hanging in the Knesset, bear
witness to the successful resolution
of the artist’s problem.
Contemporary Israeli painters
like the Abstract Impressionists
Zaritzky and Streichman base
much of their work on the quality
of light, the texture of the stones
and the sheer color of the
landscape itself, thus minimizing
the need to portray literal Jewish
subject matter per se.
The dynamic revival of
Hebrew, our ancient-modern
language, has had a decisive
influence on Israel’s cultural life,
primarily of course on its
literature. Our writers have related
individually to the rich
connotative value of the written
and spoken Hebrew word in
dealing with the central Jewish
experiences of our time. Uri Tzvi
Greenberg’s passionate collection
of poems on the Holocaust, Streets
of the River, is written in a Hebrew
enriched with Biblical cadences
and echoes of Yiddish.
A fusion of lofty and informal
diction is typical of the prose and
poetry of other writers who have
dealt with related themes; the
names of Yehuda Amichai and
Abba Kovner come to mind as
well as that of prose writer Aharon
Apelfeld. Native writers, S. Yizhar
(in his Midnight Convoy), Chaim
Gouri and Yitzhak Orpaz (in his
recent novel A House of One) have
chronicled the personal and
collective impact of Israel’s war
experience.
Benjamin Tammuz, like a
number of his contemporaries has
poignantly recorded memories of
his childhood in the early days of
Tel Aviv in Cholot HaZahav, (The
Golden Sands.) The experiences
and life-styles of the Oriental
Jewish communities have been
sensitively rendered in the novels
and short stories of Hayim Hazaz
and Yehuda Burla; while kibbutz
life has found its eloquent
expression in the prose of Yigal
Mossinsohn, Aharon Meged and
most recently in the probing stories
of Amos Oz, a member of Kibbutz
Hulda.
In spite of the fact that Hebrew
was not the native tongue of the
most innovative Israeli poets and
novelists, one may marvel at the
high degree of linguistic sensitivity
they have achieved. So much of the
texture of Yehuda Amichai’s
poetry, for example, depends on
the skillful juxtaposition of
biblical diction and colloquial
Hebrew, the language of daily
discourse, as well as corresponding
contrasts in imagery and original
word-play, all of which have made
his poems highly translatable and
have widened their universal
appeal. It is Amichai who speaks
of Jerusalem as a “port city on the
shores of eternity” and of “Day of
Atonement sailors in white
uniforms (who) climb among
ladders and ropes of tested
prayers.”
On several occasions, gifted
native author A.B. Yehoshua has
expressed his desire to emulate the
loftier Hebrew of Agnon in his
writing. The poetess Zelda, on the
other hand, in her use of sparse and
simple Hebrew, has restricted
herself to the language of the
prayerbook.
In his enthusiastic introduction
to an anthology of Israeli short
(ranaRi-t
eafiHRbY
stories five years ago, author
James Michener wrote:
“In the field of art, music,
literature and theater, the world
has acclaimed Israeli
accomplishment; one might say
that her artists have provided
Israel with one of the best
weapons a nation can have, a
viable culture which demands
international respect.... I know
few lands in which the role of
the writer is so exalted as in
Israel. When I lived there men
quoted Bialik as evidence in an
argument; they kept informed
as to what Agnon was up to;
they told me of Megged’s latest
work with a pride that indicated
their participation in it.”
These are the observations of an
impassioned visitor to the country.
For anyone who has attended one
of the crowded poetry reading
sessions at the Jerusalem Writer’s
House, these words of praise still
strike a responsive chord. ,
Ruth Kolani is the wife of the
director of the Israel Government
Tourist Office in Atlanta and is a
talented artist.
Artist at Old Jaffa Artists' Colony
Pag* 19 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE April 28, 1978