Space for Israel Israel Culture and Society Portland State University November 2, 2012 Teacher: Dr.

Spiegel Student: Mary Eng What is the role of space or location in the shaping of Israeli culture? What space, location, or site holds the most importance? Cited Works: From Zero to Hero: Masculinity in Jewish Nationalism by Tamar Mayer Constructing the city of Tel Aviv: urban space, physical culture and the natural and built environment by Nina S. Spiegel New Israeli Rituals: Inventing a Folk Dance Tradition by Nina S. Spiegel The role of space or location is the most critical and fundamental basis of shaping Israeli culture. The space that holds the most importance is the space between the ribs where beats the human heart. An exploration of masculinity in Israeli culture, will give way to genderless transcending androgynes, wherein the collective remaking of courage and perseverance, exceeds the gender codes of old, giving strength to all. The sea of Tel Aviv will hold in the heart, the pain of heart attack, where should we be, where is there a space, where there is none? New rituals, neither habitual, nor located in history will give way to future making new, a space for human hearts. In From Zero to Hero: Masculinity in Jewish Nationalism by Tamar Mayer, the Oslo Accords yielded the paraphrastic zero to hero motif. Mayer quoted the Yediot Achronot: "We used to be men, now we are zero." (p.97) Our whole digitos, that which goes in between, zeros and ones. If it were to read from zero to one, where does meaning inhere? Did the belief hold that joining the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would yield a chance to be "real men" (p.97)? Where do these numbers take embodiment? What space can hold the numbers of human dignity? Numbers of soldiers, not numbers of dead. Where cultures of militarism, wend their

way towards peace, but where there is no peace ever. Every day, every continual war, every Zero every atom for peace, default setting war. Where can women, begin, to save, to protect, the men, who then leave towards intifadas and new-antisemitisms resurgent making waves across the oceans of militarism? Would that Allah and Yaweh were one. "Real men" have violet vision, on the red sea, roundly, knowing the wheels will turn, towards angels, and what can be bought with blood diamonds. Space was the single most important place for a culture, now diasporas send the children reeling or in bunkers away, from the war. Space is that which was denied. Mayer explains "the part of young Israeli men to die for the nation is on the decline, we may well find in the future major changes in both Zionism and masculinity" (p. 113). More space, without death, more transnationalism, and more culture. War was the early way to preserve space, and in increased urban density, the accretions of culture will grow elaborate, multicultural and defiant of death. The presence of the sea, cannot be removed from our deep evolutionary yearning, for its riches. The salt, or nourishment, or the electrical effects on our fraught desert systems, the sea calms, and restores, by way of feng shui. In Constructing the city of Tel Aviv: urban space, physical culture and the natural and built environment by Nina S. Spiegel, we find the ebullient beachside culture, the locus of healthful celebration of nature, sport, and community. Words cannot describe the joyful beachside celebrations captured on reel. A new vitality was sought ferociously by a new Israeli people, resolutely restoring the ravages of war and diaspora. Tel Aviv's development hold's spectacular Star of David human sculptures incorporating beachwear clad humans, in the sun, on the sand, resilient and smiling for the camera. Spiegel cites the vintage footage preserved by the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive in Jerusalem, describing the new secular athletic idealized Israelis: "they became a defining image of the 'new Jew' and, in particular, an emblem of Tel Aviv life, representing

happy, healthy Jews in the sunlight, promoting the cult of youth and looking strong, energetic, and vibrant" (p.8). The sea, and the sand, then hold the space wherein the humans, many translocated from the cold and grey Europe, found a climate which provided a new setting, for a new way of life. Most critical to any kind of existence, is space. In New Israeli Rituals: Inventing a Folk Dance Tradition by Nina S. Spiegel, the development of new dance rituals in the space of Israel, holds a deeper metaphor for the geopolitical realities of the new Israeli state. Dancing one's nationalism, or dancing the nation, gives heart to the real Israel. Israel suffered dislocation, but in making a space, the dancer performs a literal real "taking" of space, an immanent domain. A performative staging of health, vitality, and a new tradition. Embodiments of folk dancing, and new styles merged into the new Jewish ritual, where dislocated idealistic new Israelis performed the most basic, and real possible human communication, silent dance. Dance cannot be underestimated in terms of political significance. Dance is the last refuge of free speech. When all language has been robbed of one not paraplegic, dance remains. In the section "Creating a Folk Dance Festival" the new ritual creation is described in detail, with emphasis on the new ground breaking collaborations between composers, dancers, and developers to secure the festival organization. The key role of the new ritual performing the triumph of secularist identity formation, above the old religious connotations of religious identity, heralds a new way, in which women became central actors in the development of the new national identity. The masculinst dominance of the old religion gives way to ritual choreographies embodied in a new egalitarian ethos, with women in leadership and formative roles. The settlement of the Dalia holds a picturesque location, overlooking mountains, the Carmel Range, as cited by the Palestine Post (p.396). The dances themselves drew from Scandinavian, Moldavian, Czech, and old English traditional

folk dance (p.396). Tensions in Holocaust commemoration and differences of religiosity created a dynamic restructuring of cultural priorities and hegemonies, in the development of the new dance traditions (p. 402). Reverence to religious holidays, was performed by new secular egalitarian dances (p.402). Gender, nation, being, and religion reformulated in a new futuristic exploration of creativity in this new modern land, free from the straightjacket of European monocultural control and cultural accretion. The courage to keep making space, is the dance of life. The need to portray strength, and summon the energy for the preservation of the state, dance is the ultimate sculptural fluid representation of life, performing the new. In Hasidic cultures, dance is a way of to "bring people closer to God" (p.406). Might it be for even the atheistic Israeli, that God is more reachable in euphorias of endorphin? The utmost important space in the developing cultural identity of Israel is the space between the ribs where lies the human heart. Israel gave space, to a place where existence might be forged free of old sorrows, deep into the new. Cold nights and acrid white phosphorus, hold nothing for the human heart. Only dignity can restore political crisis to a momentum of peace. Dignity for all persons, inside the empire and outside. Dignity must be at the forefront. In the Dancing of space, the claim is made, to the space of the earth. Dance triumphs over war, and the dance by the sea, above all. The dance of war is no dance at all. The bloodbaths will give new ways of being in space, with hearts for hearts holding equivalencies for each other, in compassions, transcending nation, genome, recessive or otherwise. The glories of national and cultural inculturated concentration, will glory in the rainbow riches of all humanity, and Israel will pave the way for peace in the middle east, because Israel will survive, hold the earth, and pray. Space is the field of transformation. Dance and state are transformative. New ways of configuring human existence will inhere, as Israel nourishes cultural leadership into the Middle East Peace Process.