1930 Palestine HEBREW Yiddish 3 THEATRE Magazines JEWISH PHOTOS Judaica HABIMA

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1930 Palestine HEBREW Yiddish 3 THEATRE Magazines JEWISH PHOTOS Judaica HABIMA:
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DESCRIPTION : Here for saleare 3EXQUISITEJewish-Hebrew- Eretz Israeli- Palestine 70 - 75 years old THEATRE MAGAZINES- JOURNALS depicting the Eretz Israel ( Then also refered to as Palestine ) Jewish-Hebrew THEATRE and STAGE ART in general. The PHOTOGRAPHED magazines \"BAMAH\" ( STAGE) were published in the 1930\'s(1936 , 1938 , 1939) by \"BAMAH - Theatre Art Journal TEL AVIV PALESTINE \" In Tel Aviv Eretz Israel ( Then also refered to as PALESTINE ) 10-15 years before the BIRTH of the INDEPENDENT STATE of ISRAEL and its 1948 WAR of INDEPENDENCE . A treasure of ARTICLES and PHOTOS regarding the ERETZ ISRAELI theatre in particular and the world JEWISH THEATRE in general. Depicted among other issues are the THATRE TROUPES of HABIMA ( Obviously CHANA ROBINA ) , OHEL , Ha\'MATATEH ( The BROOM ) and other companies . Several full page advertisements. Originalcovers with tipped in PHOTOS . 9.5 x7 .Around300PP + quite a few chromo photographs plates .Good condition. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) . JOURNALS will be sent inside a protective envelope . PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal .SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail is $17 .JOURNALS - MAGAZINES will be sent inside a protective envelope . Handling within 3-5 days after payment. Estimated duration 14 days.

Habima National Theatre (Hebrew: הבימה - התיאטרון הלאומי‎, lit. \"The Stage\"), located in Tel Aviv, is Israel\'s national theatre and one of the first Hebrew language theatres.Habima was founded in 1918 by Nahum Zemach in Moscow under the auspices of the Moscow Art Theatre, with patronage from Stanislavski who arranged for the mainly Polish actors to be trained by Yevgeny Vakhtangov. The People\'s Commissar of Nationalities Affairs, Joseph Stalin, also authorized the theatre\'s creation. In 1926, the theatre left the Soviet Union and toured several years before coming to Tel Aviv in 1928.[1]At that time Habima invited director Aleksei Dikiy from the Moscow Art Theatre. Dikiy directed two successful plays for Habima: one was Der Oytser (The Treasure), a play in Yiddish by Sholom Aleichem, that premiered on December 29, 1928, the second was The Crown, a play by David Calderon, that premiered on May 23, 1929 in Tel Aviv. With the success of Dikiy\'s directorship in the season of 1928/29, Habima gained reputation as a national Jewish theatre with a permanent repertoire and stage in Tel Aviv.The image of actress Hana Rovina starring as Leah\'le in the historical Habima production of S. Ansky\'s The Dybbuk (performed by Habima in the Hebrew-language translation by Hayyim Nahman Bialik) is a cultural icon that to many represents Jewish and Israeli theatre.Since 1958, the year in which it received the Israel Prize for theatre[2], Habima has been officially considered the national theatre of Israel. Habima employs 80 actors and another 120 work at the complex. The current director is Yaakov Agmon. ******* Habima Theater , [Heb.,=the stage], the national theater of Israel. Founded in 1917 in Moscow by Nahum Zemach and at first affiliated with the Moscow Art Theatre, it was one of the first Hebrew-language theaters. In 1926 the company left the Soviet Union and toured extensively for several years before settling in Palestine in 1931, and it was designated the national theater in 1958. Among its best-known productions are The Dybbuk, The Golem, and Oedipus Rex. ******** also spelled Habimah (Hebrew: “Stage”), Hebrew theatre company originally organized as Habima ha-ʿIvrit (Hebrew: “the Hebrew Stage”) in Białystok, in Russian Poland, in 1912 by Nahum Zemach. The troupe traveled in 1913 to Vienna, where it staged Osip Dymov’s Hear O Israel before the 11th Zionist Congress. In 1917, after World War I caused the ensemble to dissolve, Zemach established the group in Moscow, calling it Habima.Encouraged by Konstantin Stanislavsky, the director of the Moscow Art Theatre, and inspired by a fervent desire to overcome the tawdry and superficial Yiddish operettas and melodramas then in vogue, Habima opened in 1918 with a program of four one-act folk plays. The production was staged by Yevgeny Vakhtangov, a student of Stanislavsky, who remained Habima’s chief director until his death in 1922. Vakhtangov’s outstanding production in 1922 of S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk, a haunting play of Jewish mysticism, demoniac possession, and eternal love, an immediate success and established Habima as a theatre of the highest artistic excellence. It became one of four studios of the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1925, under the direction of B. Vershilov and V.L. Mchedelov, Habima staged The Golem, by H. Leivick, a play steeped in Jewish superstition, folklore, and mysticism.In 1926, after touring Europe, Habima went to the United States. After a division in its membership, the major part of the group left for Palestine without Zemach and in 1931 permanently established itself in Tel Aviv. Since settling in Israel, Habima has continued its policy of presenting Yiddish and biblical dramas in addition to an ever-increasing repertory, which includes Israeli, classical, and contemporary foreign plays. In 1958 Habima was designated the National Theatre of Israel and awarded an annual state subsidy. ******** Dr. Orna Ben-Meir -Fashion and stage designer. Completed PhD in Tel Aviv University on the subject: \"Jewish Symbolism on the Hebrew Stage\". Lecturer and instructor on the topics of design and fashion and their links to the arts, in Tel Aviv University and Shenkar College for Engineering and Design. Curator and researcher, on Israeli and Jewish theatre. Writer of catalogues and articles. Currently works on a book about costumes. he notion of ‘Biblical thematics’, as it shall be discussed in this article, refers to stage plays in which the Bible serves as raw material for the action and characters. The Bible constituted an inexhaustible source for Western theatre in its initial years in the ninth century, when religious ritual began to spread beyond the confines of the Church into the town squares. The elaborate mystery plays of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries travelled on pageant wagons between the cities of medieval Europe. The age-old stories of Creation, Original Sin, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, the Sacrifice of Isaac, David and Bathsheba, all constituted part of the repertoire of Biblical narratives of these mystery plays, which were, however, always presented in a Christian context, as an introduction to the main scene of the New Testament: the birth and life of Jesus. In contrast, in the context of Jewish culture, the Biblical injunction against making images prevented any development of an imitative art which could constitute an illusory substitute for reality, let alone any visual realization of the Bible. In addition, for historical reasons, Hebrew culture lacked the tradition of a living language.[1] Even when Biblical plays began to be written, from the sixteenth century onwards, initially not meant for stage production, but merely as an additional literary genre. The origins of the Hebrew play and the Hebrew theatre are closely linked with the Jewish national renaissance movement of the twentieth century. The historical awareness and the sense of primacy which accompanied the Hebrew theatre in its early years dictated the course of its artistic and aesthetic development. The Book of Books was the literary document which combined national revival with the revival of Hebrew culture in the Land of Israel, and was therefore the ideal natural source material for Hebrew plays in the initial years, as well as a suitable starting point for the new culture coalescing in the Land of Israel. In the words of Joseph Milo, the founder of the Cameri Theatre: \" as we see it, the Bible is the foundation. From the Bible, we draw our language, the nouns and adjectives for the land in which we live [...]. I do not think that any country or any people finds such a great degree of significance in each association linked with the Bible, nor has such a clear and directed desire to bring life to each page, each line, of the Bible\" [2]The choice of Biblical thematics involved an additional, universal, cultural aspect. In choosing to address such ancient and familiar literary material as the Bible, the playwright chose to work with primary material. Like Greco-Roman mythology in the European theatre, the Biblical primary material ensured the ‘programming of the viewer response’ [3] The use of primary material is a common stratagem for a culture desiring social ratification of its world outlook and values, a means by which that culture creates a continuous connection with its historic past, so as to justify its new present in cultural discourse. Theatre critic Haim Gamzu wrote: The mental need of audiences in the Land of Israel to see, on stage, plays from the period of political existence of the People of Israel in its own country, was an expression of the longings of the Jewish settlement in the [pre-1948] Land of Israel and Jewry in the Diaspora for political independence and ‘normal’ life as a people dwelling in its own territory, creating its own culture, and undergoing the upheavals of its historic destiny, like any other people. [4] The choice of Biblical thematics was thus an integral part of the process of formation of modern Hebrew cultural identity, and the frequency of Biblical plays in the theatrical repertoire in the Land of Israel attests to the significant role of Biblical thematics in the cultural discourse. This is especially true of the years of Israeli national formation - that is, the 20 years immediately prior to the declaration of Israel’s independence as a state. The Bible as a Cultural Starting Point The adoption of the Bible as a cultural starting point was part of an early twentieth-century pan-cultural phenomenon: the national search for roots. Among the characteristics of this phenomenon was the revival of Jewish plastic arts. Shlomo An-sky[ 5] , author of The Dybbuk, who was one of the pioneers of ethnographic and folkloristic research on Eastern European Jewry, sent delegations to Jewish settlements throughout the Diaspora, to document works of art which constituted Judaica. Among the members of a famous delegation of artists sent by An-sky to copy synagogue frescoes throughout Russia and document Jewish folk tales - in addition to El Lissitzky and Issachar Ber Ryback - was Arieh Sapoznikov (who later Hebraicized his last name to El-Hanani), an artist who, in the Land of Israel, designed sceneries and costumes for Biblical plays. Boris Schatz, the founder of the Bezalel Academy of Jewish Art in 1906, was a pioneer collector of Jewish objets d’art and sacred objects, as well as of archaeological findings. As in the classic Academy, these objects and findings constituted the foundations of iconographic and thematic models for works created at Bezalel. Boris Schatz referred to this phenomenon in his writings: Sacred texts were the light-filled world in which the artists lived, in which they found shelter from the sick Diaspora. They aimed to revitalize the Biblical plays with the revival of our people. Each of them found his own world in the sacred writings. Those of a warm or even blazing temperament delineated the Song of Songs under the burning sun, between fragrant vineyards [...] Those of a volatile and pugnacious character found their place in the Books of the Maccabees, next to Judas [...] Those who were weary of the troubles of life found rest and succor in the Book of Ruth, in the innocent, primitive life, the scent of the harvested field[.6 ]The subject of Biblical thematics as it appears in the works created at Bezalel is significantly represented in the Bible bindings of Erich Goldberg and Meir Gur-Arieh, the drawings and etchings of Ephraim Moshe Lillien and Abel Pann [7], the ceramics of Zeev Rabban, and woven tapestries. The hammered copper Bible bindings, for example, would later exert their influence on the sets for a number of Biblical plays, such as Jephthah’s Daughter as designed by Emmanuel Luftglass, King Solomon and the Cobbler and Young Love as designed by Genia Berger, and Surrogate Mother as designed by Ruth Dar. The Iconography of Plays on Biblical Thematics It is thus hardly surprising that the choice of Biblical iconographic themes in the Hebrew theatre was not made by chance, but guided by the national ideology as described above. The first Bible story used in this way was Jacob’s dream; God’s promise to Jacob to transform him into a nation - Israel - and to give the Land of Israel to his descendants, marked the launching of Biblical thematics by the Habimah Hebrew Theatre of Moscow, with Jacob’s Dream by Richard Beer-Hofman.It was only natural to begin the ideological program with a first act dealing with the history of the Jewish People, the original contract signed between Jacob and his God, in ratification of the relationship between the People of Israel and its renewed land.[8] This theme, in several variations, continued to preoccupy the theatre of the Land of Israel throughout the initial years. After Act 1 came Act 2, dealing with the reasons for the departure of the People of Israel from the Land of Israel. The tragedy of the destruction of the Temple is reflected in the play Jeremiah. All of the Biblical themes dealing with the ‘childhood of the Jewish nation [9 ] were embodied in the subject matter of the Hebrew theatre as it took shape in its renewed homeland. In the years of resettlement of the Land of Israel, Hebrew playwrights began to bring up new themes, whose nationalist tone nevertheless included strata of universal significance. The play Rahab is described by its author, H. Sklar, as follows: This was an event of great value in the history of our nation; one of the ‘three great events’ - the Exodus from Egypt, the giving of the Torah, and the conquest of the Land of Israel. In Rahab, I attempted to raise the curtain and cast a glimpse of Canaan and its culture at the last moment before the dawn of the Great Day.[10 ]The play Uriah’s Letter emphasizes a human problem focused on the internal conflict between King David and his conscience, alternatively embodied in the characters of Bathsheba and Uriah. The universal moral problem of crime and punishment is portrayed in Sodom. The story of the Royal House of David recurs again in Michal, Daughter of Saul. From the world of the kings, Hebrew theatre descended to that of the generals. In Jephthah’s Daughter, the Biblical story is built on the Greek mythological structure of the Iphigenia legend. The title, Ahavat Tzion [11], exploits the double meaning of this Hebrew phrase: ‘Love of Zion’ and ‘Love in Zion’,[12] in order to portray a love story inspired by the Song of Songs.Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, a change naturally took place in the type of Biblical subjects dramatized by Israeli playwrights. The question was no longer one of cultural ratification of the sources, but rather, one of the search for dramatic elements in the Bible and their transfer to the stage. An example of this is the piquant story, drawn from the Book of Genesis, of Tamar wife of Er, who stole her father-in-law’s seed in order to establish the House of David. The new reality of Israel as a State entirely changed the use of Biblical thematics; Israeli playwrights, especially the native born, now took situations or characters from the Bible, upon which they constructed a new symbolic meaning for the myths supplied to them by contemporary Israeli reality. At this stage of development of Biblical thematics, the Bible became a tool which, like other ancient mythology, was used in the portrayal of the principal “myth”: that of Israel. Nissim Aloni’s Most Cruel the King dealt with the struggle for inheritance, following the death of King Solomon, which divided the Kingdom of Israel between Jeroboam son of Nabat and Rehoboam. The Night Is for a Man, by Moshe Shamir, is a modern representation of the story line embodied in the Book of Ruth. Aharon Meged’s Genesis is a modern version of the Biblical story of creation. Yehuda Amihai’s Journey to Nineveh reflects a present-day version of the story of Jonah the Prophet. The tale of Job is retold in modern form in Aharon Megged’s The Burning Season; Hanoch Levin’s Job’s Travails lends a Christian-philosophical interpretation to the same story. Jehu, by the young Israeli playwright Gilad Evron, takes up the story of the rebellion against King Ahab by the Israeli general Jehu, as an allusion to current events. In the present-day stage of Biblical thematics, Israeli Biblical plays attain an equal standing with respect to the productions for which they constitute a basis. The Discourse of the Biblical Play Biblical thematics occupied an important place in the cultural discourse of the Land of Israel. Israeli playwrights wrestled with the problems involved in the choice of Biblical material as dramatic material, as well as those problems dealing with the validity of Biblical thematics as part of the new culture of the Land of Israel. As early as 1937, the periodical Bamah (Stage) ran a discussion of the dramatization of Biblical themes.[13] Israel Segal, one of the participants in that discussion, claimed that: The combination of these two concepts - ‘theatre and the Bible’ - created a conflict [...] The Bible itself, as it were, impeded the creation of the Hebrew theatre and kept it from attaining any theatrical heritage in the form of tradition, style, technique or acting. The problem posed is not one of the renewal of the Hebrew theatre, but simply, one of its initiation. (p. 43)
Another participant in the same discussion, Eliezer Zupperfein, added: The Biblical heroes [were not gifted] with special character traits. They, too, were made of skin, bones, blood, muscles and emotions, and sometimes they, too, descended to the depths of human depravity [...] But the imagination of the people deprived them of their concrete and earthly character [...] These heroes do not exist as concrete objects, but as ideas, as mental pictures [...] The theatre is incapable of bringing these characters to the stage, because theatre is realization. (p. 46) An additional discussion on the question of the modern Biblical play, in 1962, reviewed the past 40 years of Biblical plays.[14] Moshe Shamir, whose play The Night Is for a Man opened the discussion, explains the selection of Biblical thematics: Why do we cling so strongly to names and stories which are not of our own creation? The reason, it seems to me, is this: Even the farthest-ranging, [...] even the freest, require the existing, stable, eternal basis of the Bible [...] to come forth out of ourselves, to break through, outside the circle of relationships of a certain ‘I’ in a certain time and place (p. 25). Yehuda Amihai, author of Journey to Nineveh which reached the stage two years later, [15] held that the use of Biblical material was intended: To that there would be something ancient, something from yesterday [...] We actually do not trust the cold, effective modernism which surrounds us. We want something which will bridge the gap into life beyond the present. We seek in the past not only the explanation, but the justification, for the present of our own time. (p. 26) Yaakov Malkhin, author of Jonah Jones, views this as: a desire to return to classical works [...] the only such works we have in Hebrew literature, the only masterpieces existing in our language. (p. 27) Israel Eliraz, author of Three Women in Yellow, holds that:any secular Hebrew creative artist who is loyal to himself cannot go into the Biblical topics (without being artificial and false) the way they are; rather, he must seek himself16 in the historical reality described in the Bible. (p. 28) The dialogue is summed up by researcher Gershon Shaked, speaking from the perspective of 50 years: Hebrew dramaturgy requires Biblical sources more than any other source [...] More than any real historical platform - that is, a defined, limited temporo-spatial background - Hebrew dramaturgy has preferred a vague historical platform, which can be designed by creative artists according to their own imagination [...] This freedom would prima facie appear to simplify dramatic adaptation; this, however, is not the case. Precisely this material, drawn from an entire epic saga, is generally contained within a complete literary form, and, for this reason, makes it difficult for authors to give it new meaning. [...] An additional difficulty has been perceived by scholars as involving the monotheistic world view which delimits this material - a concept which does not allow for imagination-guided development of action as being controlled by autonomous human beings [...] Authors, critics and researchers are divided, not only with regard to the possibility of handling Biblical material, but also concerning the approach to it. [...] These opinions [...] are brought to realization in their dramatic adaptation of Biblical material. A first basic approach starts by assuming that this material should not be given ‘literary-artistic’ adaptation, but should be ‘adapted’ to the stage by means of dialogue changes only. This approach is closely related to the ethnographic-folkloristic concept which attempts to clothe the material in the attires of the past and requires - in order to put the past on stage - the exotic character of the Oriental present.[17] [...] A second approach considers Biblical material as a source for the archetypes of the Jewish spirit; in other words, within the Biblical material, it seeks supratemporal spiritual patterns [18] [...] through which, and by confronting which, it intends to cope with the problems of the specific generation and ofJewish existence in general. [...] Between these extremes is the third approach, which has been ‘brought to realization’ by most authors. The essentials of this approach involve the attempt to give new justification to the Biblical material, to refresh it by giving them a modern interpretation.[19 ]From Biblical Play to Biblical Performance Up to this point, we have discussed the Biblical play. Each choice of a narrative requires its material realization in the theatre, through the visual means of stage design and mise en scène. In other words, the narrative must be broken down into actual places of action, expressed by means of scenery, and actual flesh-and-blood characters, expressed by means of costumes and actors. The transformation into a performance thus calls for an additional translation from the realm of imagination to the realm of theatre. The abstract, divine world of the Bible, to which no real verbal description can apply, must be given material realization, by means of stage design in a performance, as stated above. This means that the theatrical translation must be based on the verbal adaptation offered by the Biblical narrative and must adopt a special, appropriate medium of art and esthetics. This is explained by Miriam Bernstein-Cohen as follows:[20] The conscience of the Hebrew theatre prompts it to put on an original Hebrew play. It does not want to content itself with the role of theatre ‘acted in Hebrew’. Its ambition is to rise to the level of original theatre, to attain that level. Theatre aims to find its creative image, which will reflect its own trends by means of its own original repertoire, which will express its period.[21 ]The division expressed above by Shaked with regard to the plays themselves applies no less to the visual adaptation of performances on Biblical thematics. These productions, in my opinion, may be divided on a parallel chronological basis: /1/ The initial crystallization of a Biblical style, starting from Jacob’s Dream (Habimah, Moscow; 1925) and up to The Book of Esther (Ohel; 1930). These first Biblical plays constituted a cultural declaration of intent: ‘To design a new and independent approach (different from the Christian concept) to the Bible in theatre.’[22] These plays developed stylistic norms for visual thematics; each subsequent performance of a Biblical play must respond to this ‘Biblical style’ formulated during the initial years./2/ The eclectic style, starting from Rahab (Habimah, 1933) and up to Tamar, Wife of Er (Habimah, 1952). As no Biblical plays had yet been written in Hebrew, the theatre took existing plays, translated them and adapted them for the stage. In those years, Biblical thematics were embodied in a theatrical repertoire, and the Biblical material in the plays involved was freely adapted according to the spirit of the times. Following the heroic stage, which favored the selection of Bible stories with a high potential for identification, Biblical thematics entered a stage involving the selection of stories with universal dramatic potential. The initial ‘Biblical style’ of stage design now became utterly heterogeneous, in a way which would continue to characterize the visual style of Biblical thematics./3/ Present-day adaptation, starting with Most Cruel the King (Habimah, 1953) and up to Jehu (Habimah, 1992). Contemporary Israeli playwrights, who have already written on current Israeli topics, cope with Biblical raw material (as others do with mythological raw material) in a local or universal present-day context which increases its potential for artistic expression. The performance, like the play, takes its esthetic material from the present-day repertoire of style. The Visual Development of Biblical Thematics The translated play Jacob’s Dream (Habimah, Moscow, 1925) by Richard Beer-Hofman [23 ]was performed under the direction of B. Sushkevitz and the stage design of Robert Falk. The narrative of the play reflected the repertorial concept and system of values of the founders of the Habimah, who considered it to be a Hebrew theatre with a national educational-ethical message for the Jewish people. It was also a modernist theatre, founded on the concepts of stage direction developed by Stanislavsky, Tairov, Meyerhold and Vakhtangov. It was, therefore, only natural that plays on Biblical subjects, with no inherent visual design, would be performed on the basis of modernist aesthetics. The concept of stage design was thus based on the then popular cubo-constructivist aesthetic style, so well reflected in the stage design of the avant-garde Russian theatre.[24] The latter was characterized by a stage constructed on several levels, as well as by the use of ladders, ropes, slopes and staircases. The scenery for Jacob’s Dream was composed of stone-like cubical podiums (meant to symbolize the stones which Jacob took to place at his head,[25] and which, following God’s promise to him, became the foundation stones of the House of God at Beth-el) [26] and vertical conical coulisses .This scenery created a non-realistic space, whose abstract neutrality increased its allusive character. The space changed its meaning from scene to scene: at one point, it represented the transcendental space of a dream, in which angels ascended and descended the vertical coulisses as one would a ladder; in another scene, it became a desert, by deflecting the podiums and introducing an abstract, branchless tree. This scenery, and especially the costumes, inspired by shepherds in their natural Environment, established symbols characteristic of Biblical thematics, which would continue to recur throughout the entire course of its development. The ancient times of the Bible are represented here in the style of clothing, made of pieces of leather or fur coarsely tied together [27] and exposing patches of naked flesh - a sort of sophisticated version of the Biblical ezor.28 An additional characteristic of the Biblical persona was that of facial hair: the men were all adorned with thick beards and moustaches. In the same year, the Eretz Israel Theatre [29] presented another version of the same play, directed by Michael Gnessin, a former Habimah actor, with stage design by Reuven Rubin, a famous painter of the period. This response to the Biblical performance by Habimah indicates that the latter was viewed as a ‘Hebrew role model’. Gnessin states: I had a strong desire to escape, as far as possible, from the rubber stamp of the Gentiles in their approach to ‘Biblical’ plays, even though I knew that this could not be done all at once, and that it was still a long way to original Biblical theatre; I said to myself that each new performance must attain some achievement in the many stages through which the Eretz Israel Theatre desires to ascend [...] And here came the performance of Jacob’s Dream and shook the skeptics. In spite of everything, it was in the nature of a great event, a step forward in the development of Hebrew theatre.[30 ]Despite the identical choice of play, the stage realization was different. The stage design commissioned from Reuven Rubin was intended to portray ‘the authenticity of the Land of Israel’, and was indeed naturalistic and Eastern Mediterranean in nature. The backdrop drawing for Act 2 strongly reflects Rubin’s typical style outside the world of theatre: the roofs of the Mediterranean houses and the palm trees characteristic of the Land of Israel. Here, too, the costume of Jacob recalled the Biblical tied garment - in this case, the Biblical kethoneth, a garmentresembling a Greek chiton. The hide draped over the kethoneth is reminiscent of shepherds’ dress. The beard, too, recurs in this Jacob. The colorful costume worn by Basemath (Fig.1), which exposes her breasts, especially emphasizes the “Biblical” stage characteristic of nudity. This trait appeared in sketches alone, as a proposal by the designer, and was not implemented on stage, due to the restrictions of convention in the theatre of those days in the Land of Israel.[31 A third response to the same theme was not late in coming, in the performance of Jacob and Rachel (Ohel, 1928). Moshe Halevy, one of the founders of Habimah who came to the Land of Israel and founded the Ohel Theatre, continued Habimah’s artistic tradition. He intended to portray a Biblical trilogy, the first play of which again raises the story of Jacob, the first Biblical play in the Land of Israel. Although Jacob and Rachel was based on a Russian play called The Tears of Rachel by Kreshnenikov, Halevy introduced far-ranging changes in it, in line with his concept as a pastoral play, despite the fact that the text was taken almost directly from the Bible: I added to Kreshnenikov’s three acts a prologue from the Bible on the topic of ‘Jacob’s Dream’, [32] and an epilogue on the subject of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel of God, who ended the play with the cry: ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but I-S-R-A-E-L!’ [33]The choice of genre offered him various theatrical possibilities, in both the visual and musical fields: the meeting by the well, the wedding dance, lifestyles of shepherds in the desert.[34] The characters were also changed in order to reflect ‘a mixture of human innocence according to the Book of Genesis and the primitive nature of primeval man in general.’[35 ]The characters were therefore divided into four cultural levels: the divine and supreme angel of God (Fig.2); Jacob and Rachel, messengers of culture; the uncultured Laban and his family; and the savage Kenaz. The stage design sketches by artist Boris Poliakov, expressed in cubo-constructivist style, were made in Russia and brought to the Land of Israel, where they were produced without him; accordingly, there are no signs of local landscape appropriate to the Land of Israel. The scenery consisted of an open space, defined by a rear curtain (cyclorama); within that space, three-dimensional geometrical objects were placed: ‘A cube instead of stones and rocks; the nature of stones instead of natural stones; in a form typical of all times and all generations - the form of geometry.’ [36 ]The geometrical objects acquired new meanings by being shifted, grouped, or added elements, such as a triangle of spotted fur meant to denote a tent, or a bull-shaped image, both of which appear in the wedding festivity scenery of Act 3 (Fig.3} The rainbow symbol drawn on the rear curtain denotes the response by the God of Jacob to the pagan idol of Laban in the struggle scene. The scenery is based on colorful confrontation between the ochre and brown earth hues of the desert and a transcendental blue, which recurs in the costumes: ‘The angel of God is a spirit and has no corporeal form; he is blue-white like ether, the divine substance.’[37 ]The remaining mortal characters were dressed in archaic-primitive tied garments, exposing naked body parts, in accordance with the animalistic concept envisioned by Halevy. Laban is ‘a goat walking at the head of a flock’ (Jacob and Rachel’s), in a wig fashioned to resemble horns, a goat’s beard and the hide customarily worn by shepherds. Jacob is a ‘deer’, and Rachel is a ‘frightened gazelle with antlers’, tall and with bared breasts.[38] The stylistic design of the characters was in line with the scenery; in the performance, they blended into visual unity. The turn toward the East as a way of seeking original identity appropriate to the Land of Israel continued into Halevy’s second play, the tragedy Jeremiah (Ohel, 1929). Prior to the production, Halevy went to Europe, in order to study the most recent innovations of the theatre in Berlin and Paris, and to ask the permission of the author, Stefan Zweig, to make changes in the play. The search for the Eastern/Hebrew roots was implemented by means of a tour of Jerusalem: As a result of this trip to Jerusalem, my inner eyes perceived the Temple, the royal court, the courtyard before the House of God, the streets and alleys leading to it [...] It seemed to me that the glory of Solomon’s palace, although it blinded the eyes of those living at the time, was actually rather primitive.[39 ]The choice of the artist Aryeh El-Hanani, who had copied synagogue frescoes for An-sky in the 1920s and had participated in Prof. Sukenik’s archaeological excavations of Jerusalem, [40] as the stage and costume designer for Jeremiah was a natural one. The monumental scenery designed by El-Hanani was made of huge sculptured cubes, linked together with stairs (Fig.4). This cubist structure was transformed into King Zedekiah’s palace by opening a gap in it and hanging a purple curtain adorned with lions - a symbol of Israel and royalty common throughout the Middle East. The cubist concept recurred in the costumes: tied garments, cubist make-up and sculpted hair and beards.[41] Halevy divided the costumes into two types: It occurred to me that the poor villagers in Jeremiah’s day preserved a typical Hebrew character in their garments, whereas the city-dwellers, and especially the rich and prominent ones, were influenced by Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt.[42 ] El-Hanani drew his inspiration from Assyrian reliefs and statues which he had seen in the British Museum; their influence is obvious in the sketches of the king’s guards and ministers. The prophet preserved the typical Biblical dress of garments tied with laces. The heroic nature of the Biblical tragedy is denoted by means of the dark colors - deep blue and gray-black - of the costumes and scenery. The costumes of the poor people include contrasting colors and marks, alluding to a new, naturalistic-comic trend, originating in local Eastern folklore and clowns’ motley. In the same year, Habimah visited the Land of Israel as part of a tour of Europe. In the year and a half which it spent in the country, it put on two plays under a Russian guest director, Alexei Diki. The first of these dealt with a Jewish theme; the second, David’s Crown (written by the seventeenth-century Spanish playwright Calderon de la Barca), with a Biblical one. David’s Crown addressed the war of inheritance following the death of King David. Menahem Shemi, in his stage and costume design, was inspired by the visual model of the previous four plays. Alexei Diki’s stylized, expressionistic concept of direction led to the design of the stage as an open space, within which stood an abstract structure of stacked cubes ; the only realistic stage prop was the king’s throne - and even that was cubist. This concept of stage design drew on two different sources: first, the tradition of Gordon Craig and Adolph Appia, and second, the model presented by Robert Falk in the scenery of Jaco’s Dream described above. The cubistic nature of the characters was in line with the primitive aspects of the costumes: the wild beards, tied garments, desert colors, and clubs for weapons. In 1930, Halevy staged the third play of his Biblical trilogy, The Book of Esther: After the Biblical idyll of Jacob and Rachel, I was greatly attracted by the idea of staging a Biblical comedy in the Ohel Theatre, and I believed that there was none more suited for this purpose than The Book of Esther. [43] Halevy took the play by Kadish J. Silman, and intended to stage it as a Purimspiel: To create an original, Eastern ‘Purimspiel’ from the Land of Israel, and not an imitation of the Purim plays of the Diaspora.44 For this reason, I drew more heavily on Persian artistic sources and those of the Eastern ethnic communities of the Land of Israel.[45 ]Halevy’s and El-Hanani’s choice of the abovementioned visual source of inspiration determined the nature of the performance and gave it a vivid, colorful and ornamental character. The curtains were decorated with drawings to resemble Oriental carpets and Persian miniatures (Fig 5). Queen Esther, who sits to the right, is depicted as a Yemenite girl wearing the typical sirwaal, or trousers with embroidered cuffs, a kerchief on her head and zarabil shoes. Mordecai the Jew is shown as a Persian haham (rabbi) in a turban, a caftan and a sash. The remaining characters of the Book of Esther - Haman, his wife Zeresh and their son Vaizata - also seem to have sprung from ancient Persian illustrations; their garments constitute a mixture of elements from various Oriental sources, attesting to the beginning of a new, eclectic trend. The Eclectic Style In February 1931, Habimah came to the Land of Israel for good. Rahab, a translated play by Harry Seckler staged two years later, was the first of a series of Biblical plays performed by Habimah in its new home and ushered in the eclectic stage of Biblical thematics. The play was directed by Baruch Chemerinsky; the naturalistic scenery drawings were done by stage designer Reuven Rubin. Rubin viewed the stage as a two-dimensional ‘picture’ creating an illusion of three-dimensional reality. This illusion was achieved by means of the two conventional basic components of theatre: a rear curtain (solid-color or painted), and painted two-dimensional wings. The wings for Rahab created a sort of architectural structure with ornate rounded pillars on one side and a city tower and stairs on the other. The rear curtain depicted palm trees, a typical feature of landscapes in the Land of Israel, frequently used by Reuven Rubin (appearing, inter alia, in his scenery for Jacob’s Dream). The concept of the ‘stage as picture’ was emphasized by a ‘frame’ element consisting of the wings and doors and designed in the form of an Oriental relief. The costumes combined elements of two Greek garments: the chiton and the chlamys, along with Egyptian headdresses and snake bracelets (for example, in the costume of the King of Jericho). Uriah’s Letter, a translated play by Emil Bernhard (Habimah, 1935), was directed by Zvi Friedland. Moshe Mokady’s stage design also adopted the concept of the ‘stage as picture’ and expressed it by means of curtains on all sides, creating a constant ‘frame’ effect, behind which the scenery ‘pictures’ changed on alternating rear curtains. One of the latter depicted the architectural element of rounded pillars and a throne whose armrests were decorated with lions. Sodom, by Halper Leivick, was staged four years later (Ohel, 1939), directed by Halevy. The three-dimensional constructivist concept which had come to be perceived as a Biblical sign was translated, in that play, into a two-dimensional painted concept in the stage design by Emmanuel Luftglass. The cubical structures, staircases and vertical cones were painted on two-dimensional wings, creating an illusion of a three-dimensional rocky space in the desert. Desert colors were also evident in the costumes, which showed a multiplicity of styles: animalistic and primitivist features in the character of Zerubbabel, depicted as a shepherd, and Egyptian and Assyrian features in the costumes of the king’s slaves (Fig.6). The year 1941 marked the production of Michal, Daughter of Saul, the first original Biblical play by the Hebrew author Aharon Ashman (Habimah, 1941). The performance was directed by Chemerinsky; the stage design concept by Genia Berger transformed the naturalistic, two-dimensional, illustrated stage into a three-dimensional construct representing the palace of King Saul, with all the familiar features: rounded pillars, stairs, and Arab houses, recalling to mind the scenery designed by Reuven Rubin in Jacob’s Dream. The costumes displayed an eclectic mixture of Eastern and Greek elements. The unprecedented reception of Michal, Daughter of Saul aroused an additional Biblical response. Moshe Halevy undertook to transform the folk legend of King Solomon and his poor double, King Solomon and the Cobbler by Sami Groneman, into a contemporary musical comedy. The dynamic direction of interchanging scenes required a sophisticated stage design. Genia Berger designed a three-dimensional dynamic ‘picture’ using a revolving stage. Three scenery segments were modified and interchanged within a fixed three-dimensional ‘frame’ made to resemble a Jewish wedding canopy on poles held by two lions at the sides, reminiscent of the hammered copper work produced at Bezalel. Behind the ‘frame’ stood coulisses in the form of houses, comprising an additional, interior three-dimensional frame, which also revolved and could be transformed into market stalls, in the scenes in which Shalmai the Cobbler appeared. Jerusalem landscapes drawn in the background appeared as a three-dimensional structure behind the three scenery segments; when exposed by lighting, the landscapes were seen through a cyclorama as a distant backgroundThe same year marked a production of Jephthah’s Daughter (Habimah, 1943), a translated play by Hava Boshvitz, directed by Baruch Chemerinsky. Emmanuel Luftglass designed a ‘stage picture’ painted with scenes from the Land of Israel. Within a fixed frame designed in the style of the hammered copper Bible bindings of Bezalel (Fig.7), interchanging curtains painted with landscapes from the Land of Israel showed typical Biblical signs: open spaces, desert colors, and the branchless tree which had already appeared in Falk’s Love in Zion (Habimah, 1947), an adaptation of a famous Hebrnovel written by Abraham Mapu, was interspersed with verses from the Book of Proverbs and the Song of Songs. Zvi Friedlander’s direction created a performance in the style of the Thousand and One Nights.46 This style was enhanced by Genia Berger’s stage design, which was innovative for its time; an almost empty stage with the exception of a few objects, and cloth curtains onto which landscapes from the Land of Israel were projected through painted pieces of glass. The costume sketches - with their black outline and strong colors, reminiscent of an ‘Oriental Purimspiel’ also resemble stained glass. Six years after the foundation of the Cameri Theatre as a theatre representing the Sabra (native Israeli) generation, it produced its first Biblical play, The Queen of Sheba (Cameri, 1951). This translated play by Sami Groneman was directed by Gershon Plotkin. Aryeh Navon’s innovative stage design concept was based on an empty stage in the form of stairs, delimited by a stylized rear curtain, with Jewish architectural elements appearing in the twisted three-dimensional columns of the palace. The columns were covered with pieces of fabric, whose draped folds were reminiscent of a stage curtain, and somewhat similar to the Jewish wedding canopy which had appeared in King Solomon and the Cobbler. The fabric was decorated with royal lions. The costume design was inspired by Eastern garments from various sources, except for the costumes of the Queen of Sheba and her companions, who wore furs exposing naked body parts.[47 ]Tamar, Wife of Er, an original play by Yigal Mossinsohn (Ohel, 1952), closes the eclectic period of the Biblical style and already shows signs of the modernistic trend which was about to make its appearance. Written by a native Israeli, the play was directed by Moshe Halevy. Genia Berger’s stage design returns to the concept of the empty stage with a few props scattered through it. Most of the scenery consisted of a rear curtain and pieces of fabric stretched on both sides of the stage, creating an ancient-looking desert space, which changed along with the lighting (Fig.14). The costumes expressed a sculptured, cubist concept, with tied garments exposing and thus emphasizing body parts, allegedly a sign of Biblical times and a sign of gender in the case of Tamar.[48] The eclectic phase concluded with the abstract, minimalistic visual solution presented in Tamar, Wife of Er, in the spirit of modernism characterizing the next stage of Biblical thematics. Present-day Adaptation The present-day adaptation stage of Biblical thematics, as stated, involves the production of original Biblical plays. The affinity of contemporary Israeli playwrights with the Bible is used to increase the force of their present-day artistic statements. The scenery for Most Cruel the King by Nissim Aloni (Habimah, 1953), directed by Shraga Friedman, was designed by Moshe Mokady. His stage design and costumes, in the spirit of the present-day adaptation of the play, was non-naturalistic in character. They embody an abstract, modernistic version of Biblical locations and characters: vertical wings, stairs, costumes based on the unisex kethoneth above which is tied the Biblical salmah (or simlah).[49] The Night Is for a Man, a Biblical play by the Israeli author Moshe Shamir, was directed by Joseph Milo (Haifa Municipal Theatre, 1962). The stage design by Aryeh Navon was based on an empty stage delimited by a rear curtain printed to resemble a straw mat. Additional straw mats are scattered on the floor of the stage, giving the illusion of a threshing-floor, ‘populated’ by familiar Biblical symbols: bare tree trunks, Bedouin tent cloths, and bales of hay. Another Biblical play by Aharon Megged, Genesis, was presented the same year (Habimah, 1962). The play, directed by Amnon Kabatchnik and designed by Aryeh Navon, encompasses a gallery of typical Israeli characters. Adam was given the external features of a beatnik tourist, in a Hawaiian cotton shirt printed with animals from the Garden of Eden (Fig.8), Eve resembled a stereotyped 1960s ‘cutie’ from trendy Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv; the snake became a muscular Israeli macho; and Cain is a pioneer from the Second Aliyah wave of immigration. Journey to Nineveh by Yehuda Amihai (Habimah, 1964) was directed by Julius Gellner, who gave the performance a 1960s milieu and characters. The costume design by Shmuel Back, in the spirit of the play, recalls fashion illustrations of the period. The whore, for example, was dressed in a short peignoir with exposed breasts which, despite its modernity, arouses associations of Biblical nudity. Yet another Biblical play by Aharon Meged, The Burning Season (Habimah, 1967), directed by Amnon Kabatchnik, was designed by Oded Peleg in the spirit of the times. The character of Keziah, daughter of Job, for example, appeared in a miniskirt, of the type favored in the 1960s. The story of Job recurs in Job’s Travails, written and directed by Hanoch Levin (Cameri, 1981). The stage design by Ruth Dar was modern in concept, and yet recalled visual symbols from earlier periods of Biblical thematics. The scenery was based on an empty stage, delimited by a rear curtain, and a heap of stones which recalled those used by Falk in Jacob’s Dream and by Shemi in David’s Crown. At the beginning of the performance, the heap of stones was covered by black cloaks worn by the party guests. For the first time on the Israeli stage, full nudity appears, when Job removes his ezor during the crucifixion and the stripper practices her art in the circus tent (Fig.16). The circus midget is also given a familiar Biblical symbol: the clown’s motley Purimspiel costume. The play Jehu, by the young Israeli playwright Gilad Evron (Habimah, 1992), was directed by Hanan Snir. The set designer, Roni Toren, used a bare and empty ‘black box’ stage; the walls of the wings were exposed, and one of them appeared cracked. The actual acting space was defined by a frame of ancient mosaic strips. The costumes by Buki Schiff again feature the Biblical sign of nudity, by means of ‘nude’ half-body masks, both male and female. In the present-day stage, Biblical thematics no longer involve the translation of foreign plays into Hebrew. Rather, they are expressed in original works, by means of an interaction of living and active artists: the playwright, director, and stage designer - and, in some cases, even the actors. This new theatrical interaction releases the Biblical play from its ‘antique authenticity’ and enables it to achieve free visual and stage realization. Stage designers for present-day Biblical plays can take wings and seek inspiration as they please. In doing so, however, they lose the unique style of Biblical thematics which become identical to any other contemporary thematics of the Israeli theatre.