Even-Zohar, Basmat 1999. “The Construction of Children’s
Literature within the Creation of Hebrew Culture in Eretz-Israel”. Thesis
Submitted for the Degree “Doctor of Philosophy”, Tel Aviv University.
THE
CONSTRUCTION OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE WITHIN THE CREATION OF HEBREW CULTURE IN
ERETZ-ISRAEL
Thesis Submitted for the Degree “Doctor of Philosophy”
by
ABSTRACT
0.1. The Building of Hebrew culture during
the First Aliya (the first wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine)
This study examines
the building of a literature for children in Palestine between 1880 and 1905.
The texts for children, as well as the very creation of Hebrew-language
children’s literature in Palestine, are discussed as part of a complex and
comprehensive endeavor to establish a new national Hebrew culture in Palestine.
This endeavor consisted of a set of actions carried out by a small group of people
who committed themselves to planning, creating and marketing this culture
through all means that were available to them, as well as through means they
invented and manufactured when the need arose. The discussion of the Hebrew
literary system for children focuses on the literary repertoires it used and
the status of its various models, underlining where it was innovative. Since it
has become apparent that all of the activities involved were highly constrained
by the “Image of History”, I will focus on describing the group’s historical
and historiographic concepts which structured their plan of the new culture.
This “image of history” manifested itself in their texts as “awareness of the
past” in the broadest sense.
Hebrew literature
for children began to develop in Palestine only in the 1880s, although isolated
texts for children (such as “chinukhey banim” by Metrani) had been published in
Palestine earlier. This literature developed as a result of contact with Hebrew
literature for both children and adults, which already began to develop in
Europe during the Hebrew Enlightenment period, and also as a result of contact
with European literatures. However, its development started from a different
point of departure and took a different direction. Its beginning can be found
in literary models of an earlier period in the history of Hebrew children’s
literature, but along these, it used the most updated literary repertoires of
European literatures for children, and quite soon it developed new directions
of its own.
Like other
children’s literatures, the first stages of Hebrew children’s literature in
Palestine seem linked with education. Its first texts were educational –
readers and textbooks – followed only later by literary texts for
entertainment. However, this process lasted less than ten years – from 1883
(when Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s geography book appeared), through 1887 (when the
first reader for children, by David Yellin and Ben-Yehuda, appeared), until
1892 (when the first story-books by Grazovski, Tzifrin and Yudilovitch, and by
Grazovski and Horvitz, were printed).
The authors and
their activities can be more adequately described as “cultural enterpreneurs”,
who endeavored together toward the construction of the new Hebrew-National
culture in Palestine, rather than within narrow bounds of “education” or
“children’s literature”. Already at the beginning of the 1880s, a local center
emerged in Palestine, socially and culturally involved in local relations amid
the Jewish community in Palestine (including the local orthodox community). The
center was led by this local group of “entrepreneurs” – Ben-Yehuda, Yellin,
Yaavez, Grazovski, Yudilovitch, Tzifrin, Epstein, Belkind and others – who
began to develop a local repertoire. For that purpose they established Hebrew
education and Hebrew children’s literature in Palestine, made Hebrew the spoken
tongue of the new Jewish entity in Palestine, produced a repertoire of new
activities for the new culture, such as “singing the songs of Zion” in Hebrew,
celebrating new Hebrew holidays and ceremonies, or going on excursions. At the
same time, they created the textual repertoire for the literary presentation
and distribution of those activities, in texts for both children and adults. It
even seems that the “Revival of the Hebrew language” and Hebrew children’s
literature in Palestine, successfully marketed to Jewish centers in the
Diaspora, played an important role in the development of Hebrew culture and
children’s literature there.
The planning and
construction of the new culture were complemented by a third activity carried
out by the enterpreneurs, namely its distribution. For that purpose they formed
associations and activated the children, their pupils, who by speaking Hebrew
among themselves and participating in Hebrew activities spread the new
repertoire. They also marketed their texts both in Palestine and the Diaspora,
and made ample use of the media of the time, especially the periodicals. As
part of their distribution efforts, the entrepreneurs also struggled against
competing repertoires, both old and new, such as the “religious orthodox”
culture of the “old Jewish settlement” (haYishuv haYashan), or the
national-religious repertoire.
The texts for
children constituted an important factor in the struggle for the making of a
new Hebrew culture at the time, first and foremost in the matter of “reviving”
Hebrew as a spoken tongue. However, it is difficult to understand their
function without considering their context. For example, plays were important not
as literary texts, but as central social events by being publicly performed in
Hebrew. Similarly, the stories “from the lives of the children in
Eretz-Yisrael” did not function as reading matter only, but as proof and
evidence – for both internal and external audiences – of the claim that a new
“reality”, different than that of the Diaspora, was being created in Palestine.
The new repertoire thus helped consolidate a new “identity” for the new
Palestinian Jews, and served as propaganda in the Diaspora.
This study focuses
on the center in Palestine, but the findings also make it possible to examine
processes which took place in the Diaspora. These also suggest a new mapping
for the interrelations between the two centers, as far as Hebrew literature for
children and the beginning of Hebrew education are concerned.
All the activities
and texts created by the cultural enterpreneurs were based on a new concept of
“awareness of the Jewish past” (צככֹ
5991: 11). As part of making the new culture, a “new history” was
“invented” for what they came to call “the people of Israel”. This new history
served as a model for their plan of the future. The enterpreneurs’ plan for
“building a national culture” was inspired by the founding of the new European
nations, such as Germany, Italy or the Balkan states. Ben-Yehuda specifically
mentioned the “liberation” of the Balkan nations, especially Bulgaria, as a
model for the Jews (“she’ela nikhbada”, hashachar 1879). “History” was an
integral part of the plan, since the enterpreneurs did not convey it through
ideological preachings, but via the “image of the national past”. In order to
consolidate a nation it was necessary, in their view, to construct a history
for it, to declare a Homeland, to set its language and to strive for political
independence. In keeping with this, the creators of the new Hebrew culture in
Palestine also used history to legitimize their program – to find in it the
necessary justification for their cultural choices. Within these concepts,
there was admittedly no problem to view the Jews of the time as some sort of
collective, but a new need emerged to re-describe them as “the historical
people of Israel”. Similarly, in the reality of the time, the “Homeland” was
situated in the Ottoman empire, in a geographic area called “Palestine” in
European languages of that time[1], but
it was presented as Eretz-Yisrael, the “Land of Israel” – Israel and Judea of
ancient times. The same holds for language. The language which was presented as
“the language of the nation” was Hebrew, because it was considered as the
“historical” language of the nation, although the “Nation” did not speak it.
A key-word in this
process was “revival”. But the concept of “revival” was only one of the
mechanisms through which the enterpreneurs of modern nationalism succeeded in
introducing their new inventions into an extant culture. This mechanism was
wholly based on the historical aspect: on the image of history which was
constructed and distributed in order to replace the current culture (usually
called “tradition”), and to market their innovations as if they actually were
the “true”, ancient, original and authentic “tradition”. Moreover, in addition
to creating a history of “the people of Israel” for earlier periods, they also
inserted an instant history of the recent Jewish settlement in Palestine into
the continuum of this history. They thus created an immediate historical
“myth”, with the intent of presenting their future goals as if they had already
been achieved.
Since “history” is
not a given inventory of “facts”, existing, as it were, in some “reality”, in
order to create the image of the new “history”, the enterpreneurs had to
re-arrange the whole inventory of possible “historical” elements. This required
not only new interpretations to change the organization of known and accepted
“elements”, but also a change in the position of elements and models and the
introduction of totally new components, mostly adopted from European models of
history and nationalism. The enterpreneurs presented the past in a certain way
in order to create symbols for identification. The elements were supposedly
“found” in the historical past, but in fact, an amended “image of past” was
imbued with values of modern nationalism.
The very claim that
there had existed a unified, homogeneous and continuous entity that was “a
people of Israel” which had a continuous history since Abraham until the Jews
at the end of the 19th century, was itself an invention. Another invention was
the complete omission of the activities which for centuries held a central
position in Jewish culture – the institution of the Rabbinate, the production
and organization of Halakha, the writing of interpretations for the scriptures,
the literature of “Questions and Answers”, etc.[2] All
these were erased from “history”, to be replaced by activities which were
generally considered marginal or negative, such as the migrations to Palestine,
the building of places in Palestine in previous centuries (Safed, Tiberias,
Jerusalem), the “Jewish kingdoms”, or the phenomena of “False Messiahs”.
Although the texts
were written for children, they actually served as a vehicle to help reach
adults. The children were a means to spread the new repertoires among their
parents, relatives and the general population. For example, plays produced at
schools were intended for adult audiences, especially in the new agricultural
settlements (Moshavot), where the audience included not only the whole
population of the settlement, but guests from neighbouring settlements as well.
In addition,
investing in the education of children was clearly the result of the belief
that this would raise a new generation of adults, who would realize the new
culture. Ben-Yehuda explained quite explicitly that girls must be taught Hebrew
so that in due course, when they become mothers, they would raise a whole new
generation of Hebrew speaking children. The children were the target – as in
any system of education – because they were conceived to be easily molded, in
contrast to adults, who were considered difficult to influence.
0.2. Sources and the period studied
This study is based
on heterogeneous source materials: the body of texts written by the
enterpreneurs, memoirs, research and primary documents (letters, diaries,
notes). Both texts and “activities” were analyzed. The latter have been partly
researched in studies about “the revival of Hebrew”, or in studies about the
development of the “new Jewish settlement in Palestine”, such as the founding
of libraries or schools or the purchasing of land.
In order to
reconstruct the enterpreneurs’ “image of the past”, I have examined all the
texts written for children in Palestine, and those which were part of this
endeavor, even if printed elsewhere. The body of texts examined comprises not
only stand-alone publications, but also texts and parts of texts included in
books, readers and periodicals.
The study
concentrates on the first period of the intensive activity for the creation and
distribution of the new culture in Palestine through the “image of history” via
literature for children, and therefore it covers the period between 1880 and
1905. Though in the lives of the writers, 1905 was an arbitrary point in time,
for the creation and the development of the new repertoire it constituted a
turning point, and an end of a period.
0.3. The structure of this study
This study is
divided into two parts: the first, chapters one to four, presents the
enterpreneurs, children’s literature in relation to Hebrew culture both in
Palestine and in the Diaspora, the literary texts and repertoires of Hebrew
children’s literature in Palestine. The second part, which includes the last
five chapters, describes “the image of history” which the enterpreneurs created
in children’s literature, and analyzes the way it was used to construct the new
Hebrew national identity and culture in Palestine.
Chapter One
presents the people who created and distributed the “texts” discussed in this
study, and the context in which they operated. Since it is not the people as
individuals who are the focus of this study, they are presented as a small
group of “cultural enterpreneurs” whose agenda was to consciously and
deliberately devise the Hebrew-National culture in Palestine as a new culture,
meant to replace the existing Jewish cultures on all levels.
This chapter
describes how the enterpreneurs founded an array of institutions and set up
operations for the purpose of marketing their newly devised culture. This
comprised both social and literary repertoires, and putting these to work in
both texts and deeds. The deliberate planning included attempts by the group to
institutionalize its team-work by founding associations (such as Bne Brith, Bne
Moshe, Safa Berura, the “teachers’ organization” [1891–1896]), and by the use
they made of the Hebrew press for adults (especially the Ben-Yehuda press) and
for children, which they founded themselves.
In the second decade
of their activity, the enterpreneurs succeeded in mobilizing the children as
agents for distributing and marketing the new culture among adults, both
privately (in their homes and families) and publicly (when the Hebrew schools
became the focus of Hebrew activity in Jaffa and the villages).
The familial aspect
of the enterpreneurs’ activity surfaced already in the close family contacts
among the small group of enterpreneurs: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda included both of his
wives (who were sisters[3]) and
his children, in all his activities and in his plan to maintain “a Hebrew
home”; he was later joined by his father-in-law. One of the first decisions in
the history of the new culture was the decision of the first “four families” to
follow Ben-Yehuda and speak only Hebrew at home (Horvitz, Grazovski,
Yudilovitch and Meyuhas). Yaavez, Pines, Yellin and Meyuhas were relatives, and
so were the Belkinds and the Yudilovitches. The whole Belkind family took part
in the Hebrew and educational endeavor: father, sons and daughter. Grazovski
and Press both married their students of Hebrew, who also published texts for
children in Hebrew in the first Hebrew periodical for children, Olam Qaton
of Jerusalem (1893). Yudilovitch and Yellin founded the first Hebrew
kindergartens in Palestine, to which they sent their own children. Thanks to
their children who came home from kindergarten conversing in Hebrew, Yellin and
his wife also began to speak it as the domestic tongue. Even Olam Qatan
in Warsaw, the children’s periodical with the strong “Eretz-Yisrael” links, was
a family project: the editors and publishers, Ben-Avigdor and Gordon (“Shalag”)
were brothers-in-law, Ben-Avigdor’s brother, the writer “Salmon”, participated
in the periodical, and so did both of Gordon’s sons, who initiated a zealous
correspondence among the young readers of the periodical. The children of
Epstein, Yudilovitch, Yellin and Grazovski from Palestine participated in it by
letter, while their fathers participated as writers.
In contrast to the
Diaspora, then, where the making of the new Hebrew culture was an almost
exclusively male project, which mainly remained in the realm of texts for
adults and schools for children, the new culture in Palestine succeeded in
becoming the reality of the entire population because it “invaded” the home,
the family, the women and children, thus creating authentic habitats of “Hebrew
life”, which influenced their surroundings by the example they gave. However,
in Palestine, too, as long as Hebrew was only a language studied at school,
i.e., during the 1880s and until about the middle of the 1890s, the new culture
had no tangible accomplishments. Only after it transcended the realm of schools
and started to be used in actual life situations, did it become a living
reality.
Chapter Two
presents Hebrew children’s literature in Palestine between 1880 and 1905. In
these years, and even until the beginning of the 1920s, the center of Hebrew
children’s literature was still in Europe, though first signs of crisis
appeared there in the first decade of the 20th century, and were augmented
during the second decade. Although many publishing houses and periodicals for
children were founded in Europe during this period, they all shortly closed
down. The blossoming turned out to be an illusion, because the target audience –
thousands of students of Hebrew in Eastern Europe – scarcely consumed the
literature written for them. In Palestine, this period was a time of
crystallization, with a complex relationship with the Diaspora, still without a
distinct boundary between education and children’s literature or between
literature and press for adults and literature and press for children.
In addition to
creating a public Hebrew social activity, the enterpreneurs initially created
Hebrew children’s texts of different kinds – for study and reading – which were
initially based on existing repertoires, such as the Bible, the Talmud or the
moralistic literature of the Enlightenment period. However, they very soon
began to develop a new literary repertoire which also created “the new life
that is forming in Palestine”, according to the enterpreneurs’ Plan.
Chapter Three
focuses on the body of texts which were written in Palestine: readers and
textbooks, belletristics and periodicals, and the literary texts they
encompassed: stories, poems, fables, legends or “moralisms”. The chapter also
discusses the question of translation and its position within Hebrew children’s
literature in Palestine, which is linked to the question of the available
reading material for Hebrew reading children in Palestine at the time.
Chapter Four
focuses exclusively on the “original” texts, because it was only from these
texts that original Hebrew children’s literature actually emerged in Palestine.
Many discussions of
children’s literature bring up the image of the “Eretz-Yisraeli child” in the
context of the question of what literature “befits” the children of the Land of
Israel. This image, interpreted within nationalistic concepts, actually related
to two distinct aspects: (a) The Hebrew child as different from the Jewish
child in the Diaspora, who therefore needs literature different from that of
the Diaspora; (b) The ideal of “the Hebrew child”, who was to be created in
Palestine. On one hand, there was an attempt to fulfill the needs of actual
children, though within the Hebrew national perception of these needs. On the
other, there was an attempt to create a model of “a Hebrew child” in children’s
literature, in the assumption that children in Palestine would be molded
according to it.
A repertoire of
elements conceived by both writers and readers as “Eretz-Yisraeli” was created
in order to shape the Hebrew language, life in Hebrew Palestine and “the New
Hebrew” literary characters. Among these elements we find the following: (1)
Hebrew language which determined the speech of the characters, their names,
their games and their studies; (2) the background and the setting of the
stories taking place in Palestine, especially the emphasis on outdoor life,
replacing the Diaspora indoor-setting; (3) the characters, who replaced the
character repertoire of Diaspora literature by characters of “Hebrew speaking
Eretz-Yisraeli children, free and confident, mischievous and anchored in the
land”; (4) the new activities, which quickly became symbols of “the new life
that is being created in Palestine”: the excursions into the country, the singing
of “songs of Zion” in Hebrew, and the new Hebrew holidays, where the historical
and agricultural aspects were emphasized instead of the religious and
traditional ones; (5) history, manifested in an obligatory linkage of every
place and action to the ancient history of “the people of Israel” in the “Land
of Israel”, or to the immediate historical past of the new settlement in
Palestine. It was also manifested in a literary model which had to include in
each prose fiction piece for children at least one “story” from ancient history
and at least one “story” from the history of the new settlement.
In this way, Hebrew
children’s literature of the First Aliya created the models for the use of the
new culture developing in Palestine, not only in the children’s system, but
also in the entire culture. It subsequently distributed these to the Diaspora
as symbols of “Eretz-Yisrael” and as testimony to the success of the national
and cultural program to create “a new generation”.
Chapter Five
presents a general view of the “image of history” that the entrepreneurs
constructed, as a framework for the detailed discussion of its major components
in the following chapters: the nation, the homeland, political independence,
and the alternative History Model of religious nationalism, whose main
representative was Zeev Yaavez. It also discusses the choice of Hebrew as the
language of the “Nation”, in the context of the national program and the use of
“the image of history”. The struggle for Hebrew was part of the attempt to promote
the new national concept, and the use of the term “the revival of Hebrew”
reflected the entrepreneurs’ “image of history”. Hebrew was conceived of as the
historical language, which used to be “the people’s language” during its
ancient, glorious past in its own country. This “reconstructed” past served as
a model to be implemented in the future, which is why they used the term
“revival” in their time.
Chapter Six
discusses the re-writing of “the history of the people of Israel” that was
meant to prove that the Jews were a “nation” in the modern sense. In their
texts, the entrepreneurs presented an entity called “the people of Israel”, for
which they created a “national” history, based on the history narrated in the
Bible (Old Testament). They avoided the use of the term “Jews”, which due to
non-national concepts might have insinuated a split between the “Jews” of the
end of the 19th century and the “children of Israel” of ancient times. They
chose the name “Israel” also to emphasize the link between “the nation” and its
“homeland”, which was called “the Land of Israel”, not “the Land of the Jews”.
Their view of all Jews, throughout their history, as belonging to one nation, a
unified and continuous national entity, stands out as unique against the background
of similar texts written in the Diaspora at that time. They used the Bible as a
source for legitimation and as a historiographical source to prove the
existence of the nation, and to show the connection between the various
contemporary Jewish communities through their shared ancient past. However,
they made one change in the biblical tale, when they invented a new model for
“the beginning of history”, which started with the creation of the “nation” at
the Exodus from Egypt, which replaced the traditional model which started with
the creation of the world. The conceptual change regarding such a critical
moment in the national history is also related to the propaganda for
immigration to Palestine, because, according to the new historical point of
beginning, the creation of the nation was an act of leaving “exile” and
“returning” to the homeland.
Chapter Seven
discusses the means the entrepreneurs used in their attempts to instill
patriotic values in children through the “image of history”. The historical tale
focussed on the Land of Israel through the ages, and the historical models
provided the ideal of the “homeland” for the purpose of its realization in the
near future. As part of the presentation of Palestine as the “national
homeland”, special emphasis was placed on the history of Jewish immigrations to
it. In this respect, the period of the “Return to Zion” (Shivat Zion) to build
the second temple (538 B.C.) assumed a special status since it was viewed as
the ancient historical equivalent of the modern act. Since the “Return to Zion”
was the beginning of the period of the Second Temple, the analogy to their own
time created the impression that their time was the beginning of the period of
“the Third Temple”.
Chapter Eight
discusses the use of history for the sake of creating the aspiration for
political freedom for the Jews in Palestine. The aspiration for national
independence was expressed by emphasizing those chapters or events in history
which could be interpreted as a state of independence or a struggle to achieve
one. The “aspiration for freedom” also resulted in making heroes of those who
labored for it, or for any independent Jewish rule. In the same way, persons
who seemed to offend “freedom”, in the entrepreneurs’ opinion, were criticized.
Still others were presented as if they upheld the “value of freedom”, even
though their actions would not support such an interpretation. The “desire for
freedom” was also stated explicitly in the authors’ forewords, in chapters of
history and in literary texts, and described in various ways as a value
long-held by the Jews. This was done in order to create the impression that it
had always been legitimate and consensual, although of all the principles of
the new Hebrew culture, this was perhaps the only one which was totally new,
and totally imported from modern secular European nationalism.
In connection with
“the desire for freedom”, at the beginning of the 1880s Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
already initiated the replacement of the accepted Jewish calendar, which begins
with the Creation of the World according to a Rabbinical medieval calculation,
with a new one, which begins to count the years from the destruction of the
Second Temple in the year 70 (the entrepreneurs initially dated it 68 AD). The
date “since our exile” or “since the destruction of our Temple”, intended to
replace the traditional Jewish calendar, indicated (a) that political
independence was the most important factor for them, so much so that its loss
constituted a reason to start a new count. A new count beginning with the loss
of freedom also embodied the expectations for the return of political
independence; (b) the concept that the new Jewish settlement in contemporary
Palestine represented a revolution in Jewish history, the beginning of a new
era which would create in Palestine a state for the Nation, similar to the
change of calendar at the French revolution. It seems that all European
cultures in the 19th century attributed symbolic meaning to the calendar and
its replacement was viewed as a choice denoting revolution, value change and
the beginning of a new era. The new Hebrew culture, however, did not offer a
new count beginning with the new era, but chose a founding event from ancient
Jewish history instead.
Chapter Nine
presents the alternative model to the new Hebrew culture, created by Zeev
Yaavez, an exceptional figure among the enterpreneurs. In the national Hebrew
culture that Yaavez suggested, Jewish religion and God played a central role,
while the desire for political independence was subdued. Four test-cases – the
return to Zion, the revolt of the Maccabeans, the calendar and the poet Yehuda
Halevi – are discussed in this chapter to illustrate his ideas, in comparison
and contradistinction to the “secular” Hebrew nationalism propagated by the
majority of entrepreneurs.
0.4. Conclusion
Since this work
focuses on the repertoires created by the “entrepreneurs of Hebrew culture”, it
necessarily emphasizes the work of the entrepreneurs, the social activities of
the new culture, the new literary repertoire, and the new “history” they
invented. To avoid the impression that these actions were made in a vacuum, and
that the construction of the new culture was the only or even the central
process which took place in the Jewish settlement in Palestine at that period,
attention is often drawn throughout this study to the broad context in which
these changes were taking place, and especially to the following factors:
(a) The existence of
various groups of people who actively objected to the attempts to introduce the
new culture, who at that time were the majority in the country (the people of
“the old Jewish community” [haYishuv haYashan], and most of the people of “the
new settlement”, who did not intend to replace the traditional Jewish culture they
were familiar with).
(b) The relations
among the entrepreneurs, and especially the gradual crystallization of two
distinct national concepts: the more secular majority-concept, and the minority
religious one.
(c) The existence of
several competing literary repertoires, of which some served the entrepreneurs
to create Hebrew children’s literature, and some were only a source for the
texts which were available for reading in Hebrew as well as in other languages.
The new Eretz-Yisraeli repertoire thus becomes at the same time more
conspicuous, set against the background of the dominant “Enlightenment”
literature, and assumes a humbler position.
* * *
The entrepreneurs
spread their ideas via the educational system, the associations and the press
they founded, via their textual activity and via the organization of culture in
the new community in general and in the moshavot (the new agricultural
settlements) in particular, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora. This took place
first and foremost in the children’s system (including in the training of
school and kindergarten teachers). In this way, they influenced the development
of Hebrew culture in the Diaspora as well: whether in their books, which were
studied at Hebrew classes, or by spreading their methods of teaching “Hebrew in
Hebrew”, or by being a living model of the feasibility of a living Hebrew
culture in Palestine.
Nevertheless, it is
important to emphasize that their activity was local, and that their interest was
in Palestine alone. This is particularly conspicuous in “the image of history”
they created. They had no interest in the history of Jews in Europe per se;
only as steps on the way to the renewal of the Jewish community in Palestine at
their time. They had no interest in Jewish solidarity per se, except as a step
on the way to gathering all Jews in the Land of Israel. The Diaspora Jews
interested them only as candidates for immigrating to Palestine.
During the first
decade of the twentieth century, in the first years of the “Second Aliya”, a
new group of capable and charismatic teachers arrived in Palestine and
eventually took over from the first entrepreneurs. Though they came quite
experienced from the Diaspora, they actually continued to develop the new
culture according to the principles which had already been formed by their
predecessors, since those who came with the “Second Aliya” did not fight Hebrew
culture, but already came as its supporters and fans. This shift was possible
because there was no split between the groups, and since the entrepreneurs had
by then already marketed their concepts and deeds to the Diaspora during the
preceding thirty years.
The activities and
literary repertoire invented by the entrepreneurs of the “First Aliya” continued
to gather strength during the period of the “Second Aliya” and became cultural
assets of the new Hebrew culture, not only at school but throughout society,
and continued to flourish in the repertoire of Hebrew children’s literature at
least until the 1960s.