Culture in the Histadrut, 1930-1945

Abstract

The Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine was dominated by the Hebrew national culture. Culture was an important and sometimes definitive element in securing the dominance of the Zionist Labor Movement during the Mandate era. The construction and shaping of a new Hebrew culture was a central principle in the movement’s creedal, political, and educational approach. The General Federation of Jewish Labor in Palestine, known as the Histadrut, which was the main institutional player in the shaping of cultural endeavor in Yishuv society, hewed to the spirit of the Socialist Zionist worldview. During this period, the Histadrut emerged as the most progressive, authentic and current cultural agent working to shape the Jewish-Zionist atmosphere and every-day life in Palestine. In the 1930s, the leading figure in the Histadrut’s cultural endeavor was Jacob Sandbank, who operated as part of the Cultural Center established in 1935. According to Sandbank, culture, in the sense of kultura, cannot be ‘manufactured’. Instead, he claimed that it materializes in various spheres of life, and its vital and spiritual elements come about inadvertently – without prior intent, without setting goals, and without dictating things ab initio.