Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 30, 2020

The granddaughter of a female pioneer seen in shorts in a quarry in Mandatory Palestine reveals that the propaganda scene was in fact staged

AMONG THE HANDFUL OF surviving photographs depicting female pioneers during the pre-state British Mandate period, one of the best known is a picture of Aviva Alef.

She was photographed in the summer of 1941 next to an open rail-cart full of rocks at a quarry at Kibbutz Ein Harod. The man who took the image was Zoltan Kluger, one of the greatest photographers in the country at the time, and who documented the Jewish state in the making for various Zionist organizations.

Over the years, the iconic photo became a symbol of groundbreaking female equality in the Zionist movement. Just this week, however, 79 years after it was taken, Aviva Alefs granddaughter decided to reveal the true story behind the picture, which is now in the official photography collection of the State of Israel.

My grandmother became a symbol of female pioneers against her will, her granddaughter, Yael Avrahami, told Haaretz.

In contemporary Israel, every year when the weather warms up, a controversy resurfaces in the countrys schools over the appropriate length of female students shorts. Someone recalled the picture and retrieved it from the archives, noted Avrahami, a biblical studies lecturer at the Oranim Academic College of Education in Kiryat Tivon, northern Israel.

FULL STORY The true story behind this iconic photo that became a symbol of gender equality in the Zionist movement (Haaretz)

Photo: Aviva, left, at work in the quarry near Kibbutz Ein Harod in Mandatory Palestine, August 1941 (Zoltan Kluger/GPO)

Read more:
Iconic image of gender equality in the Zionist movement was staged - Plus61 J Media

Category: Zionism
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