Hora: Togetherness, Transgression, Transcendence, Transformation

• In Event: Embodied Judaism

Abstract

The Land of Israeli hora has been analysed by several Jewish and Israel Dance Studies scholars, such as the late Zvi Friedhaber Z”l, Nina Spiegel, Liora Bing-Heidecker and Dina Roginsky. Novel research on this topic, in the framework of my doctoral dissertation, provides a wealth of new insights on the meanings, messages and manipulations therein. Utilizing written accounts and archival sources, such as Zionist youth movement songbooks and newspaper clippings, I hope to contribute to the scope of understanding regarding the hora’s powerful impact on Jewish youth, national self-determination and nation building in the Land of Israel, as well as the Jewish Diaspora, in the first half of the twentieth century.

Though often misrepresented in the West, and just as often conflated with Israeli folk dance, the hora has a distinct history within the Zionist framework. As my research reveals, embodiment of the hora had a transformative effect as a vehicle for the transmission of Zionist ideology in the diaspora, as well as a form of embodied resistance under British rule in Mandate Palestine. This paper will mainly focus on hora dancing in Hungary before the Holocaust, and in the immediate post-war period, as an integral part of the culture of the Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Guard) Zionist youth movement. Rare archival photographs and never-before published personal accounts of hora dancing as an informal initiation into the movement are highlights of this talk, as are literary analyses of early Hebrew songs and poems about this dance form. The true significance and symbolism of the hora, in its heyday, is still largely unknown and I look forward to sharing my findings with conference participants through a Dance Studies and Jewish Studies lens.

Author

• Gdalit Neuman, York University