Ten landmarks of Israeli culture

From soaring poetic visions to cheesy Eurovision winners to hit television shows, SHAHAR BURLA selects the literature, music, film and art that encapsulate Israel’s unique culture.

When David Ben-Gurion envisioned Israel, he imagined a "melting pot" nation where Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, religious and secular, Yiddish and Arabic-speaking, would form a new, uniquely Israeli, identity and culture.

The core of the new culture would be the Sabra, the first generation secular Ashkenazi Israelis who were raised on the ethos of the Zionist labour movement. Ben-Gurion implemented the "melting pot policy" to create a new generation of migrants who would negate the exile and assimilate with the Sabra.

Today, as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of Israel's independence, we can see the results of Ben-Gurion's failed attempts to create the one-dimensional Israeli identity and negate the exile. The fuel for the deep separation between the supporters and opponents of the judicial overhaul is the sentiment of deprivation and exclusion, mainly felt by Mizrahi and religious Israelis, which is the result of the melting pot policy.

The three vectors that shaped the new Israeli culture were the melting pot policy of the 1940s and 1950s, the resistance to it in the 1960s and 1970s, and its collapse in the 1980s. These three waves, together and separately, created a rich, new and diverse culture. This new culture, along with the Hebrew language, even more than Judaism, is what connects Diaspora Israelis and many secular Israelis to their homeland.

For this special anniversary, I have chosen 10 chronological achievements of Israeli culture that also represent the three vectors of the melting pot that created the “Israeliness culture”.