Published: 23 April 2019
Last updated: 5 March 2024
ISRAEL IS OFTEN REFERRED to as the melting pot of the Jewish people, and this nation of immigrants — where Jewish daily life is infused with the ancestral memories of Russia, Poland, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, Iraq, Syria, Libya, France and dozens of other countries — is as diverse in dress codes as it is in food, customs and language.
Most Israelis wear Western clothing on a daily basis, but when it comes to life’s most special moments, ritual dress reigns. The most prominent example of this is Israeli weddings, No’am Bar’am-Ben Yossef, senior curator of ethnography at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, told Al-Monitor.
In 2007, Bar’am-Ben Yossef sought to show the scope and diversity of Jewish ritual dress, both in terms of history as well as which garments retain modern usage in Israel today, in a major exhibition at the Israel Museum together with curator Efrat Assaf-Shapira
"From the many Jewish costumes that arrived to Israel, the ones that are still most worn are those of wedding ceremonies,” she said, noting that among the Jews of Sephardic descent — with roots in Africa and the Middle East — the henna ceremony, a pre-wedding celebration that includes a festive meal, is most often the opportunity to don native dress, while the actual wedding ceremony itself will see the groom in a standard suit and the bride in a typical white gown.
FULL STORY Israel's traditional costumes display diversity (Al-Monitor)
Photo: Israeli traditional costumes often display modesty, as an 2017 exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem demonstrate (Israeli Museum)
