Jewish folksongs in the Palestinian period : building a nation

Abstract

The psyche of an entire people underwent a paradigm shift during the Palestinian Period (1920-1948). Jews took a spiritual quantum leap; they left the despair of the 'wastelands' of the Diaspora and journeyed towards the Promised Land. The quest of these pioneers was to rebuild their ancestral homeland. When the pioneering Halutzim encountered the ancestral soil of their Motherland, deep impulses were revealed. Their folksongs - an important component of folklore and mythology - reflected this inner dimension of their being and of their experiences in Eretz Israel by means of archetypal transformations. Initially, an idealistic devotion to reconstruction and intimate reverence for the Land was reflected. However, in the 1930s and 1940s, opposition to Jewish settlement transformed folksongs so they became increasingly militant, reflecting a movement towards extroversion in the Jewish psyche which was consolidated in 1948.