People’s Houses in Eretz Yisrael and Israel and the Memory of the Holocaust

Abstract

Abstract: The People’s House is a building and institution born of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, offering a sociocultural alternative to both the church and the alehouse. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the People’s House became a model of progress for a better society. The activists of socialist Zionism, who aspired to forge a new Jewish person along sociocultural lines, saw the People’s House as a crucible for Jewish communities who came to Eretz Yisrael from different countries. Indeed, beginning in the early twentieth century, People’s Houses were built in all manner of Jewish settlements in Eretz Yisrael, as centers for both creating and promulgating a new Hebrew culture. This article uncovers the historical link between the memory of the Holocaust and the conception and building of People’s Houses in Eretz Yisrael and Israel, through a discussion of the houses’ building initiatives, funding, ideological dependencies, naming, programs, and architectural and functional aspects. The essay’s conclusions are that: (1) The living memory of the Holocaust, both personal and communal, was a driving force in the conception and building of People’s Houses; (2) The built, functioning result proclaimed the lessons of Holocaust memory, reflecting an inversion of the scars left by the trauma; (3) The People’s House, designed as a workshop and a crucible for new Hebrew culture, was seen as a Holocaust-proof space, immune from the Holocaust’s painful memories.