Bezalel’s founders justified Palestine’s location partly by its cheap labor costs

Evidence

According to Boris Schatz, the first reason why the Bezalel Society had chosen to locate their institute in Eretz Yisrael was that “in Eretz Yisrael the craftsman would be able to live off a smaller salary than in other countries.” This view was fiercely criticized by leftist circles among the Zionist yishuv. The organ of the first workers’ party in Jewish Palestine, Ha-poel ha-tza’ir attacked in its first issue the whole set of economic presumptions behind the establishing of Bezalel pointing out two major issues: (a) that the Jewish worker would continue to be content with little, a totally undesirable condition; and (b) that the livelihood of the people would depend on markets abroad that might undergo sudden and severe changes and every crisis would badly influence the home industries of Eretz Yisrael. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 596

Categorization

• SEED: The economics of ‘good material’ cheap labor — a deliberate low-wage strategy wrapped in Zionist idealism — is a sharp angle for an essay on how cultural revival movements rationalize labor exploitation.