Palestine’s industrial backwardness was pitched as Bezalel’s economic advantage

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, 586 (#expands, via linked claim)

Promoting Bezalel to British Jewry, Otto Warburg put it bluntly when he claimed that an advantage of Palestine as the location for Bezalel was that “the land is backward industrially and has not yet entered the epoch of capitalism. Hence the manual work which is languishing in most Western lands will hold its own there for many years.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 586 (#expands, via linked claim)

It seems that the economic base of the proposal relied not so much on rational analysis as on the spiritual and metaphysical status of Palestine as the Holy Land, especially as it developed and was perceived during the nineteenth century. Moreover, the emphasis in the Bezalel program on producing handicrafts for souvenirs was based on an existing tradition. The nineteenth century witnessed the production in Jerusalem of decorative and religious objects from olivewood and other materials for the pilgrim, tourist, and export markets. Jewish craftsmen competed for their share of these markets. According to some sources, by the 1870s there were about a hundred Jews working in olivewood souvenirs in Jerusalem. In goldsmithing, too, Jewish craftsmen gradually dominated the market in Jerusalem, and needlecrafts were entirely the provenance Jewish women. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 592 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Bezalel project explicitly rejected modernization of Palestine.; Bezalel’s early workshops were crippled by Palestine’s lack of raw materials.; Bezalel’s founding economics explicitly relied on low Palestinian wages — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 586 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Bezalel’s founding economics explicitly relied on low Palestinian wages #expands (0.93) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 586
• Zionist leaders marketed Palestine’s backwardness as an economic asset to attract Western capital #expands (0.92) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 586
• The Bezalel economic plan rested on Palestine’s sacred status more than on market analysis #complicates (0.75) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 592