Yemenite crafts were central to constructing Israeli cultural identity in the 1950s-60s.

Evidence

The first Hebrew study of Yemenite crafts was published by Mordechai Narkiss, the director of the Bezalel museum (and former Bezalel student) and was based on items from this museum as well as from the British Museum. Mordechai Narkiss, The Artcraft of the Yemenite Jews (Jerusalem: Jewish National Museum Bezalel, 1941). Yemenite handicrafts had a significant role in manufacturing a cultural Israeli identity in the 1950s and 1960s. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 1203

Categorization

• CANDY: A surprising inversion: a marginalized Mizrahi community’s crafts became the symbolic heart of a European-Zionist national identity.