ISPADA Israeli Planning, Architecture and Development in Africa
Sewing Lesson Attended by Female Teenage Immigrants in Kibbutz Ginosar
Haim Yacobi's Family Album
israel | 1950
“While doing research in the Israel State Archive, I came across a collection of photos that depicted African youth in one of the pseudo-kibbutz agricultural farms that were established in various African countries. Surprisingly, I seemed to recognize in the photos familiar images from my own family album: the "pioneer" posture of youngsters with harvested fields in the background, the soldierly appearance of African "Nahal recruits", Israeli agriculture guides visiting African farmers, etc. One of the photos that drew my attention featured a group of African women learning how to sew, seated by tables carrying sewing machines, symbolizing the modern woman becoming productive on the one hand, yet still constrained by her gender on the other.

The stance, the perspective, the objects and the pedagogical message of the photo strongly resembled those of my family album. Shortly afterwards, while visiting my mother, I skimmed through my parents' album, containing photos taken during the first two decades that followed their immigration to Israel with Aliyat Hanoar. The album was full of pioneering photos: youth dressed in khakis dancing in the fields; dark-skinned boys on the Sea of Galilee shore; and a group of girls trekking in the Galilee. Suddenly I found the familiar photo that resembled the one from the Israel State Archive. The photo depicting girls of Aliyat Hanoar from Iraq, learning to sew as part of the "whitening" process they had to undergo in order to become Zionist, modern and productive women. Yet, it was not just the visual semblance, but mainly the political-cultural identicalness of the two photos- one taken in Lesotho in 1972, and the other in Kibbutz Ginosar two decades earlier – that made me realize the centrality of cultural aspects to the establishment and stabilization of Israel-Africa relations. Geo-strategic considerations, taking part in the Cold War and making economical profits were not the only factors that tied Israel and African countries together during the 1960s, but also analogical processes of nationalism that produced knowledge and specialties based on the motivation to generate a modern-national territory, identity and society.”

Figure 1: Sewing lesson attended by female teenage immigrants in Kibbutz Ginosar (Private Collection)
Figure 2: Sewing lesson, "class 4", 12 Apr. 1972 (Israel State Archive, TS 3083)

From: Haim Yaacobi, Israel and Africa- A genealogy of moral geography, Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Geography, 2015.