Kommunist omed ve-shar (A Communist Stands and Sings): On Israel’s Ron Workers’ Choir

Abstract

ABSTRACT At first glance Jewish Israeli Communists and SLI (Songs of the Land of Israel) make strange bedfellows. Communist Party members would seem to be the last to sing songs that glorify the Land of Israel using Zionist tropes. Yet they did. Since the end of World War II, the Ron Workers’ Choir, which was affiliated with the Communist Party, sang SLI songs and performed on international stages in the Socialist Bloc and in Israel. This amateur choir, its history, and the ideological shifts that enabled its activity are the focus of this article. We argue here that the shift in the Jewish Communists’ ideology toward a form of qualified recognition of Israeli nationalism and the development of a Zionist Habitus enabled the reception and embrace of Zionist culture, including its settler colonial aspects, by Jewish Israeli Communists.