Modelscapes of Nationalism: Collective Memories and Future Visions 9789048529018

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Modelscapes of Nationalism

Heritage and Memory Studies This ground-breaking series examines the dynamics of heritage and memory from a transnational, interdisciplinary and integrated approach. Monographs or edited volumes critically interrogate the politics of heritage and dynamics of memory, as well as the theoretical implications of landscapes and mass violence, nationalism and ethnicity, heritage preservation and conservation, archaeology and (dark) tourism, diaspora and postcolonial memory, the power of aesthetics and the art of absence and forgetting, mourning and performative re-enactments in the present. Series Editors Rob van der Laarse and Ihab Saloul, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Editorial Board Patrizia Violi, University of Bologna, Italy Britt Baillie, Cambridge University, United Kingdom Michael Rothberg, University of Illinois, USA Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University, USA Frank van Vree, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Modelscapes of Nationalism Collective Memories and Future Visions

Yael Padan

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Central Zionist Archives. ‘The Old City in Miniature at the Holyland Hotel’, file no. NKH\428705, original no. 2198/39 Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 985 0 e-isbn 978 90 4852 901 8 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789089649850 nur 680 © Yael Padan / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2017 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



To Haim, Avigayil, Itamar and Adam



Table of Contents

Preface 11 Introduction: Narratives into Objects, Objects into Narratives 13 What are Models? 15 Modelscapes 17 Case Studies 19 1 The Qualities of Modelscapes Models and Modern Modes of Perception Visual Perception as a Product of Social Relations Visual Objects as Makers of Culture Historicizing Visual Culture Contemporary Modes of Vision Collection and Classification The Model as Representation The Copy Model, Image and Text Experience, Performance and Play Models and Architecture The Perception of Architecture On Scale and the Body Interior and Exterior Modelscapes

27 28 29 30 31 32 34 37 38 41 43 48 49 50 54

2 Models and Modern Perceptions of Nationalism 57 The Perception of Time and Modern Nationalism 58 A Verbal Model: Utopia 60 Models and the Construction of Collective Identity in Modernity 61 Theories of the Emergence of Modern National Identity 62 Modelscapes as Representations of National Space 65 Modelscapes as Signifiers of National Identity 67 Time and Enclosure 72 3 The Second Temple Model Designing the Second Temple Model The Model of Imperial Rome A Serious Plaything Authenticity

75 77 81 84 88

The Second Temple Model as a Representation of Archaeology The Second Temple Model and the Protestant Perspective Representing the Past A Vision of the Future Relocating the Model Who Visits the Second Temple Model? Updating the Model

98 101 103 106 108 111 114

4 Mini Israel Mini Israel as a Theme Park The Politics of the Miniature The Politics of the Site The Politics of Utopia: Planning the Site The Politics of the Sign: Choosing the Models The Political Economy of Mini Israel The Politics of the Exhibition: Mini Israel at the Israel Museum The Politics of the Model: A Partial Inventory

121 123 125 128 130 134 145 148 154

5 The Valley of the Communities 161 Collective Memory and its Sites 163 Official Holocaust Memory in Israel 167 The Valley of the Communities in the Context of Minimalist Memorials 170 Yad Vashem and the Mount of Remembrance 175 The Valley of the Communities 179 Designing and Building the Site 185 Remembering and Forgetting 189 The Memorial Ritual at the Valley of the Communities 191 Performance and Ritual within Memorial Monuments 193 Pilgrimages to Holocaust Memorials 195 The Linking Path March 196 Conclusions 207 Representational Modes 208 Bibliography 219 Index 231

List of Illustrations Figure 1 The Second Temple Model, general view 20 Figure 2 Mini Israel theme park, general view 21 Figure 3 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson), 2006, installation view, Israel Museum, Jerusalem 22 Figure 4 The Valley of the Communities, by Lipa Yahalom – Dan Zur, Landscape Architects 23 Figure 5 Bekonscot Model Village, general view 36 Figure 6 New York Panorama, general view 45 Figure 7 Model of Mont Saint Michel, at the Musée des PlansReliefs, Paris 66 Figure 8 The Second Temple Model, general view 76 Figure 9 Detail from the Model of Imperial Rome 81 Figure 10 The Hasmonean Palace, Second Temple Model 86 Figure 11 Second Temple Model at the Israel Museum, Aerial view 110 Figure 12 Moving of the Second Temple Model 111 Figure 13 The Second Temple Model with the Parliament at the background 113 Figure 14 Site plan of the My Land Holyland exhibition 125 Figure 15 Plan of Mini Israel (official map which visitors receive at the site), 2010 131 Figure 16 The Latrun Monastery (at the far background) seen with its model 137 Figure 17 Typical figures at Mini Israel 139 Figure 18 A Bedouin tent at Mini Israel 141 Figure 19 Figures of worshipers covered with protective box 144 Figure 20 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson) 2006, installation view 152 Figure 21 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson) 2006, installation view 154 Figure 22 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson), 2006, installation view 155 Figure 23 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson), 2006, installation view 157 Figure 24 Plan of the Valley of the Communities 162 Figure 25 Site plan of Yad Vashem. The Valley of the Communities is no. 14 in the upper left corner 177

Figure 26 The Valley of the Communities, engravings of community names 183 Figure 27 Sketch for the Valley of the Communities. Lipa Yahalom – Dan Zur, Landscape Architects 185 Figure 28 Competition entry, Lipa Yahalom – Dan Zur, Landscape Architects 186 Figure 29 The Valley of the Communities seen from above when approached by foot 187 Figure 30 Visitors next to stone slabs 188 Figure 31 Dramatizing activity at the Valley of the Communities during the Linking Path March, 2010 200 Figure 32 Candles and flowers placed by students on the walls of the Valley of the Communities during the Linking Path March, 2010 201 Figure 33 Students carrying the Israeli flag during the Linking Path March, 2010 202

Preface This book is about the relationship between miniature architectural models and the exterior reality to which they refer. It sets out to explore how this relationship enables us to envision a full-sized environment in our imagination. In particular, it is about architectural models that are on display to the public. I visited many such models in order to examine how representations of space and place can be symbolic containers of collective hopes and dreams, as well as fears and anxieties. Such representations of collective landscapes are termed in this book modelscapes. As an architect and academic interested in questions of Israeli culture and identity, I explore in this book three modelscapes. These very different sites are interesting because they deal in different ways with the Israeli socio-political reality. Spatially, they represent different aspects of the contested physical space, which is the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They offer ways to understand and manage a chaotic and complex reality, by inviting the visitors to participate in the model reality with their bodies. Ideologically, they represent political and cultural narratives of collective memory and identity. Furthermore, I show in this book how interpretations of their meaning are affected by the political and cultural changing context, and thus have evolved and transformed over time. In the process of analyzing modelscapes and their meanings I was helped and guided by some wonderful and generous people who shared with me their knowledge and thoughts. The first version of this book was my dissertation, and my first thanks are to my teachers Professor Lev Grinberg of Ben Gurion University and Professor Wendy Pullan of the University of Cambridge, for their endless support, time, thought and care. They have encouraged me to undertake this long and interesting process, and provided guidance and inspiration throughout the years of this research. I wish to thank the people who have read the different versions of the manuscript and provided me with important comments and ideas: Professor Yael Zerubavel, Professor Adrian Forty, Professor Tovi Fenster, Professor Stephan Stetter and Professor Jackie Feldman. Without their invaluable advice and support this project could not be completed. My research was supported by a grant from the Kreitman School for Advanced Studies at Ben-Gurion University. In addition, I was given an opportunity to teach undergraduate students at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at BGU, which not only aided me financially but also taught me a great deal.

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Several colleagues have assisted me by providing opportunities to present my work in academic forums, followed by helpful discussions, advice and criticism. I wish to thank Dr. Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, who organized the “Exhibitionary Geographies and the Post-Museum” session at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2011. I also thank Dr. Britt Baillie for inviting me to presented part of my research to the Cambridge Heritage Research Group. I have benefitted as well from participating in the Portable Landscapes conference at Durham University’s Centre for Visual Arts and Culture in 2015, organized by Dr Stefano Cracolici, Professor Mike Crang, Professor Janet Stewart, and Professor Jonathan Long, and I wish to thank them all.



Introduction: Narratives into Objects, Objects into Narratives

My grandfather, who was a construction worker, began to build wooden models when he retired. First he chose sites from his personal history that he wished to remember. Later he built models of monuments from postcards that he found interesting. As a child I was fascinated by these models, especially when he placed colourful lamps that lit them from within. Perhaps the memory of these models was one of the reasons I chose to study architecture, and later to write about models. What is the importance of architectural models? They are found in many cultures, alongside other forms of representation such as texts and images. Albert Smith argues that architectural models have served throughout history as ‘machines for imagining’ (Albert Smith, xxii), or thinking mechanisms, which participate in defining a culture’s universe. He further suggests that models are capable of mediating between perceived chaos and human designs, enabling humans to measure and test their various concepts of the invisible (Albert Smith, xxi). This book focuses on architectural models which are on display to the public and consequently have some collective aspects. Models of this kind are fairly common, often found in museums, town halls, landscape and theme parks. I argue that such public architectural models are distinct modes of representation within wider cultural contexts. As discussed by Albert Smith, they are machines for imagining the invisible. This invisible is not merely architectural concepts regarding the shape of future buildings; instead, the public nature of such architectural models suggests that the invisible which they deal with is about outlining collective issues. They serve to define ‘a culture’s cosmos’ (Albert Smith vii), and more specifically a particular shared vision of a group’s identity. Some contemporary public architectural models are places of heritage, some of entertainment, while others are intended to instruct and educate. Some models aim to combine these notions by offering an experience of ‘edutainment’. A recurring feature in many models is a claim to authority by representing some kind of authenticity regarding the external world. The visitors to such models are introduced to a certain ‘reality’ which is laid out in front of them, inviting interest and participation in their contents. Scale relations between the human body and the model often create a feeling of empowerment of the visitor over the miniature model.

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However, this claim to authority through authenticity, together with some degree of empowerment and of participation, raises the question whether these seemingly playful and educational structures are ‘machines for thinking’ or whether they are manipulative tools in the hands of their creators. How do such models work? How do they achieve a sense of authenticity, empowerment and participation? How do they manoeuvre between the symbolic and the concrete? How do they represent the invisible using visible objects? Why are tangible models still relevant in the age of computerized simulation? In other words, in what ways is the visual and bodily experience translated into narrative? The main topic which is addressed in this book is the three-layered relationship between (a) the tangible artefacts, the model-objects that form public architectural models, (b) the external source objects which they represent, and (c) the meaning produced by the encounter between this type of representation and the visitor. This does not suggest a necessarily chronological process whereby the model precedes the source object and representation precedes meaning. Rather, these three elements condition each other in different ways in response to changing cultural contexts. I begin by examining the format of the model as a means of representation, which differs from other representational forms. The general study of models is followed by a focus on the specific format of architectural models, and in particular on the type of public architectural models, and the relations of representational likeness with their external existing or imaginary source objects, as well as the differences between them. Following this, I examine how meaning is produced by the interface of the visitors and the models. I explore the scale relations and the bodily experience of movement between, inside or around architectural models, as well as the sequence in which the model is revealed. I aim to reveal how public architectural models function and how they address the visitors. This may also explain the relevance of such physical models in the age of computer simulations. Studying the models discussed here requires an interdisciplinary scope of knowledge. They are mainly representations of architecture, but they have some qualities of two-dimensional representations as well as some textual qualities, and thus they do not fit entirely under any of these fields. In addition, these models can only be fully appreciated in the context of the local social, historical, cultural, and political circumstances of their production.

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What are Models? The term ‘model’ comes from the Latin word modulus which means ‘small measure’ or small-scale, and was used in the writing of Vitruvius (Manchanda, 11). Furthermore, in ancient Greek thought ‘measure’ referred to proportions or analogos, which suggests that a model is an analogy of something else.1 During the Renaissance the word shifted to modellus, which meant ‘form’. The English term carries the additional connotation of ‘mold’ (Healy, 19). Philosopher Nelson Goodman suggests a definition of the term ‘model’ which points to the ambiguity and vagueness of its current use: A model is something to be admired or emulated, a pattern, a case in point, a type, a prototype, a specimen, a mock-up, a mathematical description – almost anything from a naked blonde to a quadratic equation – and may bear to what it models almost any relation of symbolization. (Goodman, 171)

A more precise definition is offered by Max Black, a philosopher of language, science and art. He describes models as three dimensional, more or less true to scale, representations of an existing or imagined material object (Black, 219). The models I refer to correspond to this definition. Ruling out some of Goodman’s wider and more ambiguous explanation, they seem to be neither exemplars or samples, nor mathematical or scientific descriptions. Black’s definition can be of further use, since he suggests thinking of models as scale models, although not necessarily miniature. He suggests that they are ‘likenesses of material objects, systems or processes, whether real or imaginary, that preserve relative proportions’ (Black, 220). I find his account useful as a starting point for developing an understanding of the qualities of models. The definitions mentioned so far suggest that models recall their source objects by means of some kind of representational likeness and relative proportions. However, models also seem to exist as separate objects, detached from their exterior referents. Their sense of detachment and autonomy comes from the exteriority of models to the objects they represent. This is particularly clear in the case of models which precede their objects, such as models made in the process of designing future or imagined buildings. Such models carry meaning even in cases when their reference objects are 1 See Oxford Dictionaries Online, http://oxforddictionaries.com/def inition/english/ analogy?q=analogy, accessed 2 February 2013.

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never built. Furthermore, models can be interpreted differently from their source objects, additionally stressing their independent nature. Morgan and Morrison refer to this quality of models and modelling as used in natural and social sciences: It is precisely because models are partially independent of both theories and the world that they have this autonomous component and so can be used as instruments of exploration in both domains […]. Models typically represent either some aspect of the world, or some aspect of our theories about the world, or both at once. Hence the model’s representative power allows it to function not just instrumentally, but to teach us something about the thing it represents. (Morrison and Morgan, 10-11)

In order for us to understand what a model teaches us about the thing it represents, we must be familiar with the conventions of representation, the ‘correct’ ways of ‘reading’ the model. How is the specific genre of public architectural models intended to be ‘read’ by the visitor? Such models are not mere sites of heritage, leisure, entertainment or memory, but rather they provide specific tools for constructing experiences which frame certain narratives and outline their internal logic. The public architectural model represents a particular manner of looking at the world, as well as of controlling it. Furthermore, I argue that this manner is both an outcome and a reflection of modern modes of perception. These will be examined in Chapter 1 which focuses on the emergence of public architectural models, as well as on the qualities that characterize them and the habits and conventions which frame their ‘correct’ understanding. A clear definition of the type of models which are analysed in this book has been neglected in the literature so far. I use the term ‘public architectural model’ to refer to a representation of an environment which is often composed of numerous individual models, and is displayed to the public. The individual architectural model has been studied extensively, both theoretically and as an architectural tool.2 Some attention has also been devoted to the analysis of public models directed at non-professional audiences.3 Francoise Choay has written a seminal book on architecture and urban theory which analyses the phenomena of utopian models. Her 2 See for example, Healy (2008); Moon (2005); Morris (2006); Albert Smith (2004); Patteeuw, Topalovic, Vervoort (2011). 3 See for example, Larry Abramson (2006a, 2006b); Berger (2008); Crinson (1996); Efrat and Scharf (2003); Greenhalgh (1988); Celik (1992).

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critical stance towards the format of the model reveals its powerful qualities which have enabled it to influence both the readers of utopian texts as well as contemporary professionals and policy makers in the field of urbanism. Choay’s analysis of utopian models is central for understanding the persuasive power of physical models, such as those which are presented in the following chapters. In addition to these works, many public architectural models have been studied individually.4 While several of these studies include a wider theoretical or historical background, none of them encompasses an analysis of the genre as a particular and distinct social and cultural phenomenon. In this book I focus on this genre of models and analyse the historical and cultural context of its emergence as well as its distinct qualities which differentiate it from other types of representation.

Modelscapes Public architectural models are clusters of individual models grouped together in an intentionally planned way. For the sake of clarity, I propose a special term to identify these clusters and to differentiate them from other types of models: modelscapes. I have chosen to use this term for several reasons. First, like other terms such as ‘landscapes’ or ‘cityscapes’, it suggests a multiplicity of objects which together form a certain scenery or panorama that cannot be offered by an individual model. Thus the basic feature of a modelscape is the arrangement of models and the spaces between them. Second, I refer to the attachment of the suffix -scape, as it is used in other theoretic contexts. Appadurai has developed a theory of ‘-scapes’, attaching the suffix to socio-political phenomena such as ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financecapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes. He suggests that the suffix indicates that ‘these are not objectively given relations’ (Appadurai, 33). On the contrary, they are constructed dimensions of social reality which are ‘inflected by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sorts of actors’ (Appadurai, 33). Following Appadurai’s use of ‘-scapes’, Soja suggests that in relation to urban space, ‘appending -scape seems to evoke a visual and panoramic sensitivity’ (Soja, xv). Similarly, Chaudhuri relates to the term ‘landscape’ as an effort to attach meaning to an array of objects. ‘Like the many other terms with which 4 See for example Amit (2009); Cohen Hattab & Kerber (2004); D’Amato, Di Tanna and Liberati (2008); Dethier (1990); Feige (2008); Momchedjikova (2002); Sartorio (1993); Wharton (2006).

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it shares the suffix -scape […] the term landscape suggests a systematicity and a coherence that often prove elusive in applications’ (Chaudhuri, 12). I use the term ‘modelscape’ to describe ‘landscapes’ or ‘cityscapes’ of models. However, the difference between ‘modelscapes’ and ‘landscapes’ or ‘cityscapes’ is that ‘modelscapes’ are deliberate creations of individuals and institutions. Hence the term ‘modelscapes’ indeed embodies a basic coherence that other ‘-scapes’ lack. Based on these definitions I argue that a modelscape is a spatial arrangement of meaningful objects which is intended to be visited by the public and creates a panoramic sensitivity. This sensitivity is not limited to the visual but rather relates also to a corporal experience. The meaning of the individual models within the modelscape is determined by their particular grouping, which constructs relationships between them and relates them to the visitor. These relations reflect a social and cultural context. Modelscapes display a particular combination of features that characterize other forms of representation. One of them is a concept of place, evident in the use of geography and topography, which relates the modelscape to the format of the map. Another is a concept of time, evident in the choice to represent a certain historic moment. The concept of time, together with aspects of collection, classification and display of objects, relates the modelscape to the museum. In addition, many modelscapes contain a didactic element, which is also central to the concept of the museum. According to Annis, the museum is A place for things taken out of their natural context to be stored, reclassified and exhibited. When objects become exhibits, they necessarily take on new meanings: they are transformed […]. The object-symbols twist in meaning between two worlds, the world of their origin and the world of significance created by display. (Annis, 21)

These qualities of the museum are relevant to modelscapes, since they too display objects away from their context, creating new meaning by their (re)arrangement and classification, and attempting to educate the visiting public. Another feature of modelscapes is the creation of a bodily experience, relating them to the landscape park as well as the theme park. Theme parks often display existing or typical spaces and buildings that represent a given subject, and rearrange them in a new context according to a structured logic. In the light of these features I argue that the modelscape is a hybrid, containing some qualities of the map (the concept of a place), some qualities

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of the museum (concepts of time, classification, organization, display and education) and some qualities of the landscape park (a bodily experience), or theme park (aspects of spatial organization and of entertainment). These are schematic definitions (for example, the map has some elements of classification, while the museum offers a structured experience), and in different modelscapes some of these components are more dominant than others.

Case Studies In order to understand how modelscapes are used and how they are designed to achieve an impact on their visitors, in the following chapters I analyse several case studies from Israel. The reason for this decision is that unlike many countries, in Israel national identity is a relatively recent formation which is not taken for granted. It is constantly discussed and contested, and therefore its construction and legitimation are important national objectives. Thus considerable cultural efforts have been and continue to be invested in creating the Israeli collective narrative. Modelscapes are part of these cultural efforts and reflect both the importance of constructing collective identity in Israel and some of the ways in which this is achieved. The three cases of modelscapes are all significant for understanding Israeli national identity. They were planned and built during key periods in Israeli history, and thus their contents reflect the social and political circumstances of their time. In addition, they are representations of crucial points in the national history, which play a role in the formation of contemporary Israeli culture, national identity and collective memory. Over the years they have undergone transformations which reflect changing political, social and cultural contexts. In Chapter 3 I examine the Second Temple Model of Jerusalem, also known as the Holyland Model (fig. 1). While miniature modelscapes for tourists can be found in many cities, this modelscape does not represent the city of its day. Rather it refers to the past, showing Jerusalem in the year 66 AD, during the Second Temple period which represents national glory and cultural independence. The Second Temple Model is both a representation of heritage as well as a heritage site in its own right. It is therefore a utopian representation of a shared past, which also plays a role in constructing contemporary national identity and collective memory. It was built in 1962-1966, a period when the entire archaeological site which it reconstructs was under Jordanian rule, and thus inaccessible to Israeli visitors. The Second Temple Model served as a substitute for these

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Figure 1 The Second Temple Model, general view

Photograph by Y. Padan

sites, one of its objectives being to educate and remind the public of them. It served to cultivate national feelings towards these places, and to represent contemporary Jerusalem and its inhabitants as continuations of the ancient Israelites and their city. Following the 1967 war and the unification of Jerusalem, the Second Temple Model nevertheless retained its national and cultural importance because, paradoxically, it is easier to envisage ancient Jerusalem in the modelscape than in the actual ruins of the city. In 2006 the Second Temple Model was moved to the Israel Museum where it was placed next to archaeological finds of the period. This move further enhanced its position as a historically accurate representation, based on the museum’s professional reputation. The new location also visibly connected the Second Temple Model with nearby symbols of the state such as the Parliament and the adjacent government buildings. This modelscape thus partakes in the construction of the modern narrative of national identity, based on a collective myth of origin using representations of ancient heritage sites. The second modelscape analysed in Chapter 4 is Mini Israel, a theme park containing contemporary miniature models of various places in Israel. It was designed as a recreational tourist site and opened in 2002 (fig. 2). The park does not reproduce the physical layout of the country’s

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Figure 2 Mini Israel theme park, general view

Photograph by Y. Padan

geography, but rather depicts Israel in the shape of a Star of David. As a family-oriented leisure site, the choice of places represented in this modelscape (as well as those that were excluded) and their arrangement in relation to each other is designed to incorporate all visitors while hiding some difficult aspects of Israeli social and political reality such as the borders, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the relationships between centre and periphery. Thus Mini Israel provides the visitors with an idealized version of contemporary Israel, which is the basis for an idealized national narrative. In reaction to the Mini Israel Theme park, a counter-exhibition of miniature models, also called ‘Mini Israel’, was initiated and curated in 2006 by artist Larry Abramson at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (fig. 3). He invited forty-five artists to display works whose common feature was the use of the format of the model. The artists presented their views of reality in Israel. Many of these models dealt critically with political and social issues. Larry Abramson’s counter-exhibition introduced questions of self and collective identity, and created an opportunity for dialogue between the viewers and the alternative miniature models of ‘Mini Israel’. Chapter 5 analyses the Valley of the Communities in Jerusalem, a memorial to the Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust, designed by

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Figure 3 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson), 2006, installation view, Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Photo: Theolonius Marx

landscape architects Lipa Yahalom – Dan Zur (fig. 4). The Valley of the Communities is located at Yad Vashem – the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. It is part of the national project of creating a historical site which is removed in space and time from the sites where the actual events of the Holocaust had occurred. The Valley of the Communities is designed as a labyrinthine shape dug into the ground and open to the sky, with walls of rock about six meters high carrying the names of every Jewish community. Its plan roughly resembles a miniature map of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as several countries in North Africa that were occupied by the Axis powers. Because it literally transfers the map of Europe and North Africa to the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem, the Valley symbolically reconstructs the entire geographic setting of the Holocaust in a local context. Thus the destroyed communities are incorporated both in space and in time. Spatially they are inserted into the national territory, and temporally they are integrated into the contemporary national reality. This site was built as a memorial, and although it represents exterior places using scale, it is

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Figure 4 The Valley of the Communities, by Lipa Yahalom – Dan Zur, Landscape Architects

Source: Collection of L. Yahalom-D. Zur, Judaica Division of Harvard College Library

not referred to as a model. In Chapter 4 I will discuss how and why it can be defined as a modelscape. In analysing these case studies, I distinguish between the creators of models that make decisions concerning the contents they aim to communicate, and the visitors who experience the models and relate to them as an audience. I focus mainly on the aspect of the production of modelscapes, rather than on their reception, in order to find out why the initiators and

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makers decide to use the format of a modelscape, and how they determine the contents, the physical shape and the interior rules that govern their modelscapes. As noted by Annis, visitors do not always absorb the contents of museum exhibitions in the ways that the curators expect. He suggests that the plans and intentions of curators, designers and marketing experts might be creatively altered by the imagination and expectations of the visitors (Annis, 19). These observations are appropriate for the visitors of modelscapes as well. In this book, however, I do not focus on the visitor reactions and perceptions of modelscapes. Although I have observed visitors and their reactions in the three modelscapes and one exhibition analysed, surveys of visitor feedbacks or interviews have not been conducted. These require further research which is beyond the scope of this book. Consequently, in the following chapters I set a framework for exploring how the qualities and features of modelscapes reflect the intentions of their makers, as well as the social and cultural context for experiencing them, rather than presenting an ethnographic document. I focus instead on other aspects of the modelscapes, asking what is being produced at each one. Is the model a commodity? What is being sold? I argue that because of their hybrid nature, modelscapes offer their visitors a composite experience. They are not commodities in the straightforward sense, although some modelscapes require entrance fees. They do not aspire to shape knowledge in the same way as a museum, nor to display exact cartographic information, as in a map, or to merely provide an entertaining activity, as would a visit to a theme park. Nevertheless, as suggested above, some aspects of each of these can be found in the hybrid experience of a modelscape. I therefore argue that the ‘product’ of the modelscape is the story which it tells using its particular qualities: a narrative. In the following chapters I show that these narratives are about collective issues such as identity, nationality and history. These abstract topics are given material shape in modelscapes, and ‘marketed’ to the visitors as ‘authentic reproductions’ of ‘reality’. Furthermore, I show that modelscapes display certain flexibility in the narratives that they promote, so that they can be adapted to different ‘target populations’. Thus the planners of modelscapes have different audiences in mind, and tour guides, for example, adjust the narrative to fit their customers. In this book I explore how the hybrid experience of a modelscape is constructed, how the narrative is designed, and how meaning is communicated. In all three sites I examined the social and political context of their design, the physical context of their location, and their history since they

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were opened to the public. However, a different methodological focus was placed in each case, in accordance with the characteristics and framing of each site. Different sets of expectations arise from the different frames in which these modelscapes operate. The Second Temple Model is mainly didactic, Mini Israel is mainly a site of entertainment and leisure, and the Valley of the Communities is mainly a memorial. The Second Temple Model is an educational model and therefore I investigated the didactical intentions of its creators, and the way its meaning has evolved through the years. I analysed its design process, which gave it credibility, and its history. Since it was opened to the public in 1966, this modelscape has undergone significant changes, and therefore has a history as a heritage site in its own right. It started out as a representation of historical sites that were under Jordanian rule and therefore inaccessible to Israeli visitors. Soon the political context in which it was viewed changed, as Israel conquered the sites represented in the model in 1967. In 2006 this modelscape was relocated from a privately-owned hotel to the Israel Museum, changing its status to a national exhibit. I used interviews and historical documents in order to research the intentions of its creators. Interviews with the model’s owners reveal the decisions behind its relocation, and interviews with the museum staff show the changed impact of the model in its new location. The Mini Israel theme park is a site of entertainment and leisure. As such, its analysis focuses on the ways in which the entrepreneurs identified the visitors’ expectations, and how they responded to them. In the decade between this modelscape’s inception and its realization, the political climate in Israel has changed significantly, affecting the design both financially and conceptually. I interviewed the people involved in its design, management and marketing through the years, in order to investigate how the shifts in target population from tourists to local visitors affected the contents and policies of the park. The Valley of the Communities is a memorial site built in the context of Yad Vashem. In its analysis I focused on the design process, which reveals that this memorial can be considered as a modelscape because a key element in its design is its layout as a miniature map of Europe. I studied the impact of this site by participating in the Linking Path March, an annual commemoration ritual in which Secondary school children are taken on a symbolic journey beginning in the Valley of the Communities, winding through Yad Vashem and ending on the national commemoration site of Mount Herzl. In this march the physical aspects of the sites complement the educational objectives of teaching about Israeli national identity and collective memory.

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The different methodological decisions have enabled me to explore the differences, but also the similarities between the modelscapes, and the points in which they overlap. They all reflect the Israeli national narrative at certain points in time, as well as changes within this narrative. They are planned and intentional representations of collective identity. The variety which these modelscapes provide allows for generalization by showing different aspects of Israeli nationality. I suggest that the analysis of these different sites can provide tools for analysing other modelscapes in different national, social and political contexts.

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The Qualities of Modelscapes

In this chapter some basic characteristics of models will be explored. My focus is on public spatial models which I have defined as modelscapes, referring to meaningful constellations of individual architectural models that are exhibited to the public. I will examine in what respects modelscapes are unique modes of representation, which differ from other forms such as texts and two dimensional objects. My aim is to identify the features that characterise modelscapes and make them unique. I begin by examining modelscapes as objects that occupy a physical space, which stands in some relationship to an actually existing space beyond the modelscape. What is the relationship between a modelscape and the external objects to which it refers? The models I am interested in are representations of the built environment, representing mostly architecture. However, they differ considerably from their source objects. I analyse this difference in order to determine how models, as objects or artefacts, relate to architecture. Another important feature of modelscapes which differentiates them from other modes of representation is the use of scale. Many modelscapes are miniatures, and thus position their visitors in a powerful position, quite different from the experience the visitor would have at the exterior site which the modelscape represents. The question of alterations in scale is also relevant for examining modelscapes which are not miniaturized, for example, real-size replicas of buildings in World Expositions, which nevertheless participate in a miniature representation of the world itself.5 Modelscapes are one of the manners of representation which are both an outcome and a reflection of modern modes of perception. I base this argument on an examination of the historical emergence of modern modes of vision and concepts of time and space. Modernity is characterized by a 5 Another type of life-size modelscapes which will not be discussed in this book is reconstructions of entire built areas for the purpose of military training in urban warfare. Such ‘ghost’ environments emphasise the built structures as models of threat and representations of death itself (Leshem, quoted in Larry Abramson, 2006b, 90) rather than as shelters for human life. The life-size buildings nevertheless require the training soldiers to participate in simulation and to ‘play’, in order to empower them over the simulated built environment. Rather than using the framework of play as a retreat from reality, a controlled environment of pleasure and entertainment with its escapist and utopian connotations of creating better alternatives to reality (see below the section about experience, performance and play in relation to modelscapes), the training game is played in order to prepare for action in combat, which is invariably a destructive action (Berger, 2008, 40).

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cognitive separation between viewers and viewed. One of the reasons for this was the development of both optical instruments and the perspective system. These placed the subject in a central and powerful position, while the world became a visual experience determined by the viewer. I aim to explore how models and modelcapes are perceived within this visual and cultural framework. Modelscapes are organized clusters of individual models, and therefore it is important to examine the physical presence of the individual spatial model as well as the effects of grouping models together to create a context, a model environment. Just as the built environment within which we pass our everyday lives has cultural dimensions that deal with collective issues such as belonging, common roots and cultural heritage, so does an imagined miniature environment made of architectural models. The interesting question is, how does a model built environment represent ideas, standpoints and aspirations about identity and nationality? Which issues are represented, and why were they chosen? Individual models invite people to pick them up, turn them around, touch them and feel their tactile qualities. This is not always possible in exhibitions and in modelscapes, where touching is sometimes forbidden. However, visitors can still walk around, in between, and sometimes inside models, and experience them through the movement of their body. I examine the walking routes planned for visitors within and around modelscapes, in order to find out how the individual objects are revealed in sequence and framed in carefully constructed ways. Movement within a modelscape is hence inseparable from its perception and interpretation. The process of interpretation is invoked by the objects on display, but in order to understand their meaning it is necessary to be familiar with the social context of their experience. In this chapter I explore the functional features of modelscapes: what makes them distinct modes of representation, how they present themselves to reading, how they are used, and which habits and conventions enable the makers of models to address their audiences.

Models and Modern Modes of Perception There is a vast academic literature about modern modes of perception.6 In addition to perception through the moving body, an important property of all types of models is their visual aspect. Some models are not accessible to 6 For an overview, see for example Dikovitskaya, 2006.

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the body, but are exposed to the eyes. This is true especially of miniature models, in which ‘all senses must be reduced to the visual, a sense which in its transcendence remains ironically and tragically remote.’ (Stewart, 67). Although miniatures offer more than a merely visual experience, this section will focus on the visual qualities of models and relate to their qualities as types of visual media. Visual Perception as a Product of Social Relations In order to understand modes of visual perception and its relevance to the study of models, it is necessary to explore how visual information is interpreted by the viewer. This interpretation is conditioned by the social and cultural context in which it is made, rather than by inherent qualities of visual (and other) media. A useful explanation of how interpretations are made and how they change is offered by Bourdieu in his theory of the habitus. Bordieu defines habitus as the individual’s position within the social world. He argues that perception and appreciation of all experiences is structured by the habitus. The habitus thus constructs individual and collective practices. It is a product of history, that ‘ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the forms of schemes of perception, thought and action, tend to guarantee the “correctness” of practices and their constancy over time.’ (Bordieu, 54) Thus Bordieu argues that a ‘correct’ perception of visual culture is determined by the habitus of the viewer. Baxendall proposed the term ‘cognitive style’ for the process of interpreting visual information. Cognitive style is a product of specific historical periods (Baxendall, 30). It reflects the ‘mental equipment’ that defines the visual experience, based on social and cultural circumstances. This ‘mental equipment’ includes the ability to categorize visual stimulations, the knowledge required to complete the visual information, and the viewers’ approach towards the visual material (Baxendall, 40). The style of the visual information has to correlate with the cognitive style of the period in order for the viewers to be able to ‘see’ the visual media (Baxendall, 86-91). Bryson criticizes Baxendall’s approach by warning against the assumption that there is a unity of culture. He points out that different social groups, as well as different members of these groups, perceive the same works of art differently, based on their ability to access different codes for viewing (Bryson, 18-42). In order to study modes of perception it is therefore necessary to take these differences into account. This is underlined by Bourdieu in his theory of the habitus using the concept of the field. Bourdieu

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argues that the field of culture (like other fields) is a configuration of positions which impose certain determinations upon their occupants by their situation in the structure of the distribution of power. Hence those that can shape the rules of the field and access its relevant capital (in this case, the ‘mental equipment’ that will enable them to comprehend the visual media ‘correctly’) can participate in the field from a position of power (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 97-98). I argue that the perception of models, like other cultural objects, is therefore shaped by the ‘cognitive style’ which is reflected in the conventions of representation of a given culture, as well as by the ‘mental equipment’ which an individual is able to access within its social structures. Visual Objects as Makers of Culture Material artefacts have a major role in expressing and defining the field of culture. This field consists of ‘[t]he shared practices of a group, community, or society, through which meaning is made out of the visual, aural and textual world of representations.’ (Sturken and Cartwright, 3). Since there is a variety of different possible meanings and interpretations, culture is a process rather than a fixed set of practices and interpretations. Meaning results from negotiations within a given culture, not only between individuals but also between people and artefacts, images and texts. Hence Sturken and Cartwright suggest that interpretations are as important as the visual artefacts (Sturken and Cartwright, 4-5). Visual artefacts are therefore inseparable from the production of meaning in a given society. Cultural critics tend to concentrate on the visual aspect of artefacts, and have ignored the genre of models altogether. For example, Mitchell (1995, 11) has created the term ‘pictorial turn’ to emphasize the importance of visual perception in postmodern culture, while Mirzoeff argues that visual culture involves an interface with ‘visual technology’ which includes any form of apparatus designed either to be looked at or to enhance natural vision (Mirzoeff, 1999, 3). Meaning resides not solely within visual images, but is produced in various ways by the interrelation between objects and viewers in the process of their consumption and circulation (Sturken and Cartwright, 7). Furthermore, as argued by Azoulay, the language that describes the work of art and the space that exhibits it affix the object under a certain shape, concealing other possibilities of its visualization (Azoulay 1999, 25). Hence the object and subject partake in constructing each other, and this mutual construction takes place in certain public sites. Azoulay refers to

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the museum as such a site, a space where the object is exposed, gathered, rephrased, exhibited and represented. The museum demands interpretation and self-reflection in front of the object, which in turn posits the viewer as a free, rational and impartial subject (Azoulay, 76). Individual models as well as modelscapes are often exhibited in museums and can therefore be analysed as cultural objects organised and managed by the museum. However, modelscapes contain elements that characterise the museum, and therefore they are not merely visual objects on display but also public sites containing and exhibiting visual objects. Hence they are part of a field of cultural production as defined by Bourdieu, where the viewer participates in patterns of preservation, representation and visualisation. Historicizing Visual Culture As argued earlier, models are products of modern modes of vision, which determine contemporary perception of the self and the world. Mirzoeff suggests that modern visual perception begins with the formal logic of what he calls the ancien regime image (1650-1820), that included for example the perspective system and the camera obscura (Mirzoeff, 1999, 8). Harries suggests that the awareness of the perspective system (first systematized by Alberti in 1435) and its implication in painting was in fact a key to the shape of modernity (Harries, 19). The perspective system was identified with the very essence of vision. Hence it seemed to reveal not only the exterior visible world but the very nature of the spectator’s cognition (Mitchell 1986, 39). Vesely suggests that perspective representation offered a way to reduce the larger context of human existence to a fixed point of view or ‘mind’ versus a ‘picture’. This was a departure from the medieval concept of the relationship of human existence to the world, in which man (microcosm) was perceived as an abbreviation of the world (macrocosm). Vesely calls this change ‘the perspectivization of reality’, a process which established a dualism of man and world, subject and object. This dualism is the basis of current modes of interpretation of modern history and culture, which he defines as ‘divided representation’ (Vesely, 177-184). The desire to appropriate reality has led to the establishment in the 16th century of different collections. Works of art, stones and minerals, curiosities and exotic plants were housed in specially designed cabinets, rooms, private galleries and botanical gardens. Vesely notes that such representations, which were kept in enclosed spaces, are closely linked with the imaginary room of perspective construction. These collections

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were introverted representations which created an illusion that they were the world itself, presented to the individual spectator whose judgment determined the visual experience (Vesely, 184). Contemporary Modes of Vision The modern, Western cultural paradigm is thus based on a differentiation between viewers and viewed, on both cognitive as well as analytical levels. This differentiation coincided with some optical developments such as the technology of the lens, the telescope and the microscope. The epoch of modernity has thus been described as the ‘opening of vision’, whereby visual relationships dominate human experience (Jencks, 6). Modern modes of vision are based on the dichotomy of ‘the vision’ and ‘the ultimately visual’. The ‘self’ becomes ‘the receptacle’ and the ‘other’ becomes ‘the spectacle’, (Jencks, 3). Thus the ‘spectacle of the world’, was developed in the eighteenth century, producing both the seeing subject, as well as the subject-in-sight (de Bolla, 68). Jencks further points out that the modern Western ‘plain view’ of reality is both based on and projects a consensus ‘world view’. This leads to a loss of the viewer’s interpretive power, since alternative ‘visions’ or ‘perspectives’ become unintelligible, classified as deviance and distortion (Jencks, 7). This idea corresponds with Baxendal’s suggestion that works of art must fit the ‘cognitive style’ in order to be ‘seen’, as well as with the argument by Bordieu that the ‘correctness’ of perception depends on the viewer’s habitus. Modernity is similarly defined by Heidegger as the ‘age of the world picture’. He suggests that ‘beings’ are only interpreted in terms of their ‘presentedness’, or the human representations of them (quoted in Reisinger and Steiner, 75). This is a departure from previous perceptions of the world, since there were no, and could not have been, medieval or ancient ‘world pictures’ (Heidegger, 218). This is because only in modernity do ‘beings’ owe their existence to their placement before human perception. Thus perception of the world as a picture distinguishes the essence of modernity (Heidegger, 219). Heidegger further argues that the modern human has become a subject, ‘[t]he referential centre of beings as such’ (Heidegger, 217). Other scholars have argued that the presentation of the modern ‘world picture’ to the subject-viewer is inseparable from modern conditions of production and consumption of images. The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was once directly lived has become a representation. (Debord, 12)

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The essence of modern society is what Debord calls a ‘reciprocal alienation’ between reality and the spectacle, whereby ‘reality erupts within the spectacle, and the spectacle is real.’ (Debord, 14). Debord argues that the spectacle is the visual reflection of the ruling economic order and thus, ‘[t]he real world becomes real images, [and] mere images are transformed into real things’ (Debord, 17). Analysing the spectacle requires a critical approach that would reveal the ideology it has materialized (Debord, 139). Barthes suggests that a semiotic process of breaking down the ‘visual text’ must take into account that images contain several levels of messages. These include coded iconic messages (requiring ‘external’ cultural knowledge) and non-coded iconic messages (requiring the knowledge that is bound up with our perception), which are received simultaneously by the viewer. The confusion which arises conceals and neutralizes cultural messages and hence corresponds to the function of the mass image (Barthes, 2002, 70-73). The mass image exemplifies the modern period (1820-1975) of visual culture, in which the logic of perspective was transformed to the dialectical logic of the image characterized by film and photography (Mirzoeff, 1999, 8). These new types of image created a relationship between the viewer in the present and the past moment of space and time that is represented as ‘reality’ by the camera. Furthermore, McQuire argues that technologies such as camera, cinema, television, internet and virtual reality provide us with ‘indirect’ perception. The uncanny equivalence between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ perceptions presents a radical challenge to traditional formations of identity and subjectivity. Modernity entailed a crisis of perception as technology replaced the presence of the subject with the formation of representations in the subject’s absence. This crisis has caused a profound change in contemporary experiences of time, space and memory (McQuire, 1-2). The crisis of visual perception is not merely relevant for representations, but also for the experience of space. Thus, for example, Jameson describes the Westin Bonaventure Hotel by John Portman in Los Angeles, which he terms ‘hyperspace’: My implication is that we ourselves, the human subjects who happen into this new space, have not kept pace with that evolution; there has been a mutation in the object unaccompanied as yet by any equivalent mutation in the subject. We do not yet possess the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace. (Jameson, 242)

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The only solution to this bewilderment would be ‘to grow new organs, to expand our sensorium and our body to some new, yet unimaginable, perhaps ultimately impossible, dimensions’ (Jameson, 242). Another modern mode of vision is the tourist gaze, which participates in shaping the meaning of visited sites. Since the end of the eighteenth century, sight became a central factor in the ordering of the discourse of tourism and travel. The tourist visually captures the visited sites, and constructs meaning, expectations, experiences and memories through visual images (Crawshaw and Urry, 178-179). Within these sites, tourists produce and re-produce space by their performance, which in turn exposes them to the disciplinary gaze of other tourists. Hence tourist sites are oriented towards visual consumption, and the tourist gaze shapes these sites by constructing the meaning of places according to individual and group identities (Edensor, 71-72). Individual models as well as modelscapes are perceived within this visual and cultural framework. The modern concept of separation between viewer and viewed is fundamental for understanding the modelscape as a means to appropriate reality, by creating an introverted representation of an exterior world. This situation is particularly clear in miniature modelscapes, which are an extreme case of detachment of visitor from model. The external reality represented to the visitor corresponds with the idea of a ‘world picture’ presented to a viewing subject. Such models provide the viewer with panoramic vision, which Barthes suggests requires a power of intellection in which the world is read and not only perceived. The combination of knowledge and perception results in a new ‘architecture of vision’ which presents intelligible objects that have material existence (Barthes, 1997, 175-176). I argue that modelscapes possess this quality of the ‘architecture of vision’, because they are what Barthes calls ‘concrete abstractions’. Collection and Classification Modelscapes are related to artefacts and collections, in particular public collections (as for example in museums). However, individual models on display within a modelscape are different from collectibles. This is because collections usually contain artefacts that are collected as primary sources with values of their own, while modelscapes often contain individual models whose value derives solely from the entire constellation. Nevertheless, the modelscape displays some important aspects of the logic of a collection, by using the concept of a spatial arrangement of the individual artefacts. Modelscapes thus contain relations of interiority and exteriority,

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classification and display, physical boundaries and scale, as well as their own interior logic and rules. Similar to other collections, in modelscapes narratives are transformed into objects, and objects back into narratives. Collections are characterized by the relationships between the objects within them, namely their interior temporality. I argue that modelscapes similarly display an ability to represent shifts in time. The experience of this aspect of modelscapes is a result of the modern perception of time, past experience and future expectations. Furthermore, I argue that both individual models as well as modelscapes of future buildings and environments are attempts to bridge the conceptual gap between past and future by giving the future a material tangible shape in the present. The emergence of public collections since the sixteenth century, designed to represent reality, was a process for defining both self as well as shared identities. As argued by Clifford, the collection is a method for possessing the world and creating an orderly, meaningful display, and these are crucial processes of Western identity formation. He points to the 17th century ‘ideal self’ as the owner of possessions, and argues that the same ideal can be applied to collectives defining their shared cultural ‘selves’ (Clifford, 96). Contemporary identity formation through collections is def ined by Baudrillard in his analysis of the capitalist ‘system of objects’, which is a structured environment that replaces the ‘real time’ of historical and productive processes with its own temporality. Baudrillard notes the importance of object collections: The environment of private objects and their possession (collection being the most extreme instance) is a dimension of our life which, though imaginary, is absolutely essential. Just as essential as dreams. (Baudrillard, 1996, 95-96)

The collection represents a transformation of narrative and history into space, or property (Stewart, xii-xiii). Clifford concludes that collecting is a Western subjectivity as well as a changing system of powerful institutional practices (Clifford, 98). The collection seeks to represent experience ‘within a mode of control and confinement’ (Stewart, 161): Thus there are two movements to the collection’s gesture of standing for the world: first, the metonymic displacement of part for whole, item for context; and second, the invention of a classification scheme which will define space and time in such a way that the world is accounted for by the elements of the collection. (Stewart, 162)

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An important feature of the collection is therefore the presentation of objects detached from their context and inserted into an alternative framework. Another feature is the replacement of the circumstances of the concrete production of the objects with the interior rules organizing the collection. Hence the interior time and order of the collection mask the historical and social relations of the collected items and their appropriation (Clifford, 97). Stewart argues that the collection functions as a means to bring the environment into the personal, and hence the ‘self’ – the collector’s own identity – becomes part of the collection (Stewart, 162). In Baudrillard’s articulation, ‘[w]hat you really collect is always yourself.’ (1996, 91); therefore the collection serves to define the collector, as well as to establish the subject (collector) as an object in the collection. Like artefacts, models within modelscapes gain their meaning from their individual presence as well as from their placement within the context of the collection. An interesting example of how interior temporality and meaning are created by the context is found at Bekonscot Model Village in England (fig. 5). This model village was founded in 1929, and is the oldest member of the International Association of Miniature Parks (IAMP), which includes Figure 5 Bekonscot Model Village, general view

Photograph by Y. Padan

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more than 40 public miniature parks open to the public across the world. The model’s brochure describes Bekonscot as, ‘[a] little piece of history that is forever England’. This referrs to the interior logic of the collection, in which the temporal aspects of the past (‘piece of history’) and the present are fused into an imagined ‘forever’. This is also a reference to a 1914 poem by Rupert Brooke, an English poet known for his idealistic sonnets written during the First World War: If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. (Brooke, 15)

Sherry argues that in the 1920s, there was a tendency to view the pre-war era as a time of innocence and wonder. Brooke ‘extends the imaginative claim of Georgian nationalism to its revealing extreme, a verge and a limit at which its establishing outlook is at once exaggerated and typified’ (Sherry, 153). The Bekonscot Model Village, which represents ‘forever England’, supplies concrete images to such national sentiments. Bekonscot is a collection of miniature models, some of them replicas of existing buildings and others typical English buildings such as pubs, railway stations, churches and manor houses. The sites are detached from their original geographic context, and the system of their classification or spatial arrangement creates a new symbolic geography, complete with its own nature and countryside, representing an ideal nostalgic England.

The Model as Representation A central theoretical question concerning modelscapes is in what respects they are unique types of representation that differ from all other representational tools such as texts and two dimensional objects. I argue that rather than being merely a copy of a source object, a model is a creative and interpretive type of image that works by invoking comparison with its external referent. The act of comparison involves verbal interpretation of both model and its source, including reference to abstract ideas.

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Another important quality that makes modelscapes unique representations is their nature as objects which involve the human body. A third central aspect of modelscapes is the alteration of scale. Many modelscapes are miniatures, and their scale relations with their source objects as well as with their visitors are central to their experience. Although some modelscapes are not miniaturized, they often exhibit complex scale relations with the represented objects as well as visitors. The Copy The relationship or the distance between object and its representation is a fundamental issue in Western culture, and has been widely discussed in the literature of art and philosophy. This question is relevant for understanding how modelscapes stand in relation to the places that they model. In his book Likeness and Presence, Belting analyses the pre-modern interpretation of the image and its source as bound by resemblance. Thus in icons of saints, for example, ‘the likeness is not honoured in the name of the image but in the name of the person represented, the image being only a means to an end’ (Belting, 153). Hence icons could be venerated, since ‘by adopting the essence of the archetype, the image borrowed the supernatural power that justified its worship’ (Belting, 153). Belting further argues that this interpretation of the image was based on the Platonic concept that every image originates in a prototype from a pre-existing and everlasting world of ideas. Hence the image was a universally significant cosmic agent in the development of the physical world (Belting, 154). In medieval thought this concept was used to explain the nature of the image as generated by its source model: The image was not the mere invention of a painter but was more or less the property – indeed the product – of its model. Without the model, the image could not have come into being. (Belting, 153)

However, as argued by Auerbach, such resemblance to the source does not necessarily imply an exact reproduction. He referrs to the representation of reality using the term ‘mimesis’, arguing that representational art which is a copy of ‘reality’ is in fact a re-interpretation, a creative repetition that differs from the original. Representation is thus ‘an active dramatic presentation of how each author actually realizes, brings characters to life, and clarifies his or her own world’ (Saïd, xx). Auerbach defines the conception and representation of pre-modern reality as ‘figural’. This term indicates ‘the

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intellectual and spiritual energy that does the actual connecting between past and present, history and Christian truth, which is so essential to interpretation’ (Saïd, xxi-xxii). Modernity is characterized by a shift from this pre-modern perception and interpretation of the image. Belting suggests that a ‘crisis of the image’ took place during the Renaissance, when the image began to be interpreted as the artist’s invention or idea. This type of image no longer functioned as a visible manifestation of its source model. Rather, it was perceived as a product of optics and of the general laws of nature. It represented both the principles of perception and an original idea of the artist (Belting, 471-472). The concept of the image thus changed from a literal representation generated by its source object into an invitation to look for the artistic idea behind the work. This change has laid the basis for the modern interpretation of representations as works of art resulting from aesthetic concepts (Belting, 471-472). Furthermore, Auerbach argues that with the rise of secularism, the image shifts towards historicism, and represents through its source reality the social and cultural conventions of the time (Auerbach, 443-444). The ‘realism’ which is represented in literature and other arts requires separation, since as argued by Eagleton, ‘if a representation were to be wholly at one with what it depicts, it would cease to be a representation’ (Eagleton, 23 October 2003). Eagleton suggests that ‘pure’ representational art is impossible, because ‘nobody can tell it like it is without editing and angling as they go along. Otherwise the book or painting would simply merge into the world’ (Eagleton, 23 October 2003). The image in this view is thus always interpretative. The issue of the distance between an original and its representation is also discussed by Benjamin, who analyses the modern mass-produced copy and its effect upon works of art. He stresses the fact that the concept of authenticity requires the presence of an original. Benjamin argues that the copy differs from an original, not necessarily because it is interpretational or creative, but because its circumstances of production and circulation are different (Benjamin, 220). Benjamin goes on to argue that the ‘aura’ of the original is destroyed in the process of its mass reproduction. It no longer has a unique existence, and thus mass reproduction causes ‘the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage’ (Benjamin, 220). Models and modelscapes differ from Benjamin’s objects of analysis, but they nevertheless have several points in common. They do not imply a mass reproduction, but rather they often claim to be unique representations of their source object. Models refer to objects, such as buildings, and not to

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other representations of objects. Moreover, the separation from the original is inherent in its representation in a model. This separation is evident by the change of scale and of materials, by the de-contextualizing of the object, and by its abstraction. When individual models are grouped into a modelscape, this is further emphasized in their creative re-contextualizing, which provides a tangible but interpretive image of a ‘reality’ that they construct based on abstract ideas and values. However, models and particularly miniature models also correspond with Benjamin’s description of the modern aspiration to grasp reality through its reproduction. The desire of contemporary masses to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly […] is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. (Benjamin, 223)

Furthermore, Benjamin suggests that mechanical reproduction has created forms of art, such as photography, which are designed to be reproduced. The questions of authenticity and of the original are no longer relevant for this type of art. Instead, he proposes that art is now based on politics (Benjamin, 223-224). There is an ‘absolute emphasis on its exhibition value’ to the point that its artistic value and function may be recognized as incidental. Modelscapes similarly are removed from their original and focus on their own ‘exhibition value’, that is, their immediate presence before their audience. Baudrillard takes this point further in his essay ‘Simulacra and Simulations’. Baudrillard explores the relationship between original and image in the contemporary ‘age of simulation’, and identifies four successive phases of the image: 1. It is the reflection of a basic reality. 2. It masks and perverts a basic reality. 3. It masks the absence of a basic reality. 4. It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (Baudrillard, 2001, 173)

In the order of simulations, Baudrillard claims that the ‘real’, or the original, has disappeared. Instead, ‘nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second-hand truths, objectivity and authenticity’ (Baudrillard, 2001, 174). He therefore defines

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simulation as ‘a generation of models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal’ (Baudrillard, 2001, 169). In this view, it is the simulation that precedes and generates the ‘real’. Furthermore, this type of ‘reality’ can then be reproduced indefinitely, and this is what makes it into a ‘hyperreality’. In this process, all referentials are destroyed by being incorporated into systems of signs, ‘substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double’ (Baudrillard, 2001, 170). Baudrillard uses the example of Disneyland to explain the orders of simulation. He argues that the fantasy in Disneyland, itself a play of illusions, is in fact intended to conceal the absence of reality outside it, and thus to save the ‘reality principle’. Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. (Baudrillard, 2001, 175)

In the following chapters, modelscapes are discussed in terms of their capacity to represent both a reality which no longer exists, as well as one which is proposed to exist in the future. In this sense, they are capable of representing an original which is unreal. Furthermore, by representing a non-existent reality, models and modelscapes participate in generating and constructing it. They are used in certain cases to provide tangible simulations, but these simulations aim to reveal a certain reality rather than conceal its absence. They are part of an ideological discourse and hence they don’t correspond to Baudrillard’s contention that ‘it is always a false problem to want to restore the truth beneath the simulacrum’ (Baudrillard, 2001, 185). Model, Image and Text The question of original and image discussed above is relevant to all forms of representation. Within this framework, what characterizes the model specifically? The differences between representational media have been analysed in depth by philosophers and cultural critics, but none focused on the model. As discussed earlier, the modern view of the image departed from the monotheistic concept of showing something greater, the sacred reality, embodied and resembled in a lesser form, the image. The role of representation in modernity is the focus of Goodman’s work about aesthetics. He views the

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arts as contributing to the understanding as well as the construction of the realities we live in. Art is thus not sharply divided, in goals and means, from science and ordinary experience. Goodman defines the modern concept of representation as ‘a symbolic relationship that is relative and variable’ (Goodman, 43). Unlike the pre-modern idea of the image, in modernity it indicates an object which refers to other objects and this reference Goodman calls denotation, which is independent of resemblance (Goodman, 5). Hence he calls representation a ‘description under denotation’ (Goodman, 43). Goodman includes under this definition both images that denote, as well as verbal and textual denotations. The distinction between verbal denotations and images is the subject of Mitchell’s book Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Mitchell examines the question of ‘image versus text’ as the two fundamental types of representation. He focuses on the differences and similarities between words and images, or verbal and pictorial signs. Mitchell refers to the term image as ‘likeness, resemblance, similitude’, apparent in different kinds of images: graphic, optical, perceptual, mental and verbal. Each of these is central to a different intellectual discourse (Mitchell, 1986, 10). However, a verbal image or a text are expressions of language. Forty suggests that a text is a system of differences, which is capable of distinguishing between different kinds of experiences (Forty, 15). Mitchell points out that in this process, the text is expressed in words but creates an image in the mind, a verbal image. Hence images are closely connected with texts: both are to do with communication, by means such as reference, representation, denotation and meaning (Mitchell, 1986, 47). Both are symbolic marks which make use of different functional features (Mitchell, 1986, 69). Forty argues that unlike images in the mind, a basic feature of concrete images is the fact that the observer is external to the object. Thus for example in architectural drawings: Subject and object are conveniently separated by the surface of the paper. The drawing itself becomes a simulacrum of perception, and its exteriority to us requires us to suppose that perception, as well as the thing perceived lies outside the mind. Language places no such demands upon us: the words themselves carry no illusions, but act directly upon the mind; language allows perception to happen where it belongs, within the mind. (Forty, 41)

However, it is important to note that verbal images, like concrete ones, are not transparent reflections that offer direct access to external objects. Thus

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Richard Rorty argues that language is not a means of representation, since it is not a verbal illustration of external non-verbal ‘meanings’ or ‘facts’. Rather, language is a tool, a contingent product of time and coincidence. It merely signifies the usefulness of employing a specific vocabulary in order to handle a given situation effectively (Rorty, 3-23). In other words, verbal images which are imprinted upon the mind are artificial, conventional signs, like the letters and words that describe them, and their meaning is socially and culturally constructed (Mitchell, 1986, 26). I suggest that models are three-dimensional, nonverbal symbols, which are imprinted in the mind as images. They gain their meaning from the viewers’ capability to interpret their experiences into words. Models refer to external objects and hence they are images that denote. They resemble their reference object but differ from them in features such as scale, materials, and details. The model requires a wider reading that takes into account its propositional nature. Hence the third quality of models that I would like to put forward is that their historical and ideological components are inseparable from their formal materiality. Experience, Performance and Play Models invite the visitors to explore their aspects in motion. Unlike the frontal position assumed when observing images such as paintings, photographs, films or computer screens, models are observed through the movement of the body around them. While this is true for individual models, it is also an important aspect of the observation of collections of models, such as modelscapes. These are designed to make the public perform certain routes within or around them. Hence I consider these kinds of models theoretically to be settings for ‘public performances’.7 Another important point is the association of models with playful objects, especially miniature models which are reminiscent of doll houses and other toys. I argue that the frame of play enables models to refer to political and social problems in a mediated way, which does not deter the visitors. Berger suggests that toys are situated within a creative ‘interpretive space’, which differs from the strictness of exact duplication. Although toys, like models, 7 The idea of performance is used here in the sense defined by sociologist Erving Goffman, as ‘all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers’ (1990, 32). This type of performance is not necessarily conscious, such as the performance of an actor in front of an audience. Rather, an individual may possibly be involved in performance without being aware of it (Carlson, 35).

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refer to source objects, they nevertheless have an independent existence which opens them to new interpretations and uses (Berger, 2008, 19). Models gain access to an ‘interpretive space’ by virtue of their tactility. Ferguson describes the model as one step closer to reality than a drawing, because it gives tactile clues that help the observer to make sense of the object (Ferguson, 107). The model therefore offers a full experience which is not limited to the visual. It provides ‘nonverbal, sensual, qualitative information – visual, tactile, muscular, and aural’ (Ferguson, 107). Similarly, Healy suggests that models offer a hybrid phenomenological realm which focuses on their materiality and functionality as objects (Healy, 15). Similarly, Pallasmaa has argued that model-making is a tactile experience, both for the maker as well as for the visitor. Even when it is not physically approachable, the model is experienced by the body: In our imagination, the object is simultaneously held in the hand and inside the head, and the imagined and projected physical image is modelled by our bodies. We are inside and outside the object at the same time. (Pallasmaa, 12)

Movement enables the viewer to imagine the realized building that a model represents (Patteeuw, 126). Movement around and within modelscapes allows the visitors to imagine complex environments. The model’s layout is the decisive element of this movement. In contrary to the individual model which permits freedom of movement around it, movement within the modelscape is planned in advance and organized by the spatial logic of the site and possibly by guides which lead tours. Thus it is a structured rather than arbitrary experience, designed to instruct the visitor how to make sense of the modelscape. This didactic purpose coincides with the narratives that accompany the exhibits. A good example of a structured experience in a model can be found at the Panorama of the City of New York (fig. 6). This is a model of the city that was built for the New York World’s Fair of 1964-65 and housed at the Queens Museum of Art. At 1:1200, the model of the metropolis occupies more than 860 square meters. The Panorama was built originally with moving rail-cars around it which offered the visitors a nine-minute ride and a recorded narration (Momchedjikova, 268). This extremely controlled experience (that simulated a helicopter ride) was replaced by an ascending ramp, which today offers the visitors an opportunity to explore the model on their own aided by labels and brochures or else by a guided tour (Momchedjikova, 268).

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Figure 6 New York Panorama, general view

Source: Queens Museum, New York City

The Panorama, like other modelscapes, is experienced by the moving body. And like other miniature models, it offers the visitors an experience of empowerment over New York’s skyscrapers, which outside the museum dominate the pedestrians in the city. Momchedjikova notes that the visitor’s elevated position along the ascending ramp inverts the spatial relationship between people and buildings: while the city surrounds the pedestrians, in the model space it is the viewers that surround the city. Moreover, temporal relations are inverted as well, because the model has a special lighting system that simulates dawn-to-dusk, thus capturing the visitors within the accelerated model time. In that reversal of scale, time decreases as well, encapsulating the city even more – caught in observation and reverie, we experience one hour at the scale model as 10 minutes. (Momchedjikova, 269)

Movement also serves to validate the information the visitors gather from the model, by comparing it with the exterior reality it represents. The interaction between visitors and model is essential in order to affirm its authenticity, which ‘resides in the “bringing to life” and performing of that

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same scale model by those that it, in itself, lacks – the moving bodies of the guide and the visitors’ (Momchedjikova, 269). The experience offered by the Panorama reduces distances and flattens the visual field. The difference between near and far are erased: in several seconds the visitor walks distances which are impossible to cover outside in an entire day (Momchedjikova, 275). Walking around the model connects ‘here’ and ‘there’, enabling the visitors ‘to belong to all places at the same time’ (Momchedjikova, 279). Furthermore, for residents of the city and others who are familiar with New York, movement around and above the miniature familiar places ‘activates’ these places with memories and with comparisons that the visitors make with the city they know outside. For those visitors, Public becomes private – the public places on the scale model become the private spaces of personal memories and so the scale model functions as anybody’s memory palace, at any given time. As a result, two cities come to co-exist at the scale model: the visual, miniaturized architectural one in the museum and the tactile, lived one in our minds and memories. (Momchedjikova, 279)

As will be discussed in Chapter 4, this feeling of the co-existence of the model and its source objects is not limited to residents who are familiar with the city. Rather, this impression is shared by tourists who experience the model by comparing it with famous landmarks in the city. Culler points out that tourists have images of the attractions they would like to see prior to their actual visit. These images are produced by markers, including different types of representations (Culler, 1988, 160). In the model, miniature representations serve as markers of both the entire city as a tourist attraction and of particular sites within it, which are recognized by the visitors. Culler suggests that such a process of recognition is essential in order for the tourist to make sense of the touristic experience. Representations mark the ‘real’ attractions as places worth visiting. Even after visiting a ‘real’ sight, its markers retain their importance, since features of the ‘real’ sight are discovered with reference to and in comparison with the markers (Culler, 1988, 160). Another aspect of experience through the moving body which models offer is analysed by Handelman (1990, 27), who refers to modelling in public events: ‘Models abstract reality in coherent ways, by selecting out, simplifying, and condensing various of its aspects and relationships. Models also provide directions for the reformulation of these abstractions into action’

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(Handelman, 24). The focus of Handelman’s analysis are rituals which are public events that have a pronounced purpose of making a direct and profound change to the participants, a change that will eventually affect reality. In this sense, Handelman regards events-that-model as events that mold. Such a model-event is ‘something of a microcosm of the lived-in world, a simplified but specialized, closed system’ (Handelman, 27), which operates independently according to its own internal rules. My point in comparing spatial models with model-events is that they both frame and recreate a portion of reality. The modelscape acts as a closed site where reality is simulated according to internal rules. This reality is shaped by the model and projected back to the world, and hence the model acts upon the world. This idea corresponds with the model’s capacity to suggest a different reality, by representing alternative, fantastic, or utopian possibilities (Manchanda, 2006, 45). Some modelscapes reinforce images of existing reality rather than offer alternatives, and may better correspond with a different kind of public event, which presents (rather than models) the lived-in world. In the modern bureaucratic state public events are used to ‘enunciate and index lineaments of statehood, nationhood, and civic collectivity’ (Handelman, 1990, 42). These types of events are defined by Handelman as mirrors. They do not have transformative qualities, but rather they highlight and affirm certain aspects of social order. They display social order ‘quite as their creators understand this – as determinate images that mirror collective or elite perceptions of what the mind-sets and the feeling states of participants ought to be’ (Handelman, 1990, 79). Likewise, I suggest that modelscapes have the capacity to sustain as well as to challenge existing reality, and hence they can either ‘model’ or ‘mirror’ it. The modelscape is cut off from the surrounding world by what Goffman calls ‘the organization of experience’ (1997, 155), which informs the participants of a given situation about the frame of the activity, that is the understanding of what is going on and which actions fit with this understanding (Goffman, 158-159). Larry Abramson suggests that the experience of the model has an ‘enchanted dimension that is both entertaining and magical. The model is at once an innocent toy and a powerful fetish, a voodoo doll with control over the reality it images’ (2006b, 154-155). Hence part of the experience of the model is framed within a seemingly innocent context of play. Bateson notes that the framing of play blurs the borderlines between reality and fantasy (Bateson, 185). In the case of a modelscape, the framing of play enables the visitors to understand the internal rules of the model and to interpret its meaning as an autonomous space:

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Either, as in the case of the play frame, the frame is involved in the evaluation of the messages which it contains, or the frame merely assists the mind in understanding the contained messages by reminding the thinker that these messages are mutually relevant and the messages outside the frame may be ignored. (Bateson, 188)

The modelscape is a special case since its internal logic and messages refer to an external reality, which cannot be ignored. However, it has the capacity to represent political space which refers to the reality outside the frame of play, in a way that bypasses the difficulties of controversial or unresolved collective issues. Hence modelscapes correspond with what Handelman defines as ‘play media’, which touch upon problematic issues of political and social significance: The messages that can be transmitted through the play medium to weighty social realities are diminished in their impact, since they are received as frivolous, and as inconsequential to those realities […]. Yet, in another dimension, such messages that emerge from play media nevertheless are sent back to serious realities, albeit as unstressed, or through ambiguous genres of allegory, irony and so forth. (Handelman 1990, 70)

Models and Architecture Models are basic tools for architects. In the process of planning, models serve architects and planners to consider their work and provide a better understanding of the implications of two-dimensional drawings and sketches. The model also serves the architect to facilitate the explanation of these documents to others. I use several analytic principles of architecture in order to examine the relationship between architecture and modelscapes. The f irst principle is the perception of architecture as a background setting for everyday activities, versus that of the model. The second is a study of models as abstractions of the built environment. A third principle is the concept of scale and its relationship to the human body, a principle used to evaluate both architecture and models. The forth is the spatial relation between interiority and exteriority, an architectural category that suggests a basic difference between buildings and their model representations.

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The Perception of Architecture The objects of architectural work are buildings, whereas representations such as sketches, plans and models are merely part of the creative process. Patteeuw argues that there is a basic ambiguity between the physical presence of the building and its representation which is part of the intellectual process of architecture (Patteeuw, 123). Although models are experienced by the moving body of the visitors, they lack basic spatial qualities that buildings possess. Scale models cannot represent space as we experience it inside and between buildings, and therefore they are merely objects or artefacts. In the literature it is widely argued that the experience of architecture encompasses all the human senses, in a way that is hardly possible in models.8 The model thus offers a different experience to that of the architecture which it represents, in that it requires an effort of the imagination in order to make the suggested comparison and generate the relationship of the object to its architectural referent. Vervoort defines the model as a ‘thinking object’ which hovers between the cognitive and the material. It is ‘less a physical phenomenon than a constructed phantasm, inevitably held in place by our own imagination’ (Vervoort, 80). Architecture is part of everyday experience. Benjamin observes that ‘architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction’ (Benjamin, 241). In this sense, architecture is merely a background, noticed incidentally, where ‘habit determines to a large extent even optical reception’ (Benjamin, 242). Benjamin points out that ‘the public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one’ (Benjamin, 242-243). Distraction on a collective level creates the kind of vision that Pallasmaa calls ‘peripheral vision’, which enfolds the human body in space: ‘Unconscious peripheral perception transforms retinal gestalt into spatial and bodily experiences. Peripheral vision integrates us with space, while focused vision pushes us out of the space, making us mere spectators’ (Pallasmaa, 13). In contrast to buildings, models, and especially miniature models, tend to be more on the side of focused vision as objects on display which the visitors look at deliberately rather than habitually. Hence the visitors, although in motion, remain essentially spectators, and their sense of involvement in the model space is primarily an imaginary one. 8 See for example Pallasmaa (2005); Rasmussen (1964); Bloomer and Moore (1977); Bachelard (1971).

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Models, as artefacts, are effectively abstractions of architecture. The nature of abstraction is discussed by Chris Jencks who suggests that it is an extracting of essences from one original plane into another, creating a representation that allows for the manipulation and control of images. While images which are abstracted and detached from their context become flexible and open to manipulation, they nevertheless retain significations within that original context (Jencks, 9). The representation of a building in model, and especially in miniature model, necessarily entails a certain abstraction by the omission of some information such as details. However, the materiality of models prevents them from becoming nonfigurative and retains them as ‘concrete abstractions’ (Barthes, 1997, 176). The abstraction of the model results from its double role. It is both ‘a virtual space which makes the viewer aware of his own presence by analogy’, as well as a ‘material presence, the physical space occupied by minimalism’ (Vervoort, 77). The model is often devoid not only of the details of the complete architectural work but also of the unruly shabbiness of real buildings and cities. The Panorama model of New York is a good example: Here, one can marvel at the precision of craftsmanship as well as the precision of the city because the Panorama is, conveniently, not only a model of the city but also a model city: clean, clear-cut, connected, and quiet. (Momchedjikova, 268-269)

The cognitive similarity between model and building is used by architects as a tool for understanding an exterior reality, and therefore architectural models are taken to be an ideologically neutral media. This is because ‘the totality, three-dimensionality, manoeuvrability and/or physicality of architectural models encourages the assumption that the model “is” the building’ (Starkey, 235). Furthermore, this is due to an architectural culture which is trained to ‘look through’ or ‘overlook’ the physical existence of the model (Starkey, 236). Therefore, models are not only perceived as unthreatening playful objects, but also as professional tools referring to the building industry rather than to contested and unresolved cultural or political issues. On Scale and the Body As discussed earlier, an important feature which distinguishes models and modelscapes from other representational modes is the issue of scale. The idea of alterations in scale and of miniaturisation has changed from the

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mythical pre-scientific perception of microcosmic representation of an ideal order (Weston, 41), to the modern concept of scale as objective measure, a technical professional tool. As mentioned earlier, ‘cabinets of curiosities’ were private collections assembled by scholars and princely collectors, common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in European cities. Weston points out that these typically included specimens from nature (such as stones, minerals, exotic plants), thematically connected with man-made objects (including works of art, jewels, coins, antiquities) and scientific instruments (like globes, telescopes, clocks), as well as exotic rarities (such as ostrich eggs, fossils, mammoth bones). These were displayed together thematically to represent the world in a single room, defying modern dichotomies such as art and science, nature and culture, past and present (Weston, 38). The cabinets of curiosities, conceived as microcosms of the mystery of the universe, typically contained also minute objects such as tiny natural elements, as well as miniature works of art which were regarded as magical, metaphysical and symbolic surrogates, whose manipulation could influence their source objects (Weston, 42-44). These enclosed representations of the world were used for contemplating the whole of knowledge, metaphorically evoking the entire universal order through analogy, which tied together contrasting classifications. Disparate fragments were juxtaposed together, retaining the memory of their old context and creating new meaning by their assemblage (Weston, 41-42). Maps were also common objects in cabinets of curiosities, presented as curious or luxurious objects more than as representations of landscape (della Dora, 339). The collector could obtain a picture of the world as well as a metaphoric control over it: Indeed, the cabinets strove symbolically to reveal the oneness of the world as one great unbroken chain, in which elements echo each other. They are microcosmic images of the greater cosmic order, still understood pre-scientifically, symbolically as ‘world in miniature’. (Weston, 41)

By the early eighteenth century the logic of the cabinet of curiosities was gradually rejected, and they were replaced by rationally ordered collections which became the basis for the modern museum. This marks the shift from the microcosmic as analogic representation of the macrocosmic, to the logic of the miniature scale representation: Micro is comparatively small, but within the same measure of the macro in the sense that microscopes allow us to see the tiny inhabitants with whom

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we share our world. Nature encompasses both the great and the small, but is always ‘full-scale’. Mini, on the other hand, is both proportionally small and in a reduced measure from its full-size sibling. (Emmons and Sullivan, 103)

The miniature is therefore a cultural product, which is comprehended in relation to the human body (Emmons, 232). Stewart suggests that the body is perceived as contained and container at once, measured by its boundaries and limits. From outside we perceive its limits as object, while from inside we perceive the limits of our body’s physical extension into space (Stewart, 104). By miniaturizing the environment, the viewer’s body is transformed to gigantic dimensions (Stewart, 71). Claude Levi-Strauss has observed that miniaturization makes the object easy to comprehend and to control, and by extension this is applied to the external referent which the miniature represents: Being smaller, the object as a whole seems less formidable. By being quantitatively diminished, it seems to us qualitatively simplified. More exactly, the quantitative transposition extends and diversifies our power over a homologue of the thing, and by means of it the latter can be grasped, assessed and apprehended at a glance. (Levi-Strauss, 23)

Levi-Strauss further argues that miniature works of art are distinguished by presenting the viewer with a totality. This totality refers not only to the work of art itself, but also to the perception of what it represents. Hence it is a mediating object between the subject and the sensible world, which enables the world to be ‘mastered’ (Wiseman, 36): In the case of miniatures, in contrast to what happens when we try to understand an object or living creature of real dimensions, knowledge of the whole precedes knowledge of the parts. And even if this is an illusion, the point of the procedure is to create or sustain the illusion, which gratifies the intelligence and gives rise to a sense of pleasure which can already be called aesthetic on these grounds alone. (Levi-Strauss, 24)

Larry Abramson suggests that such a sense of pleasure from the power relations of visitor and model is the result of the model’s tendency to encourage identification with the miniature and its source objects: Like the general deploying his forces on a sand table, the viewer’s relative magnitude produces a sense of power vis-à-vis the minute and fragile

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model. Yet […] the model induces empathy in its participants, not just with the model itself but, by extension, with the reality represented by it. (L. Abramson 2006b, 154)

Furthermore, Emmons and Sullivan suggest that the shift from the perception of scale ‘as magical possession’ (as for example in the cabinet of curiosities) to scale as a technical and practical tool ignores the role of myth as a ‘foundational structuring of the human world’. They argue that the mythic aspect of the miniature nevertheless continues into the present. Thus a miniature model representation of the city ‘creates an amulet of the city that continues to operate as a fetish, an exotic object’ (Emmons and Sullivan, 103). Experiencing models of architecture is clearly different from experiencing the ‘real’ built environment, which we grasp bit by bit from our point of view between or within buildings. In the act of perceiving the entire model, the ‘big idea’ can dictate the viewer’s judgment of the project (Morris, 13). The relationship of the ‘big idea’ to the model is established through a projection of narrative which originates outside the given field of perception (Stewart, 54). The miniature aims to close the gap that separates narrative from its objects, or signifier from signified (Stewart, ix). Fascination with ‘miniaturism’ is problematic since the ‘big idea’ is always partial and simplistic compared with the complex exterior reality to which the model refers. In contrast with the individual miniature model, some modelscapes are designed so that visitors can enter them with their bodies. This is the case of the Bekonscot Model Village, where visitors can walk between models, although walking is confined to the paths which structure the visit and separate visitors from models. In such models the ‘big idea’ is retained, since the visitor is often still able to grasp the entire model at a glance. To assist this, special viewing platforms feature in many modelscapes (including Bekonscot) for visitors to gain an overall view of the model in its totality. The shift in scale introduces a shift in time as well. On one hand there is a recollection of the visitor’s personal past, as the toy-like qualities of miniature models produce a sensation of childhood play and fascination with objects that can become magical through the imagination (Valli and Dessanay, 8-9). On the other hand, time is condensed alongside space. Miniature time is not an extension of everyday time, but a parallel time that never intersects with the time of lived reality (Stewart, 57). While the model lacks the spatial qualities of architecture, and cannot be experienced in the same way, it derives its meaning from its full-scale referent, and this relationship is established by an act of imagination. As argued

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by Stewart in relation to the dollhouse, it ‘cannot be known sensually; it is inaccessible to the languages of the body and thus is the most abstract of all miniature forms. Yet cognitively the dollhouse is gigantic’ (Stewart, 63). By comparison, the miniaturisation of the model does not prevent but rather encourages its perception as a large-scale building. The cognitive ability to perceive a miniature as gigantic is precisely the feature that enables the model to be taken as a professional tool. The discourse of models is based on the assumption that they differ from toys despite some connotations of play and childhood. Experiencing models requires that everyone participate in a common act of imagination, as noted by Morris: Architects must take this illogical view when fashioning models, otherwise the practice would appear foolish; and clients, not to mention students of architecture, must be coaxed into this way of ‘miniature thinking’ without naming it as such. (Morris, 11)

The model is a visible object which points to an invisible, absent external referent. Thus the presence of a miniature model is enough to trigger an imaginary view of its complex and detailed referent, although this view is limited and incomplete. Interior and Exterior Modelscapes Models representing interior spaces display particular scale relations. For example, dollhouses are analysed by Stewart as miniatures focused on interiority and its furnishings. She suggests that they are usually simplified and affordable signifiers of expensive objects, and thus represent property relations in the exterior world. Hence she argues that the two dominant motifs of the interiority of the dollhouse are wealth and nostalgia. The dollhouse rejects contamination and crudeness by an absolute manipulation and control of the boundaries of time and space (Stewart, 61-63). The interiority of the dollhouse is experienced as a sanctuary (a place of fantasy) but also, she suggests, as a prison, because of the inaccessibility of what cannot be lived experience (Stewart, 65). Models of exteriority may similarly serve as nostalgic objects. Stewart points out that nostalgic objects, such as collectors’ items, serve to both distance and appropriate the past. Their importance lies in their ability to overcome the fact that the nostalgic past never existed except as narrative, by instead creating an imagined tangible past (Stewart, 142-143).

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In contrast with ‘domestic’ models, such as dollhouses or collections that are displayed indoors, models that are placed within a landscape function as elements of exteriority. Brennan refers to the way in which objects placed in the landscape are perceived, maintaining that this placement determines not only the relationship between people and objects, but also the self-perception of the moving body. She argues that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries landscaping brought about a ‘visual turn’ from active to passive seeing. Public parks were places where objects and other people were observed, hence passive seeing meant that one could be aware of oneself seeing and being seen. This awareness acted as a guarantor of one’s existence and of one’s ‘objective standpoint’ as a viewer (Brennan, 226). The ‘objective standpoint’ meant that the viewing eye was understood to be a passive receiver of the virtual truth, rather than an active participant in constructing this truth. The passive viewing subject was nevertheless perceived as located at the centre of the world, and therefore could retain control over the object of which he passively received information (Brennan, 224). As noted above, this approach which corresponded with the development of the perspective system underlined the modern mental model of the dualism between the viewing eye and its object. Modelscapes which are located in landscape surroundings are part of this modern perceptual system. A specific form of landscape park is the theme park, which imports existing or typical spaces and buildings chosen to represent a given subject, and rearranges them in a new context according to a structured logic. In the theme park a new space is created that is inspired by external places but gives them a different meaning. Often, these places are represented in miniature. Jones and Wills identify in the theme park elements of entertainment, utopia and orderliness. Some theme parks include representations of different countries, which inevitably distort them: ‘People, history and events are reduced in size and complexity – national identity plasticized and simplified in a similar way to how theme parks treat the natural world’ (Jones and Wills, 120). The presence of rides which create an element of excitement and fear in some theme parks reveals that they also simulate the desire for adventure and risk found in everyday life outside the park (Jones and Wills, 116). Stewart suggests that amusement parks provide an understanding of how miniature relates to narrative: some of them attempt to bring history to life, but while doing so the powerful presence of the miniature erases the history of the historical events illustrated. Therefore, she locates miniatures in theme parks within the realms of the nostalgic rather than the historic,

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like miniatures of interior and dollhouses (Stewart, 60). I suggest that this argument further enhances the notion that modelscapes feature some aspects which range between the landscape park and the theme park: they construct new spaces out of fragments of existing spaces, and in this process they give material shape to narrative. Furthermore, narratives of the past are transformed within the modelscape and can be located between the representation of heritage and nostalgic memory.

2

Models and Modern Perceptions of Nationalism

Modelscapes are representational modes which are both an outcome and a reflection of modern modes of perception. This chapter will further explore two interrelated issues within this perceptual context. The first issue is the use of modelscapes in order to represent built environments which do not exist in the present. The ability of modelscapes to represent collective pasts, as well as visions of the future, will be examined and related to the perception of time in secular modernity. As secularism developed, time was no longer understood as nearing an apocalyptic end, and therefore the perception of time in modernity was separated from religion. The secular view towards the end of the eighteenth century perceived time as a human task, and in this context, the future could be designed by human thought. The idea of living in modernity made it possible to look back on the past, as well as to propose a better, model future, which could improve society through human action. This led to the emergence, towards the end of the eighteenth century, of the term ‘progress’, which characterises modernity. Modelscapes are thus products of the modern perception of the future as a scope for human action, which encouraged the planning and making of representations of future spaces. The notions of the future as a time of progress and improvement also characterised utopian designs of ideal cities, which were represented as model plans, opposed to and critical of the existing urban situation. Modern ideas of time and progress are related to the perception of communities and collectives as moving through history, and thus to the development of modern nationalism. Therefore, the second issue explored in this chapter is the role of modelscapes in representing national identity. How do they give tangible form to a community’s collective past and shared heritage, and how are they used to represent national territories, within which nationality is imagined? Like the map, they signify the nationalization of a territory, but unlike the map they are places in their own right. In this chapter several examples will be explored, some showing that model representations of national territories may replace a visit to the actual sites represented. Others, such as the World Expositions, show how themes of heritage and national identity represented in modelscapes are used to promote cultural tourism in a globalized economy.

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The modelscape’s internal logic and narrative are based on two interrelated concepts. On one hand, it is detached from external time and space, and constructs its own internal order and sense within an enclosed and bounded area. On the other hand, it is related with external referents, which tie the modelscape to source objects that exist elsewhere. This chapter questions how the modelscape functions as a taxonomic system, which arranges and classifies time and space to create a stable and constant presence, situated within an eternal duration of an unspecified ‘panoramic’ time.

The Perception of Time and Modern Nationalism Pre-modern conception of time was characterized by the idea that cosmology and history were indistinguishable, and hence ‘the origins of the world and of men [were] essentially identical’ (Anderson, 37). Koselleck argues that between 1500 and 1800 a shift occurred in the perception of time. This shift is rooted in the development of secularism together with scientific thinking and the growth of humanism, which led to the Enlightenment. Until the sixteenth century, the monotheistic notion of expectation and anticipation of the ‘End of the World’ had constituted the dominant temporal horizon. Koselleck defines this perception as the ‘compression’ of time, which was taken to be nearing its end. Compressed time was a sign of God’s will to bring the near ‘End of the World’. In contrary, the secular view towards the end of the eighteenth century was characterized by the acceleration of time. Time had been detached from an anticipated ending and its acceleration was viewed as a human rather than divine task (Koselleck, 2004, 12-13). Perception of time in modernity was separated from religion, causing the separation of national politics from the ‘End of the World’. Anderson suggests that the perception of time as accelerating is one of the factors which enabled modern nationalism to develop: The idea of a sociological organism moving calendrically through homogeneous, empty time is a precise analogue of the idea of the nation, which also is conceived as a solid community moving steadily down (or up) history. (Anderson, 26)

Koselleck argues that perception of time and of the nation during the Enlightenment was aided by the fact that in different calculations, the end of the world was ‘postponed’, as astrological predictions pushed this event into the far future. As a result, politics became concerned with the

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temporal rather than the eternal. In this perception of time ‘Human history, considered as such, had no goal […] but rather was a domain of probability and human prudence’ (Koselleck, 2004, 15). It was in the interest of the absolute state to overcome both religious and political forecasts of time to come. The state therefore suppressed apocalyptic and astrological readings of the future, ensuring for itself a monopoly on its control (Koselleck, 2004, 16). Simultaneously, humanists criticized prophecy and visions as the properties of oracles and superstitions. This development made it possible to look back on the past as ‘medieval’: The triad of Antiquity, Middle Ages and Modernity had been available since the advent of Humanism. But these concepts became established for the entirety of historical time in a gradual manner from the second half of the seventeenth century. Since then, one has lived in Modernity and been conscious of so doing. Naturally, this varies according to nation and Stand, but it was a knowledge that could be conceived as the crisis of European thought. (Koselleck, 2004, 17)

Hence the future became a matter of political calculation, rather than a religious certainty of the Last Judgment. The notion of perfection, previously taken to be possible only in the Hereafter, was replaced by the concept of improvement or ‘progress’, a term which emerged towards the end of the eighteenth century. Not only was the future open to human action, it was also bound to improve society (Koselleck, 2004, 265-270). I argue that in this context it was possible to propose a model future, a future designed by human thought which will be better than the present. This line of thought characterized Utopian thinkers and produced designs for ideal cities (Choay, 34). The ideal cities suggested positive models of the future, opposed to and critical of the existing urban situation (Choay, 246). The notion of human action towards planning the future lies at the base of the making of physical spatial models. Models of planned and proposed environments are designed to materialize anticipated circumstances, often representing them as an improvement to an existing context. Modelscapes are products of such thinking, and represent modern concepts of the future: man-made, improved, and exemplary. Furthermore, modelscapes provide an ‘experience’, both in the sense of the lived encounter, and in the sense of the accumulation of past occurrences. Based on past and present knowledge, models of proposed environments attempt to depict future sites, thereby overcoming the problem of prediction and of projecting the past and present into the future. Koselleck

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argues that modernity entails a separation between the ‘space of experience’ and the ‘horizon of expectation’ (Koselleck, 2004, 272). I argue that the spatial model is an attempt to bridge this gap by providing a concrete representation of the future in the present. In this sense, the model is a unique product, since its spatial presence embodies human action that is capable of connecting experience (of the past) with expectation (of the future). A Verbal Model: Utopia The model acts as a generator of images, even when it is limited to text. The textual model describes and denotes an external reality, and creates an image in the mind, without having a material physical presence at all. Choay analyses Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, in which a model (in the sense of exemplar) city is described in such detail as to create a comprehensive image in the reader’s mind (More, 2003). Choay argues that language as such allows for freedom, and thus More’s abstract ideas as expressed in the text may be open to different interpretations. However, when More goes into detailed descriptions and constructs his verbal model, distinct verbal images are created which pin down his ideas and give them decisive form. These images deter the reader from reflecting upon other possible interpretations (Choay, 152-154). Utopia was published in 1516, a period corresponding to the beginning of modernity and modern nationalism.9 The book contains a description of a voyage to an imaginary ideal country. It criticizes and satirizes contemporary European society and particularly England and its king by contrasting it with the perfect country of Utopia, where human life is organized in the best possible way (Turner, xv). The term utopia which literally means ‘nowhere’ or ‘no-place’, gave its name to a literary genre featuring a critical approach to a present reality and the modelling in space of a future one (Choay, 8). The interesting feature which I find in this critical literary genre, is that in order to be clear it requires the construction of an alternative spatial image, whether positive or negative: spatial images can express utopia, in which an imaginary place must be an expression of desire, or dystopia, in which case the imaginary place is an expression of fear (Carey, xi). The relevance of utopian (and dystopian) projects to the study of models lies in the fact that in order to convincingly depict his ideal society More (as well 9

See Chapter 1: Models and Modern Modes of Perception.

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as other writers in this literary category) was obliged to verbally describe this no-place in terms of place. In order to do so he used a device for the a-priori conception of built space: a model (Choay, 8). Model space in More’s Utopia verbally represents both a social and a spatial construction. Furthermore, the printing of Utopia made this model and its subversive message accessible to the public. Choay argues that More’s attempt to suggest a radical transformation of society was constrained and limited by its use of the device of a verbal representation of a model. She points out that the book Utopia opened up and revealed potentially innumerable alternative social and political possibilities to its readers. By criticizing an existing reality through a journey to an imaginary one, the reader is offered a literary experience of oneself as other (Choay, 152-154). However, Choay points out that the device of a spatial model prevents the reader from reflecting upon different possible societies. More chose a single social model and affixed it to an image of a specific built environment that has visual coherence and identity. By doing so, all other social possibilities were ruled out, presenting the reader with definitive rather than open-ended answers to the critique of familiar society (Choay, 152-154). As argued by Scott, the narrowing of possible views serves the interests of hegemonic power: Certain forms of knowledge and control require a narrowing of vision. The great advantage of such tunnel vision is that it brings into sharp focus certain limited aspects of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy reality. This very simplif ication, in turn, makes the phenomenon at the centre of the field of vision more legible […]. An overall, aggregate, synoptic view of a selective reality is achieved, making possible a high degree of schematic knowledge, control and manipulation. (Scott, 11)

The experience of More’s detailed verbal image of the built environment is comparable with a visit to a tangible modelscape. However, I argue that the verbal model is nevertheless more open to interpretations than its physical counterpart. The spatial presence of a built model is more definitive and its authoritative qualities more extreme than those of a verbal model.

Models and the Construction of Collective Identity in Modernity Modelscapes often participate in the cultural context that defines and consolidates modern national identity. I follow the argument that ‘spatial

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representations […] can help construct, and legitimate, nation building’ (Watts, 117). Models of national territories or spaces of national importance which were made during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have played a part in the concretization of the abstract concept of imagined communities. I argue that contemporary modelscapes continue to have a similar role: they are visited by both locals and tourists, and serve as means of representing the nation to them in a condensed spatial and temporal form. By signifying national identity, these models provide an ‘experience of signs’ (Culler, 1981, 138), which is loaded with political meaning. Theories of the Emergence of Modern National Identity A vast academic literature is devoted to modern nationalism and its emergence.10 Rather than discuss theories of the construction of the concepts of nations and nationalism, I aim to understand the role of the modelscape in the cultural representation of the nation. Some scholars view the emergence of contemporary nations as a modern phenomenon, dating since the eighteenth century in Europe and expanding to be a global phenomenon in the course of over two hundred years. The ‘modernist paradigm’ was formulated among others by Gellner who links nations and nationalism with the needs of modernization and industrial development. Focusing on the effects of processes of uneven global modernization, Gellner argues that nations and nationalism are sociologically necessary in modern industrial societies (quoted in Anthony Smith, 1998, 27-30). Other scholars have moved beyond some of the assumptions of the ‘modernist paradigm’. Anderson conceives nations as imagined communities whose members hold a mental image of their communion. These communities are limited, because they are contrasted with other nations which exist beyond their boundaries (Anderson, 6-7). Anderson suggests that imagined communities are modern constructs which emerged as a consequence of modern capitalism and particularly the development of print technology. These have ‘created the possibility of a new form of imagined community, which in its basic morphology set the stage for the modern nation’ (Anderson, 48). Hobsbawm analyses the nation as a modern construct and cultural artefact of elites, resulting from modern social, political, cultural and economic conditions (Hobsbawm, 2012, 1-14). He suggests that nations are 10 For overviews see for example Hobsbawm (1992); Anthony Smith (1998).

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products of a specific conceptual perspective, and views national identity as a distinctive mode of consciousness, stressing its radical novelty. In this view, nationalism emerged in the context of broader processes of modernity including among others the development of capitalist economies, industrial technologies, the printing press, bureaucratic institutions, imperialism and colonialism (Cubitt, 2). Furthermore, Hobsbawm suggests that modernity necessitated the construction or invention of traditions, including nationality, in order to cope with the rapid transformations of society (Hobsbawm, 2012, 1-14).11 Invented traditions often rely on ‘old’ ones, but earlier identities have been radically modified in the process of their cultural transformation into contemporary nations (Cubitt, 2). Modern national identity is described by Anderson as ‘modular’, as it was transplanted gradually to a great variety of social, political and ideological constellations (Anderson, 4). Particularistic nationalism in most of Europe, which reflected geo-political and/or ethnic characteristics, did not emerge until the eighteenth century (Greenfeld, 14). As noted by Malesevic, premodern populations identified with a family, clan, religious group or village, rather than with a nation (Malesevic, 2006, 308). In France, for example, ‘the peasantry refused to exchange local for national memory until almost the First World War, and then only when they had been effectively colonized by the state’ (Gillis, 8-9). However, the urban middle and working classes became interested in national memory following the French and American revolutions of the late eighteenth century (Gillis, 7). Other scholars are ‘Primordialists’, and derive nations from a ‘primordial’ sense of collective belonging, based on notions of ethnicity, kinship, and territory as well as on their manifestation in language and religion (Anthony Smith, 1998, 223). Still others place an emphasis on the relationship between national and ethnic identity, arguing that pre-modern societies were also capable of creating self-conscious political communities. Anthony Smith defines a nation as ‘a named community of history and culture, possessing a unified territory, economy, mass educational system and common legal rights’ (1996, 106). He suggests that nations are not mere constructs of privileged elites, but also concrete historical formations, based on earlier ethnic myths, values and memories, symbols, customs and traditions, bonds of allegiance and belonging (Anthony Smith, 1998, 6). He criticizes Anderson by stressing that the nation ‘is not only known and imagined: it is also deeply felt and acted out’ (Anthony Smith, 1998, 137). In this view, modern nations are rooted in pre-modern cultures, but make use of those 11 See also Anthony Smith, (1996, 109); Anthony Smith (1998, Chapter 6).

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ethnic and cultural traditions which best suit the ‘people’ which they seek to mobilize (Anthony Smith, 1998, 226). Basing modern nations on pre-modern ethnicity is criticized by Malesevic (2011, 71) for assuming that ethnicity is ‘a homogeneous, overly structured entity with clearly defined boundaries’. Far from being so, he defines ethnicity as a continuous ‘internal and external processes of social categorization, institutionalization, self-definition and identification that shape social (and hence ethnic and national) reality’ (Malesevic, 2011, 71). Therefore, ethnicity is the result of ‘universal and often trans-historic and trans-spatial practices through which social actors invoke cultural difference to mobilize collective action by creating credible narratives of common descent’ (Malesevic, 2011, 77). Moreover, ethnicity and nation do not always overlap, and some nation-states include more than one ethnic group. The modern nation developed following creative political and cultural action which involved considerable structural transformations, including the development of modern bureaucracy, as well as of mass public education. These resulted in growing literacy and secularization (Malesevic, 2006, 308). Furthermore, Malesevic argues that although nationalism has become the dominant ideology of modernity, the implementation of nationalist ideology depends on its translation into ‘operative ideology’. This involves the use of images, metaphors of kinship and group solidarity. Thus, operative ideology appeals to emotions and aims to tie the central values of modern ideologies (such as socialism, conservatism and liberalism), to the nation (Malesevic, 2006, 317-318). Cubitt emphasizes the cultural fields which sustain and develop the sense of national identity. Cultural symbolic constituents are used within frameworks of narrative which convey the nation as a continuous existence in time and space. This includes representations of the past as common history and memory through the formation of a geography of remains and sites of heritage and commemoration, stressing the intimate connection between landscape and national character (Cubitt, 8-11). The centrality of cultural imagery is also stressed by Brubaker, who argues that ‘groupness’ is expressed by representations, which frame the group and its external boundaries. Such representations are characterized by different degrees of accessibility or ‘ease of activation’, as well by the ways in which they correspond with other key cultural representations (Brubaker, 80). Following this line of thought I suggest that modelscapes are one of the representational mechanisms used in order to materialize abstract notions of collective and national identity, giving them tangible spatial form and presence.

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Modelscapes as Representations of National Space As mentioned above, Anderson suggests that imagined communities are limited, ‘because even the largest of them […] has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations’ (Anderson, 7). Nationality is imagined within borders, even when in reality the community is scattered or exiled. The abstract concept of nationalism is thus placed within a physical frame. I argue that in this context many modelscapes are used as tools to envisage the national territories and provide a tangible representation of the collective space and its boundaries. An early example of this is the collection of models made for King Louis XIV (1638-1715) in France. This was a collection of models showing the military fortifications of border towns of the kingdom. It was begun in 1668 by Francois-Michel le Telier who was the Marquis de Louvois and minister of war to the French king. The models were needed since the 16th century when the invention of solid shot weaponry required mapping of the frontiers in order to plan military strategies. As cartography was still basic and did not provide the necessary amount of three-dimensional information, it was decided to provide the king with plans en relief (fig. 7). The first model was made in by the king’s military engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, who planned and constructed the fortifications of Dunkirk simultaneously with the miniature model that represented them. He went on to construct models of one hundred more fortified sites which he had planned. The collection allowed the king and his staff in Paris to view and comprehend the strategic facilities at the frontiers of the kingdom and their military situation within the surrounding topography (Dethier, 89).12 The collection was housed in the Palais des Tuileries, and was regularly updated with the new defensive constructions which resulted from military conquests, annexations and treaties. The collection presented the king with an overview of both existing as well as planned fortifications, and followed the advancement of the work at different sites. Dethier argues that the models also served as ‘psychological weapons’ since in spite of its confidential nature the collection was known to the rulers of other European countries. He suggests that the models were ‘at the same time strategic and secret, symbolic and prestigious’ (Dethier, 91). The models were moved in 1710 to the Galerie du Bord-de-l’Eau at the Palais du Louvre, reflecting their significance. The collection continued to be enlarged and updated representing the changing French borders during 12 See also http://www.museedesplansreliefs.culture.fr/, accessed 13 December 2011.

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Figure 7 Model of Mont Saint Michel, at the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, Paris

Photograph by Y. Padan

the first half of the eighteenth century, until 1759. Later it was neglected and many models were damaged when the collection was moved out of the Louvre in 1777 and placed at the Hotel des Invalides where it remains today. It was not until after the Revolution of 1789, and especially the Napoleonic period during the nineteenth century, that new models were built, representing Napoleon’s maritime arsenals and newly-conquered areas. The production of this type of models ended in 1870 when the French abandoned the construction of fortified bastions. In addition, mapping had become more accurate and legible and models were no longer needed for decision making and strategic planning. Between 1668 and 1870, 260 models were constructed, representing 150 fortified sites. Built at a scale of 1:600 and including the countryside around the fortification in minute details, some of them are over 70 meters square (Dethier, 89-92). The importance of the French military models for this study of modelscapes lies in the fact that they represented the country’s territorial identity in a tangible way. The collection was highly symbolic of the centralized power

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of the French state (Dethier, 92). It represented the changing geographical frontiers and thus provided both a material illustration of the borders of French nationality as well as its defence relations with the neighbouring countries. Furthermore, the forts were designed like ideal cities, characterized by calculated diagrammatic plans, mostly in perfect centralized geometric shapes. They are examples of built sites which are models in their own right, as seen in their strictly planned layouts. Hence the fortified sites seem to represent their models as much as the models provide representations of the forts.

Modelscapes as Signifiers of National Identity Modelscapes have some common features with maps, which represent the imaginative ‘nationalization’ of territory, habitat and resources (Cubitt, 10). Maps are ‘at least as much an image of the social order as they are measurements of the phenomenal world of objects’ (Harley, 7). The national map represents the nation, by giving it a recognizable shape and size: ‘To imagine a nation is to envision its geography. Borders, scenery, route ways, regions, a capital city, provincial towns, historic landmarks […] help define a sovereign territory’ (Daniels, 112). Modelscapes are means to ‘zoom in’ on parts of the national map, and to examine in detail three dimensional features such as the shape of the topography, its relation to buildings, their heights and volumes, their facades and the spaces between them. All these features cannot be conveyed by the map, even when the actual information is charted, since the conventional signs are limited to the flat paper surface and lack the spatial dimension of the model. Hence contemporary modelscapes, like maps, are meaningful in the sense that they represent an argument about the physical objects to which they refer. Making a model, like making a map, involves different steps: ‘selection, omission, simplification, classification, the creation of hierarchies, and symbolization – are all inherently rhetorical. In their intentions as much as in their application they signify human purpose’ (Harley, 11). Modelscapes are located where they can be visited by the local public as well as by tourists. The tourist experience of modelscapes is important because for the tourist these are miniature representations of an unknown country. Like the map, they signify the nationalization of a territory, but unlike the map they are places in their own right, often replacing a visit

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to the actual sites represented. The tourist gaze ‘is constructed through signs, and tourism involves the collection of signs’ (Rojek and Urry, 3). Hence modelscapes provide an experience which involves ‘a production of or participation in a sign relation between marker and site’ (Culler 1981, 133). The search for signs of a foreign identity is a basic feature of tourism: The tourist is interested in everything as a sign of itself […]. All over the world the unsung armies of semioticians, the tourists, are fanning out in search of the signs of Frenchness, typical Italian behaviour, exemplary Oriental scenes, typical American thruways, traditional English pubs […] Tourists persist in regarding these objects and practices as cultural signs. (Culler, 1981, 127-128)

An important example of the use of modelscapes as markers that signify both national as well as international identities are the International Expositions (Expos). These are locations for multiple national displays of economic and industrial achievements as well as national, socio-political and cultural trends. The Expos, also called World Fairs, are effectively temporary representations of the world as much as they represent individual distinct nationalities within it. The Expos last several months before they are dismantled, leaving behind isolated symbolic monuments such as the Crystal Palace in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, or the New York Panorama mentioned above. New and updated representations of participating nations and their mapping of the world are then rebuilt some years later in a different location. The first in this tradition was the Great Exhibition in London which opened in 1851. It was followed by a series of universal expositions which took place in the Western world up to 1939, and displayed the world order as mapped by Western powers. The exhibitions were idealized platforms where cultures were represented visually, primarily through architecture (Celik, 11). The participating countries displayed models and replicas of existing buildings as well as new pavilions whose main function was not only to house exhibits but rather to act as signs and markers of nationality. Hence the models and buildings at the Expos created a microcosm that offered the visitors an imaginary touristic journey around the world (Celik, 1-3; Newton, 353-354). Instead of travelling around the world in order to experience and gaze upon different signs, tourists could see them all in one location (Urry, 136). As argued by Greenhalgh, the exhibitions provided a tangible expression of governments’ preoccupation in generating pride and naturalizing

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politically determined geographical boundaries in order to consolidate different social and racial groups into single national units. National identity was achieved by convincing a population that nations were not abstract concepts, but things to be admired, loved and died for. The exhibitions gave a physical form to nationalist ideas in ways that could be interpreted by a wide cross-section of the population (Greenhalgh, 112-114). The Paris Exposition in 1887 introduced the ‘Rue des Nations’ – a series of national pavilions, which initiated the use of architecture to represent cultures and nations as a standard feature of the expo genre (Winter, 2013b, 139). The pavilions epitomized the dissonance between nationalism and universalism, which depicted ‘a family of nations’ participating in a shared, modern civilization, by way of free international exchange (Ang, 104-105). The spatial layout of the world at the Expos concealed power relations and illustrated the ways that Europeans related to other cultures. As noted by Crinson, those inscribed differences were necessary for a sense of national and imperial identity. He defines the exposition as a ‘symbolic machine’ relating centre and periphery, nation and colony (Crinson, 233). Celik argues that the layout of the exhibition grounds reflected the power relations among the exhibiting countries, with the host nation occupying the central site surrounded by other industrial powers, and colonies as well as non-Western countries in the periphery (Celik, 51). The pavilions in the periphery represented European paradigms and the colonial discourse embedded in the culture of the colonizing nations on one hand, and the debates regarding the redefinitions of local cultures of the colonized on the other (Celik, 11). For example, Hinsley points out that in the Chicago Exposition in 1893 ‘the central problem of the exposition as a psychological construction of white Americans was to determine distance and relative placement between peoples, physically and ideologically’ (Hinsley, 397). The Paris Exposition of 1889 displayed some ethnographic villages, including their human inhabitants. The presentation of people and goods from the colonies also played a role in legitimising the trade relations of empire, displaying producers and consumers as parts of a collective market of liberal international free trade (Winter, 2013a, 28). The nineteenth century Expos were instrumental in normalising the cultural economic relations of core-periphery within a capitalist world system. The display of distant ‘exotic’ foreign cultures also promoted the development of an international tourist industry and leisure culture based on mass mobility (Winter, 2013a, 31). Within this visual context, a model of Jerusalem and the Holy Land was displayed at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. It combined the notion of

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the religious pilgrim visiting the Holy Land, with the modern idea of the tourist going to the World Expo. Thus it represented an attempt to preserve religious sentiments and symbolism within a celebration of modernity and consumerism (Shamir, 95). In addition, it was to lend a ‘respectable’ air to the fair, which could balance the ‘distasteful’ or ‘vulgar’ types of entertainment offered in some of its other parts (Long, 47). The ‘Jerusalem Exhibit’, as it was called, was an enormous life-size model of the Old City of Jerusalem, which included about three hundred buildings. Its central location and massive presence within the St. Louis World’s Fair provided a reassuring experience of religious meaning and values within ‘the bewilderingly varied and alarmingly fragmented humanity exhibited in St. Louis’ (Shamir, 103). The ‘Jerusalem Exhibit’ could thus tie the new modern experience of the fair with the Protestant American worldview. The notion of authenticity was central to the ‘Jerusalem Exhibit’. In addition to building exact replicas of the original buildings, hundreds of Jerusalem ‘native’ residents were hired and brought to populate the model city. They stayed at the fair for the months of its duration as living exhibits, much like natives of the colonies which were exhibited in many early Expos. At the St. Louis World’s Fair itself there were other ‘live’ exhibits, such as a ‘Filipino village’ and an ‘Apache village’, including their residents. The Jerusalem shown at the fair was an ‘authentic’ replica of the most important holy sites in which visitors could not only walk around, but also watch staged Gospel events and dramatizations of biblical stories. Moreover, it was also a model city, cleansed of clutter and suited for its American public (Long, 52). As in the St. Louis World’s Fair, the main theme which characterises Expos from the same period was the idea of progress, evident in the display of scientific and technological developments (Winter, 2013a, 35). Colonialist capitalism displayed the inferiority of pre-industrialised cultures versus the supremacy and modernity of the empire. Within the framework of progress, expo themes shifted from the nineteenth and early twentieth-century focus on colonial and imperial representation towards an emphasis on fine arts, modern life, and the future. Following the Second World War, emphasis shifted again to issues of humanity and the environment (Winter, 2013a, 33). The expos of the 1950s and 1960s focused on themes such as human scale and harmony with nature. By the 1990s the emphasis shifted towards issues of environmental sustainability, reflecting ambivalence and doubt about the legitimacy of the modernist project (Ang, 109). Contemporary exhibitions still function as ‘a technology of nationhood, providing narrative possibilities for the imagining of national cultures in indeed the national “brand’’’ (Urry, 2002, 136). However, Smits and Jansen

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argue that contemporary exhibitions focus on representing national identity as a personal, individualized and emotional experience of identifying with the nation. The visitor is transformed into ‘a temporarily constructed national subject, by the way of generalized common human emotional experience’ (Smits and Jansen, 174). This approach is influenced by corporate and commercial advertising techniques used by designers and promoters that create the national pavilions (Smits and Jansen, 175). The Shanghai Expo of 2010 is an example of a spatial organization of contemporary power relations and corporate influence: rather than the old imperial powers, it is China that is attaining a superpower status (Ang, 102-104). As noted by Ang, this expo was an opportunity for Chinese people to locate their country as a central player on the contemporary world stage, especially in economic terms. This was reflected in the centrality and notable presence of the Chinese pavilion, promoting and merging national image and economic interests (Ang, 104-105). Following the current trend of sustainability, the Shanghai Exposition was themed ‘Better City, Better Life’, and aimed to raise awareness of the challenges faced by the increasing number of people around the globe which live in growing urban concentrations. Part of the expo was dedicated to an Urban Best Practice Area, which displayed cities rather than nations. However, Ang notes that this area was spatially marginalized by its location at a peripheral part of the expo site, away from the national pavilions, and thus received far less visitors. Furthermore, many city pavilions were centred around branding and promotion of tourism, rather than on sustainable urbanization or environmental innovation (Ang, 109). Similarly, some national pavilions (among others India, Cambodia and Thailand) at the Shanghai Expo were also focused on branding and on the economic potential of tourism, thus choosing to retain their ‘exotic’ and ‘traditional’ – but also reductive and culturally determinist – framing in the context of colonialism. Themes of sustainability and heritage were therefore used in these pavilions to market national cultural industries within the global capitalist system (Winter, 2013b, 151-153). Expos are related with modelscapes in several ways. They are representations of the world, emphasizing national identity and promoting cultural tourism in a globalized economy. They display ideological values for visual consumption by their visitors, using architecture as well as architectural replicas and models. They relate to Anderson’s reading of imagined communities as modern constructs which emerged as a consequence of modern capitalism (Anderson, 48). The tradition of world expositions has enhanced the global diffusion of nationality and national markets as well as of

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modelscapes as tools for displaying national identity and global hierarchy using material objects.

Time and Enclosure The modelscape’s internal logic and narrative are based on its enclosure and detachment from external time and space. However, its relation with source referents ties the modelscape to objects that have an existence of their own in an exterior reality. This section explores how the modelscape functions as a taxonomic system, which arranges and classifies meaningful objects within a framework of time and space. As in museums and collections, the question of taxonomy is related to the act of delimiting and isolating certain objects for the purpose of exhibition within a confined space. The creation of boundaries produces order and sense based on discontinuity and distance from the exterior world (Fabian, 52). Time as a significant dimension is eliminated and an underlying logical necessity is revealed: ‘the Now and Then is absorbed by the Always of the rules of the game’ (Fabian, 98-99). The museum is a means of condensing time and enclosing it in a defined and limited space. Museums display an ‘impulse toward simultaneity’ by exhibiting objects from different periods together (Stewart, 162). Similarly, the modelscape has a time of its own, different from ‘lived time’, and coordinated with its inner logic. The flexibility of time is clear at Bekonscot Model Village, discussed in the previous chapter. Different structures and buildings were added to Bekonscot throughout the years. However, at a certain moment it was decided to reverse the model time. A photo exhibition on site reveals that during the 1980s it was decided to ‘return Bekonscot to its original 1930s styling, with later concrete edifices removed!’ One photo shows the model of Luton Town Hall with its clock tower. The caption reads: ‘This concrete monstrosity was demolished to make way for more aesthetically pleasing buildings!’ Similarly, another caption explains that ‘Diesels were virtually banished from the Bekonscot Model Railway in 1992’. This erasure and reversal of time makes it possible at Bekonscot Model Village to merge history into a ‘forever England’. The shrinking of scale shifts not only space but also the time relations of lived reality. Stewart argues that the time of the miniature works against external changes, instability and variability. She suggests that the miniature’s ‘use value’ is transformed into the ‘infinite time of reverie’ (Stewart,

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65). Regarding the collection, Baudrillard observes that its organization replaces time, because the collector’s task is to resolve real time into a systematic dimension. This enables the collector to face the irreversibility of time. Birth and death are ‘recycled’ into a system of objects that allows to transcend reality by offering a controlled, cyclical mode of existence (Baudrillard, 1996, 95-96). Similarly, in the case of the modelscape, the visitor is absorbed into the interior model time which is disconnected from lived time. Furthermore, Barthes argues that when faced with the panoramic view, ‘it is duration itself which becomes panoramic’ (Barthes, 1997, 176). The modelscape is likewise detached from the present, and may represent the past or future as well as an unspecified ‘panoramic’ duration (‘forever’). However, modelscapes as well as world expositions, raise the question to what extent the visitors, which have their own perspectival constructs, participate or challenge the world-picture presented to them. It is important to note Appadurai’s extension of Anderson’s concept from ‘imagined communities’ to ‘imagined worlds’ (Appadurai, 33), which mould and reshape concepts of centre-periphery in order to negotiate the complexities and ruptures between economic, cultural and political interests. An important fact of the world we live in today is that many persons on the globe live in such imagined ‘worlds’ and not just in imagined communities, and thus are able to contest and sometimes even subvert the ‘imagined world’ of the off icial mind and of the entrepreneurial mentality that surround them. (Appadurai, 33)

As argued earlier, the definite and persuasive physicality of modelscapes tends to convince their viewers to participate in the model reality. Model representations of nations, world expositions, and other representational means such as different kinds of international spectacles, serve to domesticate differences (Appadurai, 39). Appadurai’s concept of ‘global cultural flow’ therefore challenges the aim of states to monopolize ideas about nationhood (Appadurai, 39).

3

The Second Temple Model ‘If Jews cannot get to the holy places, the holy places will come to them.’ – Hans Kroch, founder of the Second Temple Model (quoted in Cherni and Tsafrir, 14).

The Second Temple Model from Jerusalem is well-known in Israel and has been widely studied.13 However, scholars have generally focused on issues concerning its historical accuracy rather than on its qualities as a modelscape. In this chapter I examine the Second Temple Model using as guidelines the main theoretical questions posed at the outset, in order to explore how it achieves a sense of authenticity, empowerment and participation, how it conveys meaning, and how the visual and bodily experience at this model is translated into narrative. Analyzing this site called for certain methodological tools. The Second Temple Model is an educational model, originally focused on providing a tangible expression of history, archaeology and heritage to an Israeli Jewish audience. Its aims and audiences have developed and changed during its own history since it was opened to the public in 1966. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the model’s design process and history. I used interviews with people involved with its creation and maintenance, and historical documents in order to highlight the intentions of its creators. These included guidebooks, archival material, and newspaper articles. Changes in the political and social context brought about changes in the audiences which visit the model, and at present Christian tourists form a large part of its visitors. In addition, the relocation of the Second Temple Model in 2006 has caused significant changes in the way the model is presented to its visitors. In order to explore these changes, I analysed books, guidebooks and articles published at the time of its relocation. I also conducted semi-structured interviews with people who were involved in the relocation and in its current management and curatorship. The Second Temple Model (fig. 8) is a modelscape that is not only a representation of an external referent, built in the image of a heritage site, but rather has an independent existence and is gradually becoming a heritage site in its own right. I examine how and why this model was created as a 13 See for example L. Abramson, 2006b; Amit, 2009; Avi-Yonah, 1966; Barkai and Sciller, 2007; Cohen Hattab and Kerber, 2004; Harel, 1969; Tsafrir (unpublished).

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Figure 8 The Second Temple Model, general view

Photograph by Y. Padan

substitute for real archaeological sites, and how it strengthens notions of collective memory, belonging and national identity. I begin by examining the circumstances in which the Second Temple Model was initiated and the people who were involved in its design. A central feature of this modelscape is its appeal to the visitors as authentic and accurate, and its presentation to the public as an ‘authentic reproduction’. In order to understand this seemingly contradictory expression, I examine different theoretical approaches to the concept of authenticity in tourism. These approaches are useful in understanding how models and modelscapes attempt to bridge the gap between original and representation. Although the Second Temple Model is clearly a creative and suggestive representation rather than an original object, it has always had a reputation of a scientific and authoritative reconstruction of ancient Jerusalem. In this sense, the Second Temple Model as a representation of archaeology is part of the legacy of archaeology in Jerusalem, which is closely connected to the political context in which it is carried out. The modern archaeological study of Jerusalem has been used over the past two centuries as a tool to pursue and to demonstrate different ‘essences’ of origin as well as national roots (Silberman, 501). I follow this legacy in order to understand the role of the Second Temple Model as an idealised archaeological site, in which the national past has been reconstructed to perfection. The history of the Second Temple Model itself is no less significant to its understanding than the ancient history which it represents. The relocation

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of this modelscape from the Holyland Hotel to the Israel Museum, and the different interests and conflicts which surrounded this move offer interesting insights regarding this question. I argue that in its new physical context the Second Temple Model’s role as a tangible representation of collective history and national narrative has been enhanced and expanded. Initially built at a privately owned hotel, the modelscape has now gained the status of a semi-official state exhibit, which both acquires authority from and supplies a historical justification to the symbols of state which surround it.

Designing the Second Temple Model The Second Temple Model was built on the grounds of the Holyland Hotel in Jerusalem, opened in 1958 by Hans Kroch, a Jew of German origin who was a banker and developer. At the time, following the 1948 war, the city was divided by a border which separated Jordanian East Jerusalem from Israeli West Jerusalem. Most of the city’s historical and holy sites in and around the Old City were under Jordanian rule, and Israelis had no access to them. This geo-political situation had detrimental effects on the city’s economy and particularly on the sector of tourism, and the Holyland Hotel was one of the only hotels built in West Jerusalem around this period (Cohen-Hattab, 1-2). The hotel stood on a remote site at the far western part of the city, about 4 km away from the city centre. It had extensive grounds, with lawns and gardens, mini-golf and tennis courts, and one of the first swimming pools to be built in any Jerusalem hotel (Cohen-Hattab, 12). Cohen-Hattab argues that the hotel’s location was part of the city’s planning policy of the time, which prioritized building on the bare hilltops of southwest Jerusalem that were close to the border that lay about 1.3 km away from the site of the hotel (Cohen-Hattab, 7). The Second Temple Model was constructed as part of the landscape at the Holyland Hotel during the years 1962-1966. It was entitled ‘Reproduction of Jerusalem at the time of Second Temple’, but was generally known to the public as ‘The Holyland Model’. It depicts Jerusalem in the year 66 AD, when the city was at its greatest geographic extent and at the high point of Jewish independence (Tsafrir, 2009, 9). This period, shortly before the city’s destruction in 70 AD, is of central importance in the Zionist ethos, which goes back to Second Temple in linking the Jews to the territory of present-day Israel. Zionism thus viewed the period after the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 AD by the Romans negatively. As argued by Liebman and Don-Yehiya, a central aspect of the secular Zionist narrative

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was the connection to symbols of national independence during biblical times, and the opposition to exilic Judaism and its culture (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 37). Kroch thus chose to construct a model of Jerusalem in its Jewish heyday. This choice was probably connected with his own family history. He and his children had managed to escape from Germany to Argentina during World War II. His son, Jacob Ernst Kroch, came to Israel in 1945, and was killed in the 1948 war (Cherni and Tsafrir, 14). Hans Kroch decided to build the Second Temple Model in memory of his son (Tsafrir, 2009, 9). He was interested in the model not only as a memorial, however, but also for several other reasons. He wanted a cultural and tourist attraction for his hotel, which was located quite a distance away from any particular site of interest. He was also concerned about West Jerusalem, which was cut off from its ancient origins and historic monuments (Tsafrir, unpublished, 3). ‘We are missing what Rome and Athens have – ancient buildings’, he told a journalist in 1965 (Ribon, 2 April 1965). He decided to recreate the missing historical sites in the model, which was to be a substitute for the inaccessible places. In addition, Kroch was interested in the national aspect that the model would fill. He is quoted as saying: ‘if Jews cannot get to the holy places, the holy places will come to them’ (Cherni and Tsafrir, 14). Kroch was keen to acquaint Israelis with the sites of collective memory and national identity. Journalist Zvi Lavie was present at an early inauguration of part of the model in 1964, and wrote that it ‘will teach, enlighten, and educate – to remember the Jerusalem on the other side of the wall’ (Lavie, 20 November 1964). Kroch approached Professor Michael Avi-Yonah, who was a scholar of classical archaeology at the Hebrew University, and asked him to design the model. Avi-Yonah was already known as the leading scholar of Roman and Byzantine art and archaeology in the Land of Israel, and specialized in the period of the Second Temple (Tsafrir, 2009, 9). Gabbai reports that ‘Professor Avi-Yonah was enthusiastic about this idea and set to work immediately’ (Gabbai, 19 March 1965). The working drawings for the model were drawn by Hava Avi-Yonah, an artist and wife of Michael Avi-Yonah. Planning the model was a complicated task, since Michael Avi-Yonah decided to show the city in its entirety, even if this meant compromising scientific accuracy (Tsafrir, 2009, 12). Since there was no access to the sites themselves, Michael and Hava Avi-Yonah had to rely on earlier excavations of East Jerusalem carried out before 1948, as well as on ancient texts. Important written sources were the writings of Flavius Josephus, a historian who had lived in Second Temple period.

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Avi-Yonah also relied on later Jewish sources and on the New Testament (Cohen-Hattab and Kerber, 67). In addition, the Second Temple Model was designed on the basis of other Hellenistic and Roman sites around the Mediterranean, which Michael and Hava Avi-Yonah visited together. During their trip to Europe they had also visited contemporary miniature modelscapes, such as the Madurodam Miniature Park, which opened in 1952 in Holland, and the Model of Imperial Rome, which had been housed in the Museo de la Civilta Romana since 1955.14 In a personal interview held on 24 February 2010, Hava Avi-Yonah described the working process of creating the Second Temple Model. First of all, she made sketches of Roman and Hellenistic buildings and ruins from archaeological sites in Europe, paying special attention to decorations and architectural details. She noted during their trip that there were many different variations among the Ancient Greek orders. Some of these variations were not well known, and had inspired her work on the model. Describing this experience, she said: Somehow I got a feeling for the life at that time. My husband checked the written sources; I didn’t, but I got an impression of the way they lived then, and also of the styles, of the decorations, things you don’t usually see. (H. Avi-Yonah, personal interview, 24 February 2010)

Trained as a painter, Hava Avi-Yonah said that she was inexperienced in making architectural drawings and placing buildings on the topography. She had to learn these new skills for her work on the Second Temple Model, and spent three years making drawings for the miniature buildings. She began by designing the public buildings: the bath houses, markets, palaces, and of course the Temple. These buildings were described in writing by different sources, which gave Michael Avi-Yonah and herself clues and guidance to their design. In addition, she used the sketches of similar buildings that she had seen in her travels (H. Avi-Yonah, personal interview, 24 February 2010). Where there was information from previous excavations, Michael and Hava Avi-Yonah took it into account. In other places, Hava Avi-Yonah said: ‘we followed the topography; we did what looked reasonable, because we couldn’t visit the place, of course, it was before 1967’ (H. Avi-Yonah, personal

14 Madurodam is a theme park in Netherlands, showing miniature models of famous Dutch castles, public buildings and monuments. For more details, see http://www.madurodam.nl/en/.

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interview, 24 February 2010). This approach is also voiced by Lavie, who interviewed Michael Avi-Yonah in 1964: Obviously, since material remains are not available, the gaps must be completed by way of assumption – provided that it doesn’t go beyond the boundaries of logic – that such structures were built according to what was fashionable at the time. If we know, for example, that Simon or Aristobulus hired Greek architects, it is obvious that they designed their buildings in the Hellenistic fashion, and the remains of this fashion are scattered around the Eastern Mediterranean. (Lavie, 20 November 1964)

Hava Avi-Yonah pointed out that even the location of the temple was problematic, since there were two options where to place the altar. ‘We chose the one which seemed most sensible’, she said, ‘but in this type of architecture, the reasonable isn’t always what was built’. For example, she mentioned that the theatre which they located where the topography seemed most suitable wasn’t discovered in later excavations. Nevertheless, it was built in the model, like other buildings which were described in the texts but not found in subsequent excavations on the site (the most notable example is the hippodrome). On the design and positioning of these structures in the model Hava Avi-Yonah said: ‘it is an invention, simple as that. Part of it is invented; it has to be an invention in [reconstructing such] a big city’ (H. Avi-Yonah, personal interview, 24 February 2010). Tsafrir explained that Michael AviYonah preferred to place these structures in unverified locations rather than to eliminate them altogether, since their presence exemplified the extent of the Roman cultural influence on Judea in the Second Temple period, especially during the reign of King Herod (Tsafrir, personal interview, 9 March 2010). The Second Temple Model was built at a detailed scale of 1:50. The drawings Hava Avi-Yonah made were often more detailed than was possible to build in this scale. She had regularly consulted the builders of the model about what they were able to make. For example, the intricate captions of the columns around the Temple were too complicated to make locally. Hava Avi-Yonah made a plasticine model of these captions, which was sent to Italy where it was moulded in fiberglass and covered with gold leaf (Amit, 18). A team of builders made the model under the direction of the sculptor Erwin Schefler. Further building and updating were done by Rolf Brutzen and Baruch Engelhardt. The ongoing maintenance and repair work of the model was done by artist Haim Peretz (Tsafrir, unpublished, 4; Ribon, 2 April

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1965; Gabbai, 19 March 1965; Amit, 18). Hava Avi-Yona said the builders were experienced workers who made special efforts to build in miniature. I asked her if she had made individual drawings for each of the little housing units, or whether she designed one prototype which the builders duplicated. She said: ‘I don’t remember; I think I made one, and a few variations’. Certainly the builders had to be creative, she said, both about some building details as well as about the exact location of some of the buildings on the topography of the model (H. Avi-Yonah, personal interview, 24 February 2010). She explained that the scale of the model was determined by the available space at the Holyland Hotel. Michael Avi-Yonah wrote that the site (about 25X40 meters) was large enough for the model but required a slight adjustment of the city’s orientation (Tsafrir, unpublished, 7). The Model of Imperial Rome Both Hava Avi-Yonah and Tsafrir (personal interview, 9  March 2010) mentioned a visit which Michael and Hava Avi-Yonah made to the Model of Imperial Rome (fig. 9). It resembles the Second Temple Model in the Figure 9 Detail from the Model of Imperial Rome

Photograph by Y. Padan

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style of the buildings, as both represent Roman architecture. The Model of Imperial Rome shows the city in the age of Constantine, fourth century AD, nearly three hundred years later than the period shown at the Second Temple Model. It is likely that the Model of Imperial Rome was one of the influences for the design of the Second Temple Model, and therefore I will devote some attention to its history. The Model of Imperial Rome is housed in the Museum of Roman Civilization. This museum contains artefacts from two different exhibitions which took place in Rome. The first was the ‘Archaeological Exhibition’ of 1911 which marked the 50th anniversary of the unification of Italy, with Rome as the capital. This exhibition included a model of ancient Rome by French architect Paul Bigot at a scale of 1:400, which is now exhibited in the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels. The rest of the materials from this exhibition eventually formed the Museum of Roman Empire, which opened in 1929 (D’Amato et al., 10). The second exhibition was the ‘Augustan Exhibition of the Roman World’ of 1937, which marked two thousand years since the birth of Emperor Augustus. It was directed by some of the most notable archaeologists of the time, and included a second model of Imperial Rome by architect Italo Gismondi (Sartorio, 83). The central part of this model was built in 1933. Gismondi used all available resources to construct his model, including excavations, maps, texts, and the earlier model by Bigot of 1911 (Sartorio, 85). As with the Second Temple Model, some parts of the Model of Imperial Rome remained unknown, particularly the residential areas. For such areas Gismondi designed three prototypes based on buildings of the age (D’Amato et al., 26). Many of the dwellings appear in the model as abstract geometric forms without openings or details, to mark that these are presumed buildings. The model was gradually expanded in the following years. By the opening of the Museum of Roman Civilization in 1955, where it is housed today, it included the whole area within the Aurelian Walls. Gismondi continued to supervise the updating of the model in the light of new archaeological discoveries until 1973. This model was visited by Michael and Hava Avi-Yonah in the early 1960s. The Model of Imperial Rome was built at the scale of 1:250, and the buildings are made of alabaster plaster (D’Amato et al., 26). The topography of the ancient city was emphasized by raising the hilltops by 15-20% in relation to their real heights. As for the reconstruction of the monuments, it ‘appears fairly close to reality and accurate in its details as well’ (Sartorio, 86). However, Gismondi and the scholars involved in this project ‘inevitably ended up with their placing themselves on the

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borderline between the credible and the arbitrary, between science and fantasy’ (Sartorio, 86). When the ‘Augustan Exhibition of the Roman World’ of 1937 closed, the exhibits were moved to the Museum of Roman Empire. It was decided to house the enlarged collection in a new building built for the Universal Exposition of 1942. An entire new neighbourhood was designed for the Exposition and named EUR (Esposizione Universale di Roma). It was ‘meant to be a scenic celebration of the victories of Fascism’ (D’Amato et al., 10). Frampton argues that the museum and other permanent structures of the EUR were designated by Mussolini to form the core of the Third Rome, a new and monumental capital which was itself both a utopian and a reactionary vision (Frampton, 215). The new museum was called the Museum of Roman Civilization, and its monumental and austere stripped Neo-Classical building at the EUR district was designed by architects Aschieri, Bernardini, Peressutti and Pascoletti. Construction began in 1939, but the outbreak of World War II and Italy’s entry into the war in 1942 caused the work to be halted and the Universal Exposition was cancelled. The building was finally completed in 1952 and the museum opened to the public in 1955 (D’Amato et al., 10). The Model of Imperial Rome is located in a semi-basement level and viewed from the gallery above. Visitors can see the entire model from different angles, but cannot approach it from closer distance or view its details. The Model of Imperial Rome is more than a representation of ruins; Sartorio argues that it functioned as a point of reference and inspiration for the vision of Rome’s grandeur, and by extension of modern Italy’s heritage. He suggests that the model also served as ‘a substitute of an unfound image’ (Sartorio, 85), concerning some areas of the city which had not been excavated thoroughly. In addition, in some cases ruins were not preserved because of modern development. This included Mussolini’s construction of the Via dell’Impero, which cut through the ancient urban fabric. Sartorio argues that the new throughway intended the Imperial Forums to be mere ‘stage props, placed to the sides of the Via dell’Impero – naturally the “fascist” empire’ (Sartorio, 85). For the demolished archaeological sites, the model served as ‘a surrogate of the reality destroyed: an image of the lost city’ (Sartorio, 85). Sartorio further stresses the ideological continuity between the two exhibitions of 1911 and 1937 in Rome. Both utilized the grandeur of the Roman Empire as exemplified in models to suggest a link with the contemporary Italy of their time. The 1911 exhibition was characterized by the search for national unity as represented in a rediscovery of common ancient origins

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(Sartorio, 83). The exhibition of 1937, however, was meant to declare to the Italians as well as to the rest of the world that Italy was ‘the true heir of Ancient Rome and the universal values of its civilization’ (Sartorio, 83). In both exhibitions Roman civilization was ‘more or less intentionally misunderstood and exploited to justify old and new imperialism’ (Sartorio, 83). There are some important points of resemblance between the Model of Imperial Rome and the Second Temple Model. Both are modelscapes that represent historical cities which had been reconstructed based on archaeological f inds, textual descriptions, and other ancient remains. Both modelscapes include some unknown parts, which have been filled with hypothetical structures in order to complete the ‘big picture’. Both modelscapes therefore hover ‘between science and fantasy’ (Sartorio, 86). Nevertheless, in spite of the element of fantasy within them, both modelscapes are respected as authentic representations. This is based on the authority of the professional archaeologists who supervised their constructions. Furthermore, additional credibility is provided by parts of each model which are considered to be accurately proven reproductions, and these parts project their authenticity onto the entire modelscape. Another reason why both modelscapes are taken to be reliable is because they lend material shape to ideas and values of collective memory and national identity. Each of them represents a period in the distant past which is believed to epitomize national glory, and supports a projection of this glory onto contemporaneous interpretations of collective identity. A Serious Plaything The late Professor Yoram Tsafrir (1938-2015) was Michael Avi-Yonah’s student in the Department of Archaeology at the Hebrew University. Following the death of Michael Avi-Yonah in 1974 Tsafrir was approached by Hans Kroch’s daughter Elsa Cherni to take scientific responsibility for the model. About the scientific accuracy of the model, he said: Even in places that were excavated since, the ruins are limited to the foundations or ground floor: we don’t know how the upper floors, windows and roofs looked, whether there were any. Excavations revealed that there were many places where he [Avi-Yonah] got it right and many others where he didn’t. In any case, even today after all the excavations and articles, I estimate that about 85 per cent of the area is unknown to us. (Tsafrir, personal interview, 9 March 2010)

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Tsafrir noted that had the model been constructed today, with the information that is known from the excavations and with access to the sites, ‘there would have been many situations which could have been answered and decided upon, but new questions would have come up’ (Tsafrir, personal interview, 9 March 2010). Although Michael Avi-Yonah regarded his work on the Second Temple Model very seriously, Tsafrir thought that ‘in this situation, he treated the model as an intellectual game. It was scientific work: searching Flavius Josephus and comparing the ancient sources, but it was also an intellectual game’ (Tsafrir, personal interview, 9 March 2010). The reference to the Second Temple Model as an ‘intellectual game’ relates it to the playful aspect of modelscapes, discussed in Chapter 1. Berger argues that many toys are models or surrogates. She suggests that adults are attracted to toys and hence to models because they are small, controllable, do not demand a price or present a bill, and ask for no commitment. She further points out that toys belong in a closed world, which has a clear beginning and end, and allegedly has no impact on reality, which is completely separated from the world of toys. Although the model-toy is committed to a source object, it has an independent existence of its own, which is open to new interpretations and uses (Berger, 2008, 18-19). Similarly, Morris points out that the notion of the model as a ‘serious plaything’ is rooted in a wide cultural context. He suggests that models are easily understood because people have been exposed to them since childhood: ‘Reasons why the model is more accessible than architectural drawings to the layperson may be found in these supra-architectural types. We are preconditioned to understand miniature objects and therefore models’ (Morris, 117). At the Second Temple Model, the idea of playfulness seems relevant in relation to its creators as much as to its audience. Tsafrir, an archaeologist, placed a particular emphasis on the model’s quality as a ‘serious plaything’ to its professional planners. He suggested that Avi-Yonah’s ‘intellectual game’ involved choosing to copy or adapt different archaeological structures and to place them in the model. They had an educational aim: ‘the reconstructions sometimes mean to instruct by posing a riddle’ (Tsafrir, 2009, 10). For example, the difference between the architecture of the Upper City and the Lower City in the model was emphasized so as to encourage the visitors to try and find out why it was so (Tsafrir, 2009, 12). Similarly, the palaces of the Adiabene Kings were built in Parthian style, which is different from the other palaces in the Second Temple Model. ‘In this way Avi-Yonah hoped to prompt the visitor to ask why those palatial buildings were designed the way they were’ (Tsafrir, 2009, 10).

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This type of intellectual game was in fact limited to professional or knowledgeable people who were familiar with classical archaeology and could recognize ‘borrowed’ structures in the model. The general public could not participate in this game, and was mostly unaware of its existence. This is evident in Tsafrir’s words: He [Michael Avi-Yonah] knew that much of what he did was incorrect. For example, the market. He used pavilions from Lepcis Magna, a large Roman city in Libya, where octagonal or hexagonal pavilions were found. He took it from there, transferred it from there to here. It is obvious! Everyone knows it. Well not everyone, someone who doesn’t know where it comes from, would think it was really like this in Jerusalem. So there are private little games there, private riddles that some of them he disclosed, and others he didn’t: that the theatre was based on the theatre of Orange; that the hippodrome was built after a mosaic found in Barcelona. (Tsafrir, personal interview, 9 March 2010)

A look at the first guidebook to the model reveals that many of the riddles were indeed private, and most of the visitors could not participate in the game. It is entitled A Short Guidebook to the Model of Jerusalem from the End of the Second Temple Period, written in Hebrew, unsigned and dated 1966; the publisher is the Holyland Corporation, Jerusalem. The guidebook takes the visitors on a tour around the model, with small illustration sketches by Hava Avi-Yonah accompanying each site. Figure 10 The Hasmonean Palace, Second Temple Model

Photos © Holyland Tourism 1992, Ltd., by Garo Nalbaldian, Courtesy The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

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One example from the guidebook is the Hasmonean Palace (fig. 10). A drawing of the palace appears in the 1966 guidebook, next to a brief description: Of the spacious dwellings in this quarter it is especially worth mentioning: The Hasmonean Palace (16 in the plan). This palace was constructed in place of the Syrian fortress of the Hakra, facing the Temple Mount. Its facade, including its two towers and roof from which it was possible to make speeches to the public, faced the Xystus court (17 in the plan). This court, surrounded by shaded porticoes, was used for gatherings of the people in the stormy days before the revolt against Rome. The Hasmonean Palace included several courtyards with dwellings, bath houses and a large service yard. (A Short Guidebook to the Model of Jerusalem from the End of the Second Temple Period, 5)

The guidebook does not explain the sources for the design of this palace, nor any dilemmas in its reconstruction. The reader is led to believe that this was how the palace looked, based on the professional authority of the writer. Tsafrir pointed out that this early guidebook is based on a longer text written by Michael Avi-Yonah which was not published, probably because it was too long and detailed (Tsafrir, personal interview, 9 March 2010). In the original longer text Michael Avi-Yonah had made some clarifications about decisions concerning different buildings in the model. For example, he explained that the plan of the Hasmonean palace is based on the Palace of Ptolemais, in Cyrenaica (in modern Lybia), and the design of its facades incorporates details from the facades of tombs in Petra. Similar clues appear in a newspaper article from 19 March 1965, which points out that the Hasmonean palace is one of the most striking buildings in the (as yet unfinished) model: In the model are two noticeable cones which stand on marble columns. These cones are part of the Hasmonean Palace. As we know, during the Hasmonean period all Jerusalem was dominated by Greek architecture. There is not enough information in written sources about the Hasmonean Palace, and therefore it was reconstructed according to the building styles of palaces from the Hellenistic period. Magnificent Hellenistic palaces have been discovered at the Red Rock (Petra) and in Lybia. (Gabbai, 19 March 1965)

However, in the ‘Short Guidebook’ most of Michael Avi-Yonah’s explanations and references to archaeological sites around the Mediterranean

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have been omitted. Only in a later guidebook about the model dated 2007, is it explained that ‘The design of the building is based on the shape of one of the magnificent tombs in Petra across the Jordan [River]’ (Barkai and Schiller, 23). The Israel Museum guidebook of 2009 mentions this in further detail: ‘The distinctive concave cone roofs of its twin towers were inspired by contemporary tombs in Petra (Jordan)’ (Amit, 74). Therefore, few of the early visitors were aware of the different clues in the ‘intellectual game’. In the Short Guidebook most buildings are described in a concise and authoritative manner, similar to the description of the Hasmonean Palace. Some of them are described using quotes from ancient texts. Thus the game and its riddles were understood at a variety of levels. The Second Temple Model therefore was, and still is, perceived by the public as a scientific and exact reconstruction of reality. The authority that this modelscape has for most of its visitors makes it an effective tool in communicating a narrative of common roots, collective identity, and present day nationality that is compared to and glorified by an ancient ‘golden era’. Authenticity The Second Temple Model is described in the tourist literature as authentic on different levels. One level emphasizes the materials that were used in its construction. Another level stresses the exactness of the general layout and the accuracy of some individual buildings and parts of the fortifications. Further authenticity is claimed based on compliance with ancient texts and with architectural remnants of the period that were discovered elsewhere. Authenticity is an important and much disputed topic in tourism literature.15 In this chapter I will not go into the conflicting interpretations of this term, but rather use some of the literature in order to try and analyse the double role of the Second Temple Model which is described in tourism literature as both a scientific ‘authentic’ creation as well as an artistic ‘intellectual game’. The different interpretations given to the notion of authenticity in tourism are classified into several ideological types. One of these is ‘objective authenticity’, an approach held by scholars who are defined as modernists, objectivists or realists. These scholars claim that it is possible to determine the authenticity of artefacts using certain objective standards. ‘Objective authenticity’ was initiated in museums, where experts determine whether objects are original and genuine as they are claimed to be (Wang, 350-351, Reisinger and Steiner, 67-69). No reproduction can be authentic under this 15 For overviews see for example Wang, 1999; Reisinger and Steiner, 2006.

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definition (Bruner, 400). In this sense, the Second Temple Model cannot be classified as authentic at all. In the tourism literature relating to the Second Temple Model, ‘objective authenticity’ is attributed to objects from the Second Temple period that were found in archaeological excavations, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and other artefacts. The model itself is not claimed to be an original object, but rather is assigned with a different kind of authenticity. All literature regarding the Second Temple Model relates to it as authentic in the sense which Bruner calls ‘historical verisimilitude’. Authenticity in this sense is characterized by mimetic reliability, and therefore it is ‘credible and convincing […], believable to the public’ (Bruner, 399). In addition, most of the literature also describes parts of the Second Temple Model as authentic in another sense which Bruner categorizes as ‘genuineness’. Objects which are authentic in this sense are not merely reasonable or convincing likenesses; they are true and accurate historical simulations of acknowledged source objects. Regarding the Second Temple Model, this applies to several individual models which are copies of known buildings, such as the Western Wall or the Temple Mount. For example, journalist Netta Ephroni who visited the model in 1965 notes: A small portion of the inner wall was made following reliable archaeological finds, with each and every stone “cut” according to the original measurements that were found in the excavations, and in accordance with accurate photographs. (Ephroni, 24 March 1965)

The first descriptions of the Second Temple Model are from 1964, while building work on the model was still in progress. However, some of the buildings were already on site, and several journalists were invited to see it.16 One of them began his review of the model by writing about Hans Kroch and his insistence on authenticity and accuracy: Mr Kroch sees in this project a link between the magnificent Jerusalem of the past and Jerusalem of today. Therefore, he ensures that every detail, every ledge, every stone exhibited in the model will be as authentic and as faithful to the reality and to the written sources as possible. He insisted that the reconstructed Temple be built from materials similar to those

16 Lavie of Maariv (20 November 1964), Gabbai of Davar (19 March 1965), Ribon of Haaretz (2 April 1965), Ephroni of Yediot Ahronot (24 March 1965).

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mentioned in the Mishnah and therefore imported some marble from Italy. (Ribon, 2 April 1965)

Ribon seems to refer to authenticity in the second sense, as a ‘genuine’ and accurate simulation. This kind of ‘genuineness’ he attributes to the entire modelscape, rather than to individual models within it. He goes on to explain that this ‘genuiness’ was possible because of the vast monetary investment made by Kroch in his determination to achieve an exact reproduction of the city: It is estimated that the expenses will be approximately between 300,000500,000 Israeli Pounds. “No budget restraints” was the answer I got from Mr Kroch’s assistants on my question regarding the cost of this enormous project. “The money is not important, except as a means to this creation”, says Mr Kroch. For him, the financial investment is not the criterion for the project’s value, but rather its scientific accuracy. Mr Kroch doesn’t want a “toy” of kitsch or “Disney Land” style models. The model is, in his words, “my gift to Jerusalem”. No doubt that when the model will be completed within about a year, it will be an attraction for both tourists and Israelis who will be able to view with their own eyes the Temple and Jerusalem of 2000 years ago. (Ribon, 2 April 1965)

This report considers authenticity as a complete and perfect simulation (Bruner, 399). Furthermore, Ribon stresses the similarity between the materials of the model and the original ones. This similarity is also emphasized in the Short Guidebook which states that ‘we used as much as possible the real materials of which Jerusalem of the Second Temple period was built, namely stone, marble, wood, copper and iron’ (Guidebook, 2). Cohen-Hattab and Kerber point out that other guidebooks also state that the building materials are ‘as “real” as can be’. They therefore question what constitutes the ‘real’ (Cohen-Hattab and Kerber, 67). ‘[Michael] Avi-Yonah emphasized that the use of authentic materials, limestone and marble (plus some pieces of bronze) gave the model its extensive credibility’ (Tsafrir unpublished, 4). Furthermore, these ‘real’ materials are opposed to industrial imitations, such as ‘Disney Land’ style models (Ribon, 2 April 1965), implying that such models are fakes both because they provide amusement and fantasy rather than education and history, and because they are not committed to the use of ‘real’ materials (Gable and Handler, 570). Kroch tended to regard his model as an original rather than a representation, comparable with ancient ruins rather than with other models. Lavie

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points out that in spite of these intentions, the model reminded him of the Madurodam miniature model in Holland, which Michael and Hava Avi-Yonah had visited on their tour of ancient archaeology prior to designing the model: When we attended the inauguration of the Palaces of Herod and the Hasmoneans this week, it was difficult not to recall that scale model of the Netherlands which was built in The Hague, in the Open Air Museum called ‘Madurodam’. But there’s nothing which infuriates Hans Kroch more than this comparison between the extravagant model of the Netherlands and his Old City of Jerusalem. The 76-year-old [Kroch, who], divides his time between Europe, America and Israel, will only be satisf ied if you compare miniature Jerusalem to the magnif icent remains of the Parthenon in Athens and the Coliseum in Rome. (Lavie, 20 November 1964)

Another important point verifying the model’s authenticity as a perfect representation is its mode of production: the ‘real’ materials were meticulously constructed on site. This is an interesting observation since models are often built in workshops and placed in their final location as finished objects. In the press reports of 1965 by Gabbai and Ribon, sculptor Erwin Scheffler and his builders are photographed at work, building the models. The model was built at the scale of 1:50 and painstaking work has gone into it. Expert masons built it under the guidance of Erwin Scheffler. The tiny stones of the city walls are of natural material: Jerusalem stone. The precise stone-cutting was achieved, after many attempts, in ‘Even Va-Sid’17 in Haifa. So far, eight million little stones and 2,650 tiny white marble columns have been used in the various buildings. (Gabbai, 19 March 1965)

The ‘real’ materials therefore served to authenticate the model in several different ways: in their resemblance to the original materials, in their construction method like real buildings rather than like models, and in the use of manual labour. Later, however, it turned out that the ‘real’ materials were not entirely accurate. For example, limestone and bronze were discovered in the excavations, but the private houses of the Upper City are characterized in the Second Temple Model by their red tiled roofs. Such houses were found in archaeological sites from that period 17 A stone-cutting factory whose name literally means ‘stone and lime’.

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in Europe, but Tsafrir noted that in the excavations of Jerusalem carried out during the 1970s no tiles were found in this part of the city (Tsafrir, unpublished, 18). Another inaccuracy is revealed in the use of marble stones and monolithic pillars for the monumental buildings, based on written descriptions by Flavius Josephus: But the excavations proved that the use of marble in Israel during the Second Temple period was minimal […]. Also in Jerusalem no monolithic columns were used in construction, not even columns made of limestone. All columns from the Second Temple period in Jerusalem and Judea were made of stone joints. (Tsafrir, unpublished, 4)

After 1967 when some such inaccuracies were revealed, the model nevertheless retained its reputation due to other aspects of its declared authenticity. The theoretical notion of ‘constructivist authenticity’ is useful in understanding these aspects. Constructivists oppose the notion that artefacts can be determined as inherently authentic according to objective criteria. They argue that ‘constructive authenticity’ is a socially constructed interpretation of the toured objects, and suggest that items appear to be authentic because the observer’s values, beliefs and expectations are projected onto them. This notion of authenticity is relative and open to negotiation, and hence it is a result of compromises and of changing situations, contexts, and ideologies (Wang, 351, Reisinger and Steiner, 69-70). Clearly the Second Temple Model reflects values and beliefs stated by both Hans Kroch and Professor Avi-Yonah. Kroch declared that it was to be ‘a link between the magnificent Jerusalem of the past and Jerusalem of today’ (Ribon, 2 April 1965). As mentioned earlier, he was keen to ‘compensate’ for the missing historical sites of Jordanian East Jerusalem. Kroch was deeply involved in assuring the model’s credibility: ‘Mr Kroch himself spends nights and days searching through various books in order to draw more and more details to complete the reconstruction and ensure its reliability’ (Lavie, 20 November 1964). He was committed to educating the public: Kroch was worried that the younger generation would forget the Old City of Jerusalem, which was then in the hands of the enemy, and that is why he wanted to reconstruct its sites for generations to come. (Gabbai, 13 October 1967)

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Lavie notes that Kroch referred to the model in the same way he referred to ‘real’ Greek and Roman ruins. As mentioned earlier, the model was for him more than a representation; it was to fill the part of ‘the real thing’: The Greeks and Romans – says elderly Kroch – can observe today how their ancestors lived and take pride in the remains of their past. And I want the Jews in Israel to be able to see and to show how and where their ancestors lived before the destruction of the Temple, before they were driven into exile (Lavie, 20 November 1964)

Thus the model was intended to provide its visitors with a sense of identity and meaning by giving material shape to the national past as reflected in ancient Jerusalem and its monumental symbols of Jewish religious and cultural independence. Michael Avi-Yonah was also motivated to work on the model by national sentiments: Avi-Yonah already had a reputation as the leading scholar of Roman and Byzantine archaeology of the Land of Israel, with a special interest in the Second Temple period. His own strong national pride and Zionist ideals particularly attracted him to the study of Jerusalem in that ancient era, one that marked the high point of independent Jewish creativity, at least in the areas of architecture and art. (Tsafrir, 2009, 9)

According to constructivist perspective, the meaning of the Second Temple Model depends on its interpretation, which produces it as an authentic object. This modelscape was socially constructed as authentic because it reflects values of identity and nationality, which are more effective than the question of the actual ‘realness’ of objects such as the building materials. The modelscape was used to construct a link between people, country and history. This view of nationalism was discussed in Chapter 2 and voiced by scholars such as Anthony Smith who stress the importance of a ‘primordial’ sense of collective belonging (Anthony Smith, 223). The Zionist narrative set out to create a sense of bonding between Jews from different countries and cultures, and to acquaint them with the ‘homeland’. This was a diff icult task due to the lack of solidarity between different groups of Jewish immigrants, and to the absence of some common parameters, listed by Anthony Smith, such as a tradition of kinship, territory, and spoken everyday language (Anthony Smith, 223). The Second Temple Model is one of the cultural products which played a part in representing the modern nation as a continuous existence in time

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and space. It gave material shape to the past as a source of common history and collective memory. Since the actual sites of heritage were inaccessible, the Second Temple Model provided a substitute by creating a miniature geography of remains. Furthermore, the history of the Second Temple Model exemplifies that the meaning of a modelscape is not static. Rather, it is continually being reconstructed to fit new circumstances and conditions, and particular interpretations of history (Bruner, 407). The changing contexts affected the readings of the Second Temple Model and its meaning, first after 1967 when the Old City area became accessible to Israelis, and later after 2006 when it was moved to the Israel Museum. These shifts in meaning were possible because of the Second Temple Model’s claim to be ‘authentic’, meaning an accurate (‘genuine’) or at least a convincing (‘verisimilar’) representation. Cohen suggests that interpretations of meaning do not depend entirely on the existence of artefacts that are labelled with ‘objective authenticity’. He argues that ‘authenticity and falseness are not a dichotomous pair of concepts. Rather, there exists a continuum leading from complete authenticity, through various stages of partial authenticity, to complete falseness’ (Cohen, 378). Thus, most tourists do not demand ‘total authenticity’, but are prepared to accept an object as authentic as long as what they consider to be its most significant features are judged by them to be authentic (Cohen, 378). This argument suggests that it has been possible to socially construct the meaning of the Second Temple Model as authentic although it does not exhibit the ‘total authenticity’ of an original. It is sufficient that some parts of the model are described as ‘accurate representations’ which are ‘genuine’ reproductions. These lend an ‘authentic aura’ to the modelscape as an entirety (Bruner, 399-400). For example, Ribon informs his readers: The outer western wall of the Temple Mount where the Wailing Wall is situated, as well as part of the southern wall, Professor Avi-Yonah based on archaeological discoveries. These sections of the model are exact replicas of the original. Every stone that appears in reality can be found in the model in the same form and location. (Ribon, 2 April 1965)

The credibility assigned to archaeological discoveries that were incorporated into model is thus viewed as evidence of the entire model’s authenticity. This is due to the professional authority of Professor Avi-Yonah. Authority is the fourth meaning which Bruner assigns to authenticity. In this sense, authenticity means

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Duly authorized, certified, or legally valid […]. The more fundamental question to ask here is not if an object or site is authentic, but rather who has the authority to authenticate, which is a matter of power. (Bruner, 400)

In Western culture, tourist experiences that generate a sense of place and of the past are often mediated and interpreted by professionals, who decide what is authentic (Reisinger and Steiner, 73). Although the Second Temple Model was not merely a cultural artefact but also a commercial enterprise, the collaboration of professionals throughout its history formulates it as a national asset rather than a profitable project. Further professional affirmation to the authenticity of the model was granted by the authority of foreign archaeologists as reported in the press: ‘Indeed, the serious scientific work of restoring the city received special attention from the archaeological departments of the British Museum and the Louvre Museum in Paris.’ (Lavie, 20 November 1964). As mentioned earlier, after Michael Avi-Yonah’s death his former student Tsafrir who was a well-known archaeologist and scholar became the supervisor of the model. Later the Israel Museum and its curators gave the model a new institutional credibility. Even in the absence of archaeological finds, archaeologists are the ones that can interpret the ancient texts into built form. For example: Dominating the Upper City to the west is the magnificent palace of Herod which is mentioned in the Talmud and reconstructed according to the writings of Flavius. This reconstruction is so authentic that even the statues described by Flavius are placed in the large courtyard of the palace. (Ribon, 2 April 1965)

Thus Gabbai announces to his readers: ‘Now we can see Jerusalem of those days in all its glory’ (Gabbai, 13 October 1967). Gabbai further emphasizes the professionalism of the actual construction on site. He describes the professionality of Erwin Scheffler, the sculptor in charge of the building work. He discloses that in 1958, the year in which Scheffler arrived in Israel as a new immigrant, he had already built the tombstone for the grave of Herzl, the founder of Zionism. Finally, Gabbai states that Scheffler had been well informed about the history of ancient Jerusalem before he began his work on the model: Erwin Scheffler did not approach the reconstruction of ancient Jerusalem casually; he heard lectures by Professor Avi-Yonah and his wife

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and studied all the stories from the ancient sources about Jerusalem. (Gabbai, 19 March 1965)

Although Scheffler was equipped with all the necessary experience, knowledge, skill and attitude needed for the task of constructing the model, Michael Avi-Yonah supervised the building work carefully. ‘Professor AviYonah demands accurate execution of the plans, and has more than once ordered the demolition of a building, tower, or a stretch of wall that were not built properly.’ (Lavie, 20 November 1964). The political meaning of the modelscape is located in the link which the visitors made between the miniature representation and the ancient city. ‘The guide leads us to the hidden city, as it was in the time of Herod, and as we witness it from a bird’s eye view today, at a scale of 1:50’ (Ephroni, 24 March 1965). The impression of accuracy is not diminished by the fact that Ephroni states in the same article that the ancient sources provide different, sometimes even contradictory, descriptions of the city and its buildings. Archaeological evidence is also contested, as she notes for example: ‘Even now there is scientific controversy between Professor Yadin and Professor Avi-Yonah about the western wall of the City of David.’ (Ephroni, 24 March 1965). Other authors thus preferred to adopt the notion of authenticity in the sense of credibility or ‘verisimilitude’. A later guidebook that was published by the owners of the model refers to this issue: The reconstruction of the city of Jerusalem has been an aspiration of scholars and clerics in almost all generations. Countless reconstructions, mostly imaginary, have been proposed for centuries. But the reconstruction in front of us is, undoubtedly, the most accurate and impressive of them, although its accuracy lies not at the level of individual buildings but rather at the conceptual level and overall impression. (Barkai and Schiller, 2007, 5)

Barkai and Schiller go on to stress that ‘although some details here and there may be controversial, the model projects credibility and authenticity.’ (Barkai and Schiller, 2007, 5). This does not seem to contradict their more accurate description of the model in one of the following pages: The reconstruction is based on literary sources and contemporary counterparts, and only partly on sound facts and findings from the area […]. The model therefore presents more than once reconstructions that are no more than assumptions. (Barkai and Schiller, 2007, 8)

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The authority of the professionals encourages a reading of the Second Temple Model as a tangible expression of shared historical roots. Ribon concludes his review of the model: In front of the eyes of the people involved in the work, historical ancient Jerusalem is gradually being rebuilt, which has forever been a source of inspiration and faith to our people. (Ribon, 2 April 1965)

The political situation in Jerusalem when the model was constructed placed Israeli claims for sovereignty in contest with Jordanian claims, and the model’s authenticity was part of the supporting evidence of Israeli entitlement to this area. As noted above, the Second Temple Model represented not only the physical city but also the relationship of the Israelis with the place. Bruner suggests that reconstructed historic sites Enact an ideology, recreate an original myth, keep history alive, attach tourists to a mythical collective consciousness, and commodify the past. The particular pasts that tourists create/imagine at historic sites may never have existed. But historic sites […] do provide visitors with the raw material (experiences) to construct a sense of identity, meaning, attachment, and stability (Bruner, 411).

As noted above, the ‘raw materials’ provided in the Second Temple Model are based on its mimetic aspect. Its building represented both the longing for a glorious past as well as for political sovereignty over East Jerusalem in the present. In this sense, it is a product of modern thinking, in which a work of art is perceived as a reflection of social and cultural conventions. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, modern cultural fields are used to sustain and develop narratives of national identity. The Second Temple Model corresponds with Auerbach’s notion of the copy as mimesis, meaning an interpretation, a creative repetition that differs from the original. However, as discussed above, this did not undermine its authority as scientifically accurate. Benjamin argues that reproduction destroys the ‘aura’ of the original. He notes that the concept of authenticity requires the presence of an original, but this presence becomes irrelevant in mass reproduction. Models owe their existence to an original, but they are not mass reproductions, and hence they claim to be works of art in their own right. Thus the Second Temple Model is both an independent creation as well as a reproduction which enhances the ‘aura’ of Second Temple Jerusalem. It emphasized the reality of its source on two levels: first, by referring to the ‘realness’ of the

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ancient city, and second, by representing an alternative to the political ‘realness’ of the contemporary context.

The Second Temple Model as a Representation of Archaeology The title of Ribon’s review of the Second Temple Model in 1965 read: ‘Next Year – Jerusalem is Built’. Indeed, when the completed modelscape opened to the public in 1966, it became a popular attraction for both Israelis and tourists. Groups of schoolchildren and soldiers were taken to view it. Even the President, Mr. Zalman Shazar, visited the Second Temple Model in April 1967, two months before the war, and was impressed by its ability to invoke both past and future. He remarked: ‘It happens that a person loses something, and builds something else instead, and having completed the new, he then finds the old once again’ (Quoted in Tsafrir, unpublished, 2). In June 1967 the political situation changed drastically as war broke out and Israel conquered the Old City and East Jerusalem. The link between the national collective and the geography was made physically possible. Extensive excavations were carried out in the sites represented by the Second Temple Model, and some inaccuracies were revealed. However, the modelscape continued to be a popular site, because paradoxically its representation of the entire city is easier to comprehend than the actual ruins that can be viewed on site. An example of this is found in a book entitled This is Jerusalem, written in 1969 by geographer and historian Professor Menashe Harel. The book includes an appendix entitled ‘A Didactic Guidebook to the Second Temple Model’, which contains suggestions for taking schoolchildren to visit the model in preparation for a visit to the Old City of Jerusalem. Harel explains that visiting the Second Temple Model before visiting the Old City will enable the pupils to see through the physical reality of the present city: Due to the destruction of the ancient city and its buildings and the construction of new buildings on their foundations, the pupils may find it difficult, when visiting the Old City itself, to see the ancient aspect of the city which we seek to revive in their minds […]. Before the tour it is worthwhile showing the pupils slides of the model together with slides from the Old City in order to bring the model close to reality. (Harel, 1969a, 11)

In another publication written for the Education Department of the Jerusalem Municipality in the same year, Harel emphasizes the didactic reasons

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for teaching schoolchildren about the Second Temple period before taking them on a trip to the Old City itself: Knowledge of the Old City and all its sites is meant to create in the visitors an understanding of the life of the city’s inhabitants during the Second Temple period, and how they defended themselves to the point of sacrificing their lives for their capital and their Temple. (Harel, 1969b, 2)

The importance of the Second Temple Model lay in the connection that could be made between the ancient geography and the present one, and hence between the ancient history of self-sacrifice and the present political situation. However, Harel notes that the model is somewhat problematic as an educational instrument, since without proper guidance the children would react to the model in different ways than expected from them. He warns that models are playful objects and the children may not understand the model’s serious meaning. Furthermore, he is concerned that the children will be confused by the difference between the model city and contemporary Jerusalem, and won’t make the proper connection between the two: The children’s natural tendency to play, and the fascinating story of the Second Temple period, will stimulate the pupils to ‘live’ the events of the city until they can track each building and retrace the course of the war. Their imagination, too, will be stimulated to recreate the ancient past of the Second Temple period. But if we do not proficiently use all methods of explaining, and motivate the pupils and prepare an appropriate background of knowledge and understanding, and arouse respect for the magnif icent work of the model, we might miss our goal of a didactic learning experience and the model will become a toy in their eyes and the visit will turn into an hour of amusement. And especially since without adequate preparations the pupils might only see the big difference between the model and the real city of today, and they won’t be able to use their knowledge and imagination to see specif ically the equal and similar points, and the substance of development from the ancient buildings to the buildings of our day. (Harel, 1969a, 9)

According to this guidebook, in order to extract the ‘correct’ meaning from the model, the children should be directed in a structured manner. Like others, Harel argues that the Second Temple Model is both a scientific and an artistic creation, and in his eyes these terms are not contradictory.

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Rather, he suggests that the scientific accuracy is enhanced by the aesthetic beauty: The children should be encouraged to develop proper respect for the meticulous work on the model, the accuracy of the buildings’ reconstruction, the craftsmanship and artistry of their design, so that the tour will end with feelings of appreciation and aesthetic satisfaction of this rare scientific and artistic achievement. (Harel, 1969a, 11)

Other post-1967 literature about the model is still preoccupied with proving its authenticity and public credibility, stressing that it has ‘received universal recognition as the most qualified source for reconstructing the city’s appearance in the days of Second Temple’ (Barkai and Schiller, 2007, 8). Tsafrir further described the authority attributed to the model: The model of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period was an enormous success. Sections were copied, and other models elsewhere in the world drew their inspiration from it. Photographs of the model and individual buildings within it were and still are being used as illustrations in books on Jerusalem or on that historical period. (Tsafrir, 2009, 10)

The ongoing preoccupation with the model’s authenticity is related with the idea that ‘authenticity emerges to consciousness when doubt arises’ (Bruner, 408). The dispute over East Jerusalem with the Jordanians changed after 1967 into a conflict with the Palestinians over this territory. Hence the question of the Second Temple Model’s authenticity continued to be important in the new political context. As the archaeological sites were being revealed after 1967, a new relationship between the Second Temple Model and its source objects arose. The authenticity of the modelscape in this new context can be defined as ‘symbolic authenticity’, because after 1967 it became a symbol that signified ‘real’ archaeological sites rather than absent and speculative ones. The actual archaeological ruins and objects have been certified by archaeologists as original objects which are ‘objectively authentic’. As argued earlier, the existence of such ‘certified’ parts is projected onto the entire modelscape. Furthermore, some changes were made to the Second Temple Model to make it better reflect the latest finds. Michael Avi-Yonah began to redesign the area south of the Temple Mount in the light of the new excavations, and several other changes were made later by Tsafrir (Barkai and Schiller, 2007, 10, Tsafrir, 2009, 12).

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The Second Temple Model is therefore a signifier of an original site and marks it as authentic. Culler suggests that the meaning of a site visited by tourists is transmitted by a series of markers, or signs, which explain and interpret the site to the visitors. These markers or signs are representations of the site, and include things such as pamphlets, brochures and plaques, but also souvenirs, photographs and postcards. The markers are very important since they frame a place as a site worth seeing for tourists. The proliferation of reproductions is what makes something an original, the real thing: the original of which souvenirs, postcards, statues etc. are reproductions. The existence of reproductions is what makes something original or authentic. (Culler, 1981, 132)

Moreover, the Second Temple Model is also a site in its own right which is signified by a series of markers, such as brochures, postcards and souvenirs. Culler emphasizes the interchangeability of the signifier and signified, whereby the marker is for the tourist just as interesting as the site, and therefore it is possible that the marker of a site will eventually become the principal sight (Culler, 138-139). Whereas the excavations in and around the Old City signify ‘real’ national roots, the Second Temple Model signifies these excavations, and souvenirs of the modelscape signify and mark it as an original. Hence souvenirs of the Second Temple Model indirectly signify national roots as well. The Second Temple Model and the Protestant Perspective The role of archaeology in the Israeli context is rooted in the attitude of the early Protestant travellers and scholars who arrived in Jerusalem at the end of the eighteenth century. These travellers were disappointed to find that Jerusalem was a remote and neglected Ottoman city rather than a glorious manifestation of Christian Divine Order. Western scholars undertook the task of revealing the biblical city, the ‘real’ Jerusalem buried beneath the Ottoman city. European archaeologists therefore went on ‘biblical archaeological crusades’ (Long, 203), motivated more by a wish to support their ideologies rather than by the discovery of the city’s past. Evidence of other cultures and peoples found in the excavations were considered less interesting and unimportant, as were the contemporary Ottoman city and its inhabitants (Silberman, 492-494). Protestant presence in the Holy Land in the nineteenth century was thus inspired by what Lock has called ‘devotion modified by historicism’,

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which saw history, archaeology, geography and geology as disciplines that could scientifically testify to the places and events of the bible (Lock, 112). The contemporary landscape inspired the pilgrims to imagine how it was experienced by Jesus, and this act of imagination could not be performed inside churches and shrines. On the contrary, holy sites and crowds of worshippers would obstruct this ‘inner vision’ and distort the experience of the Sublime (Lock, 122-127). Archaeological finds of the sites of Jesus were documented in visual media – such as books containing illustrations, photos and maps, as well as miniature models. Many models were built during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some for bible studies (such as models built by different Protestant communities in the United States), and others for commercial purposes (such as the ‘Jerusalem Exhibit’ of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair). They offered an experience removed in space and time, by providing representations of the Holy Land to people in distant countries, as well as a contemporary experience of the biblical past. In this tradition, Protestant visitors to the Second Temple Model can experience a space for ‘geopiety – that curious mix of romantic imagination, historical rectitude, and attachment to physical space’ (Long, 1). As a representation of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, the model responds to Protestant religious expectations and emotions by offering a panoramic and uncontaminated view of the city. The distant view corresponds to the Protestant preference for broad vistas and sweeping prospects, related to the experience of the Sublime and the inner vision. This ‘Protestant optic’ is historically and ideologically constructed, and Lock argues that it is favoured by the discourse of modernity and is still used by contemporary scholars of the Holy Land and its pilgrims (Lock, 127-131). Indeed, the concept of a distant perspectival view, a prospect, dominates the discourse of modern Western art history, as noted by Mitchell: Landscape is something to be seen, not touched. It is an abstraction from place and a reification of space, a reduction of it to what can be seen from a distant point of view, a prospect that dominates, frames, and codifies the landscape in terms of a set of fairly predictable conventions – poetic, picturesque, sublime, pastoral and so on. (Mitchell, 2000, 197-198)

Thus religious symbolism and aesthetics played a role within the constructive narratives of modernization (Shamir, 99), by countering the modern notion of the acceleration of time. While modernism stressed the secular advance of progress, religion gave it meaning by transforming it into

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pilgrimage (Shamir, 103). Hence the Protestant travelers to the contemporary Holy Land and to its ancient representation the Second Temple Model are both modern tourists as well as pilgrims, able to experience spirituality through an act of imagination, prompted by the long views. Representing the Past As discussed above, archaeology is significant to the formation of Israeli national identity, and here lies the importance of the model as a representation of archaeology. Unearthing archaeological sites, both before and after 1967, was an instrument in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the physical territory as well as over the past which was hidden under this territory and justified its national importance. As noted by Nitzan-Shiftan, ‘Israel’s nation-building project has utilized the past as a modern resource. And the scientific accuracy of archaeology has helped Israelis to imagine and consequently experience their biblical past as accessible and real.’ (Nitzan-Shiftan, 61). A selective approach which prioritized biblical archaeological findings, typified the 1920s excavations conducted by Jewish scholars employed by the Palestine Department of Antiquities of the British Mandate, as well as by the staff of the Archaeology Department at the Hebrew University. These archaeologists saw in their discoveries a validation of modern Jewish political rights (Silberman, 496). The sites provided ‘evidence of ancient Israelite and Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, thereby supplying the very foundation, embodied in empirical form, of the modern nation’s origin myth.’ (Abu El-Haj, 3). The ‘origin myth’ as analysed by Balibar is an important element in constructing a nation’s narrative of continuity, which presents the contemporary nation as the culmination of an ongoing ‘project’ that extends over centuries. The origin myth is a retrospective illusion, ‘an effective ideological form, in which the imaginary singularity of national formations is constructed daily, by moving back from the present into the past’ (Balibar, 87). In the Israeli context, the narrative of continuity has a particular meaning, since it constructs the present as a direct continuity of the Second Temple period. This gap must be bridged in order to overlook the two thousand years of Jewish life in the Diaspora, which are negated in the Zionist narrative. The Israeli secular myth of origin is therefore based on a connection between people and ancient sites, and projects collective memory onto physical places. The importance of archaeology for the secular elite after

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the establishment of the state in 1948 is exemplified in the interest shown by dignitaries such as the president, prime minister and senior ministers, chief of staff and other public figures who attended the annual conferences of the Israel Exploration Society. The political elite and the senior archaeologists were closely connected during the early years of the state (Kletter, 315). Moreover, Abu El-Haj suggests that as a discipline, archaeology depends upon public appreciation of the scientific and social value of its objects of knowledge. She argues that in Israel, even during the pre-state years, archaeologists attempted to educate the public to realize the national value of ancient objects (Abu El-Haj, 21). This was done in different ways, one of which was media coverage. Kletter points out that in the 1950s the newspapers were active in teaching the public that ‘it was not just the land that was theirs now, but also its past. This past gave Israelis legitimization, so they must keep the remains and nurture their study’ (Kletter, 299). Media coverage of the Second Temple Model in 1960’s was part of this context. Newspaper articles were not written merely to publicize it or to attract more visitors. Rather they were part of an educational agenda designed to interest the public in the connection between visible remains of the past and the contemporary national narrative. The partition of Jerusalem after 1948 had cut off West Jerusalem from most historic sites. In addition, many Palestinian villages had been destroyed during and after the war. These villages were previously regarded by the Jewish public as sources of information about the life of the ancient Israelites (Silberman, 497). Palestinian vernacular architecture provided Israelis with ‘a formal archive of indigenous culture and a type of structure that they believed bore the ‘genetic code’ of the land itself’ (Nitzan-Shiftan, 55). In the absence of the ruined villages, archaeological sites became the main source for illustrating the biblical past in school textbooks, children’s Bibles and popular art (Silberman, 497). The Second Temple Model served as such an illustration of ancient Jerusalem. Furthermore, Silberman argues that the modern Israeli fascination with the splendour of Jerusalem during Second Temple period was later one of the incentives for post-1967 archaeological digs (Silberman, 497). Indeed, after 1967 extensive excavations were begun in the Old City and around the southern wall of the Temple Mount. The excavations revealed evidence of the ancient Jewish past in Jerusalem, but also other remains. Findings from the Byzantine and Umayyad periods, for example, ‘received relatively little attention in the popular literature and almost none in the public presentation of the site’ (Silberman, 499). This approach is explained in a

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newspaper article about salvage excavations conducted in the Old City area in 2012, which revealed remains of Aelia Capitolina, the Roman Jerusalem: In the history of Jewish Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina is the very embodiment of defeat and destruction – a reminder of the humiliation of the Second Temple’s destruction, which erected a pagan temple in its place. This image has distanced Aelia Capitolina from the fathers of Israeli archaeology, who were naturally drawn to the ornate, Jewish city that preceded it. “No one concealed Aelia Capitolina, but we wanted to talk about the Second Temple,” says Dr. Ofer Sion, of the Antiquities Authority. “Aelia Capitolina was an accursed city, a city from which we were banished. It was more idealistic to excavate the Second Temple.” […] Aelia Capitolina has not been entirely unearthed during the many excavations that have been performed in the city since 1967. (Hasson, 21 February 2012)

Hence the excavations were guided by a search for remains of the Jewish past in Jerusalem, which would ground this narrative, and the discoveries, in turn, were interpreted in its light. Such a search and analysis of the finds was typical of archaeology in different countries at the time (Kletter, 315). For example, Lowenthal observes that heritage sites typically display a lack of interest in other peoples’ heritage: ‘To serve as a collective symbol heritage must be widely accepted by insiders, yet inaccessible to outsiders’ (Lowenthal, 49). Evidence of national myths of origin is in some cases prioritized over a professional account of the existence of other cultures in the same place. Lowenthal thus argues that the data of heritage are social, rather than scientific. ‘Socially binding traditions must be accepted on faith, not by reasoning. Heritage thus defies empirical analysis; it features fantasy, invention, mystery, error’ (Lowenthal, 49). The excavations in search for remains of Second Temple Jerusalem were inevitably carried out at the cost of destroying the remains of later periods, which were labelled as ‘recent’. Consequently, approximately 1400 years in the history of Jerusalem, characterized by Arab presence, have received little attention (Benvenisti, 16 June 2008). Furthermore, the Israeli Antiquities Law establishes that ‘ancient’ is something that existed before 1700. Benvenisti points out that this definition means that more than 300 years of Palestinian civilization do not interest the archaeologists (Benvenisti, 16 June 2008). For example, in the excavations outside the Temple Mount, The remains overlying the Temple were […] seen as obstructions to understanding the structure of the Temple complex, and of only secondary

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interest themselves. Thus in counteracting the dominating visual impression of the Muslim shrines on the summit of the Temple Mount by creating new public monuments, archaeology had played an important role in reshaping Jerusalem’s visible historical landscape. (Silberman, 499)

Indeed, the remains of Second Temple are less impressive than the Muslim and Ottoman existing structures such as the Dome of the Rock and the Old City walls. Archaeologists were expected to unearth monumental structures of Jewish history which could match the powerful presence of the later non-Jewish monuments in the contemporary Jerusalem cityscape (Silberman, 499). The Second Temple Model countered the presence in East Jerusalem of the impressive Muslim shrines by representing the Jewish monuments in their complete and impressive original state. Guidebooks and reviews quote the Roman author Pliny who described Second Temple Jerusalem as ‘[t]he most illustrious city in the East’ (Barkai and Shiller, 2007, 9; Tsafrir, 2009, 12), as well as the Babylonian Talmud which declares: ‘He who has never seen Herod’s Temple has never seen a beautiful building in his life’ (Amit, 23; Gabbai, 19 March 1965; Gabbai, 13 October 1967). In addition, the Second Temple Model is a representation of an ideal archaeological site, as it focuses exclusively on a selected moment in the past. Unlike the sites themselves, no remains of other cultures obstruct the model. Its designers were free to complete the ruins and thus to create an image which is more tangible than the real finds. Furthermore, the scale of the model is suitable for representing monumental architecture. It is detailed enough to show the magnificence of public buildings of national importance, which are visible from the paved area around it. Smaller details and interior parts, such as floor patterns and statues, are mostly invisible to the public but nevertheless enhance the general impression of the modelscape. A Vision of the Future As noted earlier, the Second Temple Model represented a longing for Jerusalem’s unification. I argue that it also referred to the future in several other ways, by attempting to bridge the gap between the present ‘space of experience’ and the future ‘horizon of expectation’ (Koselleck, 2004, 272), discussed in Chapter 1. Expectation takes place in the present, but it tries to give shape to what cannot be experienced (Koselleck, 2004, 259-261). The model attempts to overcome this problem by providing a space for experiencing both past and future in the present.

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Since models and modelscapes invoke comparison with the built environment, the experience of past spaces can be connected with the familiar geography of the present. The comparison between ancient and contemporary Jerusalem suggests that the Second Temple Model has to do with the real topography which still exists today. Furthermore, this relevance is extended into the future by giving shape (a ‘horizon of expectation’) to a vision of a future Jerusalem. As argued by Larry Abramson, ‘when seeking a representation of itself, contemporary Jerusalem turns to a lost golden age, depicting a future of utopian redemption through the ruin of the past.’ (L. Abramson, 2006b, 152). The extension of the Second Temple Model’s relevance into the future is also evident, for example, in the use of the image of the Temple, made by different radical Jewish religious groups who try to promote an agenda of rebuilding the Temple in place of the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount (Efrat and Scharf, 2003). The temple’s model is used in some cases to suggest a tangible alternative to the mosques. Another aspect of the model’s influence over the future is its reference to local vernacular architecture, particularly as depicted in the houses of the poorer Lower City. As noted earlier, archaeology influenced post1967 Israeli architecture, and the Second Temple Model as a representation of reconstructed archaeology was part of this cultural context. Nitzan-Shiftan suggests that following 1967 Israeli architecture in the newly occupied territories and particularly East Jerusalem reflected a search for an ‘authentic vernacular’ (Nitzan-Shiftan, 55). Architecture was expected to continue the task, previously f illed by archaeological sites, of connecting the modern Israeli state with the history of the Jewish nation. This type of architecture was preoccupied with ‘traditioning’ the landscape, and ‘animated an architectural program that had attempted to localize, authenticate and biblicize the modern landscape of Israel ‘ (Nitzan-Shiftan, 62). The Second Temple Model is therefore a representation of archaeology, which influenced the making of architecture that was capable of ‘traditioning’ the landscape. Berger suggests that the model attempts to turn the reality to which it refers into a model (exemplary) reality (Berger, 2008, 110). The most striking example for this is the rebuilding of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, using an architectural style defined as ‘neo-Oriental’, which influenced the design of other new Jewish neighbourhoods constructed after 1967 (Kroyanker, 204). Larry Abramson finds a direct association of the Second Temple Model with the landscape around the Holyland Hotel:

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Looking out from the original site of the model towards the surrounding hills, with their dense post-1967 construction – the wall-like barrier of the Gilo neighborhood, the pseudo-temple structure of the nearby Jerusalem Mall, and the recent ‘Holyland Park’ residential development forming an impenetrable ‘imperial’ ring of towers – one might imagine that the representation has spread out and overtaken reality itself, as though the Second Temple model has projected itself onto the surrounding hills. (L. Abramson, 2006b, 152)

Relocating the Model In the early 2000s Hillel Cherni, the grandson of Hans Kroch and now the owner of Holyland Tourism Company, decided to make new development and construction plans for the site of the Holyland Hotel. It was no longer a remote spot in the city; by now it was valuable property surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and close to the new shopping mall and sports stadiums. The hotel was demolished to make space for a new housing project. The owners decided to keep the Second Temple Model, because of its sentimental connection with the Cherni family history, and because of what the vice president of Holyland Tourism, Mataniah Hecht, called ‘an understanding of its location within the general picture of tourism in Jerusalem’ (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010), referring to the model’s status as an established and profitable tourist attraction in the city. During the height of its popularity, it had attracted some 300,000 visitors a year (Barkat, 19 January 2006). At first we thought it could stay. A new hotel was supposed to be built, and we thought of building a tunnel from this hotel to the model. Later we realized it would be swallowed by the project […] you realize that [in this context] the model loses its meaning. (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010)

Hence in 2006 it was decided that after forty years on site, the Second Temple Model would be relocated, and a search began for an alternative place. The new location had to be a place where the model would still attract visitors and tourists. The Holyland Tourism Company considered a partnership with several different enterprises that could provide a new location, and finally decided to approach the Israel Museum. This is one of the most

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important museums in Israel, located in Jerusalem next to the parliament and government buildings. The museum directors were interested in the model and agreed to house it, in spite of some dilemmas which came up due to the fact that the model is not a usual museum exhibit: The archaeologists at the museum were at first not all convinced that it should go to the museum at all, because it does not represent the reality. A museum should give a true picture of things, and show the real archaeology of a particular period, tested, written. And when you put something like that which is actually Avi-Yonah’s dream, we have a problem. (Ruder, personal interview, 23 June 2010)

In the short run, the museum was interested in the model for a specific reason: in 2007 the museum shut down for a major refurbishment which lasted three years. The only parts that remained open were the Shrine of the Book and the Second Temple Model, which was placed next to it. The Shrine of the Book houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and other artefacts which were found in the Judea Desert east of Jerusalem, and date back to the same period represented in the model. The model was put in the charge of David Mevorah, curator of Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine archaeology at the museum. After it was decided to move the model to the vacant lot next to the Shrine of the Book (fig. 11), the relocation project was launched. The model was in rather bad shape, and it was feared that it would crumble during its removal. Trial drillings were made, and attempts to lift some buildings up with their concrete bases were successful. Thus it was decided that this would be the work method for the entire model (Hecht, 2009, 94). In a complex engineering operation, the model was cut into approximately 1100 pieces, which were transported to the museum (fig. 12). The parts that were cut each day were reassembled at the museum one by one, ‘like pieces of a puzzle’ (Ruder, personal interview, 23 June 2010). In a newspaper interview the museum’s director, Mr. James Snyder, talked about the site next to the Shrine of the Book, saying that ‘it is as though history had left this space open for the model.’ (Barkat, 19 January 2006). Mevorah sees it in a similar way: ‘The connection with the Shrine of the Book is phenomenal […]. It was a coincidence that this place was vacant, as if by divine intervention’ (Mevorah, personal interview, 6 June 2010). Therefore, it was decided to strengthen the model’s connection with the Shrine of the Book, and the museum team suggested constructing an underground passage between them. Mevorah described the logic of the movement around the model at its new location: ‘The concept of the tunnel was that you go

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Figure 11 Second Temple Model at the Israel Museum, Aerial view

Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by SKY BALLOONS

In the background are the Knesset (Israeli Parliament, top right), government offices (top left) and the neighbouring Bible Lands Museum (centre).

from Jerusalem eastwards, as if you were going from Jerusalem to the desert.’ (Mevorah, personal interview, 6 June 2010). During the museum refurbishment, a new entrance was built next to the model, and it was decided that this would remain a separate entrance, which will allow groups of tourists to purchase tickets for the model only and enter it directly from the parking lot. Who Visits the Second Temple Model? Hecht argues that the reason for this separate entrance is because the model now attracts mainly organized groups of tourists, and particularly Christian pilgrims (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010). This is an interesting point since the Second Temple Model was originally built specifically for an Israeli audience. One of the reasons for this change is perhaps the general decline in the popularity of archaeology as a ‘national hobby’ in the eyes

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Figure 12 Moving of the Second Temple Model

Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by Peter Lanyi

of the Israeli public. Greenberg suggests that ‘conflict is the oxygen’ which arouses public interest in archaeological sites. Hence excavations within Palestinian neighbourhoods such as the Muslim Quarter of the Old City (the Western Wall Tunnel) or Silwan (the City of David excavations) which have caused violent clashes are those that now interest the public, whereas other excavation sites, such as the Southern Temple Mount excavations which are represented in the model, are deserted (Greenberg, lecture, 26 January 2012).

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Another reason given by Hecht why fewer Israelis visit the model is that the model attracts primarily first-time viewers, who are mainly tourists. ‘The Israelis that came […], that’s the end of the market. Israelis are not a changing population.’ (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010). Hecht explained that Israelis which still visit the model are mostly groups such as schoolchildren and soldiers. Hence although they may not return to the model, Israelis seem to visit it during what are considered to be the formative stages of their personal and national identities. The Holyland Tourism Company had managed to secure the model’s popularity with the agents of tourist groups. ‘It seldom happens that an organized group from abroad would not visit the model’, said Hecht. The model is a preferred site by tour guides: ‘Those who promote the sites are actually the guides. That is my theory. They determine the “musts”, the sites that you have to visit.’ (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010). The decision is also financial; Hecht stated that many tourist groups have excluded some sites because of the entrance fees: ‘It’s all money, trying to minimize costs. The model is a good source of income for us, and for the groups it is not terribly expensive.’ (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010). Thus although the museum benefits financially from the visitors to the model, paradoxically the access to it was designed so that groups can avoid the museum altogether. Hecht explained that most organized tourists are pilgrims or pleasure seekers, and these are not interested in the museum. He pointed out that the museum’s regular visitors do not mix with the tourist groups. Therefore, he sees no use in Mevorah’s concept of approaching the model from within the museum (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010). Although Mevorah is aware of this, he would still like the tourists to visit the museum. In this sense, he thinks that the relocation of the model to the museum may change something in the visiting patterns to it. Therefore, in spite of catering to the needs of short visits by tourist groups which use the north entrance, Mevorah thinks the way to approach the model is from the east: From our point of view, the entrance from within the campus is from the east. And then you come and stand on this viewing platform, which is the roof of the auditorium, and you look at the city. First you don’t see anything, and suddenly you see the model all at once. Suddenly you see an entire city, from a bird’s eye view almost. This is a very strong and exciting moment for the viewer, and it’s a much better viewpoint than coming from the north […]. The view is planned like this, and so are the other four stops of the visit, where we have placed signs. (Mevorah, personal interview, 6 June 2010)

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The placement of signs is another point of disagreement. Hecht, as representative of Holyland Tourism, does not want signs around the model, as he thinks they obstruct the flow of visitors. ‘This is where the guides can deliver their knowledge and themselves’, and the signs only make the place ‘lose its authenticity’ (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010). Mevorah thinks there should be more explanations: When it was moved to the museum it changed completely, its context changes it. Whether it’s the Shrine of the Book that connects with its history, or the f indings of Second Temple period. All the f indings of Second Temple Jerusalem which are exhibited here actually reinforce the life within the city. This is missing, it is not present in the model, and I wanted to bring it to the model and vice versa. (Mevorah, personal interview, 6 June 2010)

Indeed, the context of the museum affects the model. When it was relocated the model gained an additional layer of authenticity and accuracy because of its proximity to museum exhibits of the period – artefacts identified as having ‘objective authenticity’. Its status as a national exhibit was greatly enhanced by the state symbols which surround the museum (fig. 13). Viewing Figure 13 The Second Temple Model with the Parliament at the background

Photograph by Y. Padan

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platforms were built around it where the model is seen with the parliament and government buildings on one side, and the national library and campus of the Hebrew University on the other. In the introduction to the guidebook of the model, the museum director Snyder explains: The addition of the model to our campus provides a vivid context for the Shrine of the Book and the Dead Sea Scrolls […]. Illustrating one of the most formative periods in the history of the Jewish people, as well as the era in which Jesus lived and Christianity was born, it also bears a deep connection with the symbols of modern statehood that surround the Museum campus. (Snyder, 7)

Mevorah planned four stops around the model so that it will be gradually approached from the east, but he too is aware of the far views at the background of the model: When you walk around the model you see the Temple at its centre, and when you look up you see this temple (the Parliament building). No wonder there are some similarities, it [the Parliament] was designed to look like a Greek temple. And you look up and you see the Shrine of the Book, which is also a temple, and you lift your head and you see the museum, which Mansfeld built like a temple on the mountain. And if you look to this side you see the National Library, which is another kind of temple. So it turned out to be a kind of temple compound. And here we have the Supreme Court, which was built as a temple of a certain type. So it turned out […] a very interesting compound of temples, which is very significant. And the coincidence here is amazing. All these are really the result of random decisions. (Mevorah, personal interview, 6 June 2010)

Updating the Model The Holyland Tourism Company still owns and maintains the model, and receives a percentage of the revenue from the tickets. Any changes or updates to the model require the permission and financing of Holyland Tourism. There are many disagreements on this point. Hecht is opposed to any change or update: ‘In recent years I have realized that any play with the model will damage [Michael] Avi-Yonah’s creation’, he stated (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010).

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I see it from an artistic point of view. I’ve never heard of someone going to the Louvre and trying to change a painting of a bridge which has been changed [in reality]. [Michael] Avi-Yonah built the model as he saw fit, with the materials and information that he had at the time […]. I think it absolutely should not be changed. (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010)

According to Hecht, when new discoveries are made, they should be built as separate models and placed nearby, so as not to touch the model. However, this extreme point of view is not supported by others. Mevorah thinks that although the model is a work of art, ‘a sculpture of one thousand square meters’, it should nevertheless be updated. He notes that Michael Avi-Yonah was the first person to update the model: [Michael] Avi-Yona was really a great scholar. Very quickly [after 1967] the excavations were started, both of Mazar near the Western Wall and of Avigad in the Jewish Quarter, and all kinds of other realities were revealed, and he began to change the model himself. He said to one of his colleagues that the most important tool he had was a hammer, in order to break parts from the model that were incorrect. And he pulled off walls, and he changed bridges and stairs, and he changed significant parts and had substantial sections removed because he realized it was inaccurate. That means he started to update, and he was followed by Yoram Tsafrir who continued to update, and we will probably continue this because today more and more new things are revealed that show a different reality. (Mevorah, personal interview, 6 June 2010)

Nevertheless, Mevorah thinks that not everything should be changed and updated. Some things were done by Michael Avi-Yonah with a didactic purpose and therefore should be kept. As an example he mentions the difference between the Upper and Lower City in the model, which is not supported by archaeological findings: He wanted to say that there is a difference between the quarters, both socio-economic and architectural. And that’s why he made these large courtyard houses, with a grid of straight streets. If you check the width of the streets you will find that it is impossible, no ancient city in the world had such wide streets. He exaggerated them, and he gave the houses red-tiled roofs because he wanted to distinguish them. De facto, we know from excavations that not one pottery fragment of tile was discovered.

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We can change it, because we know that’s not true, but it will change a significant principal which was purposely done, so I see no reason to do so. (Mevorah, personal interview, 6 June 2010)

Hecht is very critical of the idea of making even selected changes, suggesting that the museum staff would like to leave their own mark on the model (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010). Ruder suggests that one reason for Holyland Tourism’s reluctance to change the model could be because such changes may themselves turn out to be inaccurate and therefore the model will cease to be viewed as a professional scientific work: ‘All of us, including the Cherni family who still owns the model, are worried about what other archaeologists would say.’ (Ruder, personal interview, 23 June 2010). Indeed, other achaeologists have their own opinions about updating the model. Journalist Barkat had interviewed several archaeologists while work on the model’s transfer to the museum was in progress: Prof. Yoram Tsafrir […] told Haaretz that he supports ‘only changes that [Michael] Avi Yonah himself would have made.’ Tsafrir’s conservative approach is shared by other important archaeologists and experts. Prof. Ehud Netzer, who researched Herod’s construction throughout Israel, feels that any proposal to alter the model ‘will open a Pandora’s Box of arguments.’ ‘If the theatre has not been found until now,’ says Prof. Dan Bahat, an expert on the Temple Mount in the Second Temple period, ‘it is because [researchers] have not dug deep enough. The greatness of the model is that nothing in it can be refuted’. ‘A model of this type involves a measure of pretentiousness,’ says [Prof.] Reich, who designed the model of Jerusalem in the visitors’ centre at the Western Wall. ‘When building a whole model of Jerusalem, there can be no ambivalences, which forces the model’s designers to make decisions on a thousand and one details.’ (Barkat, 19 January 2006)

Hence it seems that the archaeologists involved with the model would be putting their professional authority at stake by deciding about certain changes. One way to avoid the ‘Pandora’s box of arguments’ within the professional world is to leave the model as it is and argue that it is an artistic creation. Furthermore, not only archaeologists are involved in this debate. ‘The public, and particularly tour guides, museum workers and museum guides that have attended one or two courses here and there, are full of suggestions! Change this, change that.’ (Tsafrir, personal interview, 2 March

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2010). Therefore, as noted above Tsafrir was very cautious about making changes: [Michael] Avi-Yonah’s approach […] was essentially conservative. According to this point of view, one should not rush to embrace interpretations that have not been proven beyond doubt, or discoveries whose reconstruction is still debatable. Alterations of the model should only be undertaken after new proposals have passed the test of time. The model is a complete scientific-artistic creation, and any change to it must be introduced with great restraint and caution. (Tsafrir 2009, 12)

In general, however, it seems that Tsafrir’s view was not very far from that of Mevorah. About changing the tiled roofs, for example, Tsafrir said: I refused, because first of all this is [Michael] Avi-Yonah’s creation. Second, you can’t change everything, get into his things. We should update the model, because [Michael] Avi-Yonah himself updated it. I think there are very important things, like the arrangement of all access routes to the Temple Mountain. He started to update them. I finished the update, corrected it […]. This is something we have to decide upon, and I want to do the amendments step by step, to be as sure as possible. [It should be done] in a very sensitive and calculated manner, not to interrupt, not to destroy his work. (Tsafrir, personal interview, 9 March 2010)

The disagreements seem to be partly a result of power relations between the different people involved with the model: the owner Cherni who is a businessman but also has family sentiments for the model, Tsafrir who was an external archaeologist, Mevorah who is the museum’s curator, and the museum’s director, Mr. Snyder. Hecht stressed that ‘the museum cannot decide about anything; the model is ours’. The Holyland Tourism Company had financed the entire relocation project, at a cost of over twenty million Israeli Shekels (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010), as well as the current maintenance of the model. Holyland Tourism has an office at the museum which is staffed by their employee who is in charge of the continuous maintenance of the model. Ruder explained that the only person who can authorize changes is Cherni, who has his own considerations: ‘It’s their decision about everything here on this model. The museum can intervene in terms of content, but whether their opinion is accepted is quite another matter’ (Ruder, personal interview, 23 June 2010). Hence the museum management is careful about the contested

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subjects. Officially, the museum seems committed to making some updates, as the brochure which accompanies the audio guide for the model reads: Though the information available at the time of the model’s construction was rather limited, extensive excavations of Jerusalem’s Old City since then have greatly enhanced our understanding of the ancient city and enabled us to improve and update the model. It is expected that such work will continue in the future. (Brochure provided at the Israel Museum)

However, in a newspaper interview during the model’s relocation, Snyder had been more cautious: Snyder also does not rule out additional adjustments and changes, but stresses that in all its deliberations over archaeological accuracy versus artistic, theatrical and other considerations, the museum favours the latter. ‘The intention is not to build a precise archaeological model, because that is not the museum’s approach,’ says Snyder. ‘True, the model was designed by archaeologists, but we see the model not as an archaeological representation, but rather as a work of art created at a certain time to serve an ideological purpose: to connect modern Israel with that ‘existential rock’ of ancient Israel, which during those years was inaccessible. The model also has its own artistic value as one of a series of models of the Temple and Jerusalem created since the nineteenth century’. (Barkat, 19 January 2006)

Yet, as noted earlier, in spite of this view expressed by Snyder that ‘the model is not an archaeological representation’ and that it is ‘a work of art’, it was not placed in the fine arts wing. Thus for the visitors, the Second Temple Model’s name and location within the museum do indeed associate it with archaeological exhibits. The viewing platforms also connect it with the symbols of state in the background, more than with a series of other models of Jerusalem. Why has this modelscape become a subject of contention? I suggest that this is a result of both financial considerations and its reputation. The museum has integrated the Second Temple Model into its campus, and strives to enhance its image as an authoritative reconstruction by proposing to update it and to link it with objects from the archaeology wing. The owners of the model, on the other hand, have chosen not to donate or sell it to the museum, but rather stress that it is still their own possession, although commercial interests have caused them to uproot it. The acceptance of the Second Temple Model by the Israel Museum and its location in the ‘compound of shrines’ has given the model national

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recognition, and made the question of authenticity and of updating less important for the Cherni family. Furthermore, by making alterations the modelscape might lose touch with their own family history, which identifies them as part of the elite Zionist hegemonic founders who had contributed to the nation. This point gained further significance after the model’s relocation and the construction of the new ‘Holyland Park’ luxury housing project, when a police investigation began following allegations of corruption involved in gaining the extensive building rights on the site. To sum this chapter up, the Second Temple Model reveals how changing narratives of collective identity were translated into tangible miniature objects and spaces. Initiated as a private commercial site, it was designed and presented to the public as a substitute for real archaeological sites which were considered of national importance but were inaccessible to the Israeli public. Thus the modelscape assumed a semi-official role as a representation of the sites of a formative period in the history of Israeli national identity. I argue that the Second Temple Model functions as a space of objectified memory, which is unrestricted by the limits of the ‘real’ sites of heritage which it represents. The modelscape is capable of depicting an idealized archaeological site in which no other periods obstruct the complete representation of the nation’s formative era. Its task is not merely representing historical continuity and the persistence of the collective. Rather, it supports the construction of a myth of origin which links the present-day nation with the distant past. The success of the Second Temple Model depended on the provision of a convincing material image, a credible representation of its objects of reference. Its attributed authenticity was mainly due to the professional authority of the different well-known archaeologists which had been involved in it since the 1960’s. In its new location at the Israel Museum, the modelscape’s semi-official status as a national exhibit has been enhanced and connected with the authenticity and scientific accuracy attributed to the archaeological artefacts of the period. The Second Temple Model operates on a physical as well as symbolic level. It shows an alternative to the contemporary city of Jerusalem and its conflicts. The limited correlation between the familiar city of today and the ancient city makes the modelscape both a material representation and an abstract site. It is a real place in its own right as well as a space of collective memory that animates the unattainable glorious city of the past. Furthermore, it has a view towards the future as well. The question of representing in the present a vision of the future is further discussed in the next chapter, which analyses a modelscape of contemporary Israel.

4

Mini Israel ‘See it all – small’ – The first slogan of the Mini Israel theme park

This slogan appeared on the early brochures of the Mini Israel theme park as well as on its website, promising the visitors an opportunity to see it ‘all’ in miniature. As in Chapter 3, the analysis of this modelscape answers the main theoretical questions: What does ‘all’ mean in this context? How does this modelscape represent Israeli national identity? How does it signify the nationalization of the territory? The Mini Israel theme park is a site of entertainment and leisure, and this framing determined the methodological decision to focus in its analysis on the ways in which the people involved in its creation and management have identified the visitors’ expectations, and how they responded to them. As will be shown in this chapter, in the decade between this modelscape’s inception and its opening, the political climate in Israel has changed significantly. These changes have had significant effects on the park’s design, both financially and conceptually. Interviews with the people involved in the design, updating, management and marketing of the park through the years reveal how the shifts in target population from tourists to local visitors has affected the contents and policies of the park. I also investigate in this chapter a counter-exhibition that was initiated following the opening of Mini Israel theme park. The exhibition, also entitled ‘Mini Israel’, was held at the Israel Museum from March to August 2006. It displayed 70 models made by 45 artists, and criticised the theme park’s utopic view of Israel, its perfect geometric layout and homogenous miniature scale models of carefully chosen buildings. For its analysis I interviewed the curator of the exhibition, artist Larry Abramson, who also exhibited his own video-art showing the dismantling of the Second Temple Model, discussed in the previous chapter. Both Mini Israel theme park and the exhibition made use of individual miniature models in order to create a meaningful entirety, framing two different views of ‘Israeliness’. Each provided the visitor with a collection of signs and markers of exterior objects which are worth further investigation. Rather than modelling the physical geography of Israel, both use spatial solutions to suit their ideological standpoints. Both use different filters to

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select individual models representing exterior source objects that deal with issues of national identity. Yet there are some significant differences worth noting between the two. The theme park represents a hegemonic narrative, and exhibits popular sites for the different audiences it wishes to attract: tourists, pilgrims, local families and school children. It is a permanent outdoor instalment designed to provide “edutainment”. It declares itself to be a-political and aims to please all its visitors, yet even models which seem neutral become imbued with political meaning once they are placed in the context of the other models to form a modelscape. The exhibition, on the other hand, was a temporary installation, part of the contemporary art scene in Israel, exhibited in the largest and most important museum. It explored the issue of artists’ representations of reality using the format of the model, and was overtly political. It was aimed at an audience of museum visitors, interested in elitist modern Israeli art and culture. Therefore, I suggest to classify the Mini Israel theme park as a modelscape, and the exhibition as a meta-model, which showed a critical stance towards both Israeli reality as well as towards modelscapes in general. I begin by examining the circumstances in which the Mini Israel theme park was initiated, and the decision to shape the site as a Star of David, ignoring the country’s tangible geography. I argue that the park’s layout has a symbolic meaning both as a national icon and as an ‘ideal city’. In terms of shape it is a descendant of the Disney theme parks, which are characterized by geometric centralized plans. Historically these plans derive from the western cultural tradition of depicting ideal cities. The use of similar plans in contemporary theme parks marks them as ‘city-states’, representing an internal logic and order. The star shape of Mini Israel relates the park both to this tradition of an idealized fortress town as well as to the Star of David as a national symbol of Israel. However, in Mini Israel the centralized plan had further uses. It served to evade the issue of the geopolitical borders of Israel, while at the same time making a political statement about Israeli-Zionist hegemony. The choice of models within the park strengthens this statement, as cultural diversity is shown in terms of folklore rather than in terms of the social and political conflicts which are still shaping the country’s geography. The park provides an ‘instant’ ideal tour of the country and its culture, which represents an existing consensus about national identity, centre and periphery, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, I suggest that this ideal tour provides the visitors with nostalgic reminiscence of an

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imaginary, unambiguous and confident past, and a longing to see this past reconstructed in the future.

Mini Israel as a Theme Park Mini Israel belongs to the category of theme parks, and displays some of their generic features. Although a comprehensive survey of the genre of theme parks is beyond the scope of this book, some relevant features are discussed since they contribute to the study of Mini Israel, as well as to a more general analysis of modelscapes as theme parks. Theme parks function as spaces for entertainment centred on specific meanings, which are communicated to the public by creating experiences. These experiences are consumed and can be studied in the context of a global commodif ication of leisure. Clavé argues that theme parks are interesting because they represent social and cultural meaning. They are controlled spaces that reflect cultural priorities and constraints, collective conventions, ideals and frustrations (Clavé, xv). Modern theme parks are regarded as descendants of the medieval fairs and carnivals. Milman traces the origins of contemporary theme parks back to the seventeenth century, when the first permanent outdoor entertainment public sites were opened in Europe. During the eighteenth century English ‘pleasure gardens’ opened, showing theatre plays, concerts, fireworks and picnics in elaborate landscapes (Milman, 222). Amusement parks from the nineteenth century as well as the International Expositions contained central characteristics of contemporary theme parks. These included amusement rides, representations of vernacular architecture and simulated geographies, advanced technology, and images of ideal urban communities (Hannigan, 184). An important goal of theme parks is their didactic concepts, aimed at creating an educational experience (Clavé, 5). In 1955 Disneyland was opened in California, marking a turn point in amusement park design and creating new standards for the outdoor mass entertainment industry. Contrary to existing amusement parks, which Disney called ‘dirty, phony places, run by tough-looking people’ (quoted in King, 119), Disney’s parks were designed to reflect patriotic and educational values, focusing on atmosphere, quality, cleanliness, safety and security (Milman, 224). Following Disneyland, many similar parks opened in the US and Europe, based on a central motif or theme. Since the 1980s the theme park industry has rapidly expanded globally (Milman, 224). Major US companies have developed theme parks in Asia and the Pacific Rim, using

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the same themes and concepts displayed in the original North American parks, with slight modifications. For example, Tokyo Disneyland is nearly identical to the Magic Kingdom in Disneyland, California, but Frontierland is called Westernland and Main Street USA is called World Bazaar (Bryman, 3). Unlike the globalized theme parks, some theme parks follow what Clavé calls ‘the local model’, where themed space contains elements of local culture. These parks support the sense of identity of local communities and also function as tourist attractions (Clavé, 77). In local parks ‘the imaginary landscape of each park is specifically oriented at certain social groups that may be stimulated by it. This is why parks profusely use the most generic references of the collective memory’ (Clavé, 195). The shape of the Disney parks is a bounded circular form. Entry is through Main Street, USA, and theme-lands radiate from a central castle, creating a total world. The design reflects ‘Disney’s desire for efficient and humane handling of large numbers of people’ (King, 121). In order to accommodate masses of visitors, the Disney research staff specialised in ‘public engineering’, using social psychology, urban technology and the new study of proxemics, which relates to the distance people naturally maintain from other people, and the personal space in which they feel comfortable (King, 122). As noted above, the centralized geometrical plan is based on the Western cultural tradition of designing ideal cities. The shapes of Renaissance ideal cities during the fifteenth century were based on mathematical principles and seen as representations of the cosmos and its divine universal order (Eaton, 48-49). Similarly, the concept of the Baroque ideal city of the sixteenth century is evident in the design of military fortresses that display geometrical plans, circular, square or polygonal, with a geometric interior layout of streets which was either radial, orthogonal, or shaped like a spider’s web (Eaton, 56-59). Mini Israel presents the main aspects of theme parks, such as a festive, low threat, fun, and fantasy environment (Milman, 232). Like other theme parks, it features a thematic identity, an enclosed space with guest-controlled entrance, a single admission price, attractions for families, food facilities, merchandise and entertainment (Clavé, 28). Mini Israel belongs to ‘the local model’ of theme parks, focused on representing national distinctiveness. The miniature models of various places in Israel connect it to the reality outside, but the theme park features allow it to create an imagined version of the country: it displays a centralized and symbolic landscape of fantasy, and aims to provide a fun and didactic experience.

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The Politics of the Miniature Mini Israel opened in November 2002, following many bureaucratic delays. The long and complex process prior to the park’s opening is very interesting, and reflects the Israeli social and political climate no less than the park itself. The park’s entrepreneur was Eiran Gazit, who had visited the Madurodam Miniature Park in Holland in the mid-1980s and decided to open a similar park in Israel. The first 70 models were ready by the beginning of the year 2000, and were exhibited at the Holyland Hotel in Jerusalem, next to the Second Temple Model. The exhibition was called ‘My Land Holyland’, and was one of many projects planned to attract the large number of tourists who were expected to visit Israel in the Millennium year (fig. 14). The connection between the models of the future Mini Israel theme park and the Second Temple Model is revealing. One motive for the project was the business-oriented thinking of Gazit, who wanted to introduce his models to the public, and of the Holyland Tourism Company, that was interested in re-attracting visitors who had already been to the Second Temple Model. Another reason derives from a thematic idea of continuation. As discussed in Chapter 3, the Second Temple Model represents an Israeli-Zionist myth of origin by depicting Jerusalem in the year 66 AD. In contrast, the models of Mini Israel refer to contemporary sights. Thus it Figure 14 Site plan of the My Land Holyland exhibition

Source: the exhibition website, http://www.inisrael.com/myland/hebrew.htm. Accessed 2 May 2012

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offers a conceptual extension of this myth into the present, representing its own version of a current utopia. The models of ‘My Land Holyland’ differed from the Second Temple Model not only in time but also in scale. They were large models built at 1:25, while the Second Temple Model was built at a smaller scale of 1:50. The exhibition was therefore shown separately, but in close proximity to the Second Temple Model. Only two models showing some remains from Second Temple period were placed in their ‘proper’ location near the Second Temple Model: the Damascus Gate to the north, and the Kidron Valley funerary monuments to the south. ‘My Land Holyland’ had a guidebook written by Barkai and Schiller, who were the authors of one of the guidebooks of the Second Temple Model (cited in Chapter 3). They describe the models as ‘selected sites from Israel’, spanning a period of over two thousand years. The exhibition was organized around thematic rather than geographic principles: Due to the numerous sensitivities, religious, national and political, care was taken to make a balanced selection of sites and places and appropriate representation was given to the three major religions. On display are 9 archaeological sites, 15 Jewish sites, 13 national sites, 3 Baha’i sites, 10 Muslim sites and 20 Christian sites. The models are arranged not geographically but thematically in order to allow a complete separation between the holy Jewish and Christian sites. (Barkai and Schiller 2000, 7)

The selection of sites prefigured the complexities which would later typify the arrangement and contents of the Mini Israel theme park. In spite of the aspirations for balanced representation, four of the nine ‘archaeological sites’ showed significant places in Jewish history.18 The thirteen ‘national sites’ all represented the Jewish state as well as different landmarks in the history of Zionism.19 In fact, Israeli-Jewish religious and national sites (a total of 32) made up almost half of the exhibition. The twenty Christian sites were meant to appeal to the expected pilgrims of the Millennium, and the separation of Jewish from Christian holy sites would accommodate religious visitors of both faiths. 18 Tombs of the Patriarchs, the Kidron Valley Monuments, the Jerusalem Citadel, and the Beth Shearim Tombs. 19 The Israeli parliament building, the Jewish Agency Headquarters, the house and tomb of the first president Chaim Weizmann, the first prime minister Ben Gurion’s hut and grave at Sede Boker, ‘The Roaring Lion’ monument and the Tel Hai outpost, the Rishon LeZion historic cultural center, Great Synagogue and old water tower, and the Great Synagogue of Tel Aviv.

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The ‘My Land Holyland’ exhibition lasted about eighteen months. Yoni Shapira, the creative and marketing director for Mini Israel, estimated that during this time 250 thousand tourists visited the exhibition (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). However, the vice president of Holyland Tourism, Mataniah Hecht, viewed the ‘My Land Holyland’ part of the joint project as unsuccessful: ‘It was a failure, in my opinion. It wasn’t interesting. There was a combined ticket, but none of the guides took their groups to see it’ (Hecht, personal interview, 3 March 2010). One of the visitors who did show interest in ‘My Land Holyland’ was E. M. Bierens, the director of Madurodam. Following his visit, the Dutch miniature park hosted a special millennium exhibition of some 45 Mini Israel models which was called ‘Shalom Madurodam’. Yossi Gal, Israel’s ambassador in the Netherlands, performed the official opening ceremony of this exhibition. The ambassador declared that ‘the exhibition has a good name’ (Gillissen, 10 August 2000). He stated that ‘Shalom [peace] is a very important topic in the Middle East currently. I hope and pray that this exhibition can contribute something to peace in the Middle East for Jews, Christians and Muslims’ (Gillissen, 10 August 2000). The ambassador’s presence granted the Mini Israel models a semi-official national significance as representations of the State of Israel. No wonder, therefore, that a Palestinian lobbyist in the Netherlands had protested against the exhibition, and demanded that every model which is sited outside pre-1967 Jerusalem be labeled Occupied Territories. Finally, it was agreed that these models would be described as located in East Jerusalem (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). Following the protest, the Dome of the Rock was removed from the exhibition’s posters and the new images which promoted the exhibition displayed the Western Wall on its own (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). It was not only Israelis and Palestinians who related to the models as semi-official representations of the political situation in the Middle East, so did the Dutch press. The exhibition lasted from August to October 2000, during which time the Second Intifada broke out (in September 2000). Shapira recalled that following the outbreak of violence ‘a Dutch newspaper published a cartoon showing tourists with cameras standing and looking at a model of Jerusalem, while stones were being showered on them from inside the model’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). According to Shapira, 330,000 tourists had visited the ‘Shalom Madurodam’ exhibition. Another sign of its semi-official character was the fact that the Israeli Ministry of Tourism held a conference promoting tourism to Israel at Madurodam in September 2000. Shapira recounted that all the

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major travel agents of Western Europe had attended the conference and were guided around the ‘Shalom Madurodam’ exhibition by him (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). However, the outbreak of the Second Intifada only days later had practically brought tourism to Israel to a halt. This political development greatly affected the Mini Israel theme park. In its preliminary business plan, the founding team had predicted that 70 percent of the visitors would be tourists, and the models which were chosen were strongly oriented towards this population. Seven years later, Shapira said that in fact only 20 percent of the visitors were (and still are) tourists, while the rest are Israelis. Initially it was the Intifada which had deterred tourists from coming to Israel. But Shapira claimed that later it was the park’s marketing policy which was oriented towards Israelis rather than tourists and therefore the majority of the visitors are still locals (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). The Politics of the Site In spite of the founding team’s explicit desire to avoid political issues within the park, political events had affected it even prior to its opening. The site at Latrun was chosen because of its central location and proximity to the most populated areas in Israel – both Tel Aviv and its surroundings, as well as the Jerusalem area. It is located next to a major highway, and is not far from the airport. The land belongs to the nearby Kibbutz Nahshon which leases it from the Israel Land Authority. Like many other former agricultural settlements in Israel which have turned to more profitable economic branches, Kibbutz Nahshon was looking to convert some of its agricultural land into a tourist site. The initial investor of Mini Israel was Secom Company which had planned to sub-rent land from Kibbutz Nahshon in order to build a commercial golf course, and Mini Israel seemed to be a good touristic supplement to this project. However, the golf course and its adjacent hotel were not approved by the planning authorities, and Mini Israel was the only touristic project realized on this land. Ironically, the park includes a model of an idealized prototype of a kibbutz, showing a scene of agricultural products being exhibited at the traditional celebration of the Shavuot holiday. In the Zionist ethos, the kibbutz is a utopian collective community based on social equality and the self-employment of its members in agriculture. The current privatization of the kibbutzim and the tendency towards employing external workers and renting land for profit, evident in the case of its own site at Kibbutz Nahshon, undermines the idealized Mini Israel model of the traditional kibbutz.

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While the guidebook mentions a shift from the traditional agricultural work, it does not stress the capitalist nature of the new sources of income. Rather, it explicitly states that the model shows only aspects of modern kibbutzim which have not been privatized. The overwhelming majority of kibbutzim, however, can no longer be characterized in this way. Fulfilling the legal and bureaucratic requirements for the park’s construction on the site at Kibbutz Nahshon proved to be expensive and time consuming. More investors were recruited to support the future project.20 The Ministry of Tourism had approved Mini Israel as a ‘national project’ supported financially by the state as part of the tourist infrastructure planned for the Millennium year. However, while planning was well underway and some of the models had already been built, the Israel Land Authority came up with an evaluation of the land which was eight times higher than had been estimated by the park’s founding team.21 Consequently, work on the park was stopped. As noted above, the models which had already been built were exhibited temporarily at the Holyland Hotel and at Madurodam. The initial opening day of the park which had been planned for the memorable date of 9.9.99 was postponed to the year 2000. However, the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 had caused more delays. The Palestinian construction workers who had been preparing the site for Mini Israel were unable to continue their work. In addition, following terror attacks in different places in Israel, the Police Department had placed new and stricter security demands on the park’s operators, which cost an additional sum of 1,000,000 NIS and further delayed the project. Hence the park was finally opened in November 2002. As will be discussed later, the park has suffered severe financial blows as a result of these political events. Constant efforts are made to attract Israelis to revisit Mini Israel, mostly focused on activities around the modelscape rather than on the models themselves. The latest addition is a 3D aerial movie of Israeli sites, another way to see the country without going out of the park’s boundaries. Models of some Christian monuments were not built due to the absence of tourists, most notably the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In contrast, other models have been added to appeal to the Israeli population, such as the local ‘Big Brother House’ used in the 20 The Secom Company was joined by Or Yam, another company from Shikun and Binui of the Arison Group. Significantly, the Arison Group includes two historic Workers’ Union construction companies ‘Solel Boneh’ and ‘Shikun Ovdim’, which were involved in all major construction projects in the early years of the State of Israel. These companies were merged and privatized in 1996. A third investor in the park was Granite Hacarmel Group. 21 Ofer Petersburg, ‘The Big Problems of Small Israel’, 29 July 1999, 12.

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popular reality-TV show. Other new models have been determined by the institutions which finance them, such as the planned model of Bar Ilan University. Thus the modelscape’s ‘imagined geography’ is influenced by political and financial constraints, and the Israeli ‘model city’ is no longer shaped by an ideal vision but rather by a harsh reality.

The Politics of Utopia: Planning the Site The creative and marketing director for Mini Israel, Yoni Shapira, was in charge of choosing the models and designing the park. Initially, he explained, the idea was to shape the park more or less in the shape of the country’s geography, as was done in several other ‘mini cities’ around the world. However, the long and narrow shape of Israel did not fit the shape of the site. It was also not an ideal shape according to the Disney perception of the layout of a tourist attraction, which should allow for spatial dispersion of the visitors so that large audiences could visit the park and not feel overcrowded. This was a crucial point since the goal of the park’s management was 700,000 visitors per year (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). Shapira decided to abandon geographical accuracy in favour of a more centralized plan. As in the Disney parks, Shapira wanted a layout which would answer to the practical needs of the shape of the site and the distribution of visitors, but would also have symbolic meaning. His concept was that models appeal to people because they have a symbolic dimension, and because they represent something that people can relate to and identify with on a personal level. He wanted this to be expressed in the arrangement of the entire park. When a tourist comes to Israel, whether he is Christian, Jew, or Muslim, this country is for him part of his own heritage, the Holy Land. He grew up on stories and values and visuals and images, and therefore his relation and identification with the Mini Israel models is deeper than anywhere else in the world […]. I had an insight that the park is a very important element for identification, and this identification is with a symbol rather than with reality. And if I make a park of symbols, then the park itself should express some kind of symbolism. (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010)

Therefore, Shapira decided to shape the park’s layout as a Star of David (fig. 15). Berger points out that in Mini Israel the symbolic dimension is

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Figure 15 Plan of Mini Israel (official map which visitors receive at the site), 2010

needed because the national affinity with the territory is problematic (Berger, 2008, 170). The symbolic shape not only provides a centralized geometrical plan, but also solves several other problems faced by the park’s founding team. One of them was the fact that 60 percent of the country is desert, whereas most of the sites represented by models are located in the remaining 40 percent. Another problem which revealed a fundamental political issue was the question of Israel’s borders. Shapira decided to avoid this question altogether: ‘Any border would have infuriated someone, whether from the Left or Right. So, as they say, politics is something you don’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole’. The Star of David, he concludes, ‘enabled me to evade political reality’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). In fact, the park’s shape is itself a political statement of Jewish-Zionist domination. Sorkin defines the type of symbolic space used in the Disney theme parks, as ‘antigeographical’ (Sorkin, 208). Similarly, the Star of David outlines an image of Israel which is ‘antigeographical’ not only in its shape but also in its avoidance of political and social complexities. Hence Feige has described Mini Israel as a ‘meta-place’, referring to its efforts to represent ‘all’ worthy places in Israel (Feige, 331). These places are contained within a simplified shape, which substitutes for a contested and unresolved geography.

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In its early marketing slogan Mini Israel was branded as ‘[t]he whole country in one little town’. Larry Abramson sees the park as ‘[a] utopian model of the promised land of Zionism, a Jewish state in Israel. “Mini Israel” is nothing short of the ideal Israeli city’ (L. Abramson, 2006a, 211). The confusion between city and country is revealing, because theme parks are often referred to as urban environments. Hence Mini Israel, in its a-political and pastoral guise, is both a model city and a representation of a utopic political vision of a Jewish-Zionist ‘citystate’. This is achieved by the grouping of selected individual architectural models into a meaningful complex – a modelscape. Israel is best represented as one ‘little town’, since both city and theme park are products of modernity. The vision of modernity is also part of the Zionist ethos, represented in the park by an emphasis on transportation and technology. The park displays 3,500 vehicles (some in motion), about 100 boats and ships, and about 20 airplanes. It has a section entitled ‘infrastructure’ which includes models of the Electricity Company, the Satellite Communication Station, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Meteorological Station and various private companies related to transportation. The geometric center of the park, where Disney would place the magic castle, houses a set of models representing a city under construction, with miniature building equipment at work. This model is one of the signifiers of Israeli national identity, reminiscent of ‘the Israeli urge to cover the country with concrete and cement – to establish facts on the ground, to build settlements overnight, to create cities out of sand dunes’ (L. Abramson, 2006b, 150). Shapira had this vision in mind when he designed this central model, with various urban housing types which show different stages in the process of construction. ‘I think a city built from scratch is a very Israeli phenomenon’, he explained. ‘Consider a place like the new city of Modi’in – rocky hills on which a city was planned from scratch. And the example we used here is actually architecture from Modi’in and its surroundings.’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). The ‘city under construction’ in Mini Israel is thus, according to Larry Abramson, the ultimate model of a model. The building site simultaneously depicts the construction of the model itself as well as the exterior referent of a prototype of a new Israeli city (L. Abramson, 2006b, 150). Hence the park is a symbolic manifestation of both visionary urbanism and modernity, and rural settlements and agriculture, which are also part of the Zionist ethos. The shape of the Star of David which bends and distorts the geography is also capable of bending the borders between city and state, rural and urban. Thus the first English slogan of the park read: ‘See it all… small’.

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Within the idealized layout of the Star of David the design team had to choose where to place each model. Here too the approach was to create a symbolic harmonized image of the country. In an interview before the opening of the park, the manager Eiran Gazit said: We made extraordinary efforts to create something sane, non-political, and optimistic. We do not have wars and cemeteries in the park. We tried to create a park that represents the most beautiful and significant buildings and sites in Israel – without leaving anyone dissatisfied because they are not represented. We tried not to put into the park places which are not within the public consensus. (Moshe Ronen, 19 Sept. 2002)

Public consensus is represented by simulations of architecture, reducing Israeli society to its bare physicality (Feige, 338). Unlike their source architectural objects, the models in the park are removed from their original contexts and arranged in a fantastic layout to form a modelscape that is capable of communicating narratives that suit different types of visitors. ‘The tourist or visitor can find, identify and relate to sights which “belong to them” and are places of reference and identification.’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). Although the models depict the present, they also provide the visitor with an opportunity to experience an imagined past, in which an unambiguous and confident image of Israel and its inhabitants was considered possible (Feige, 341). As argued by Stewart, such a nostalgic vision is a constructed experience: Nostalgia, like any form of narrative, is always ideological: the past it seeks has never existed except as narrative, and hence, always absent, that past continually threatens to reproduce itself as a felt lack. Hostile to history and its invisible origins, and yet longing for an impossibly pure context of lived experience at a place of origin, nostalgia wears a distinctly utopian face, a face that turns toward a future-past, a past which has only ideological reality. (Stewart, 23)

In addition to a reminiscence of an imaginary less complicated political past, Mini Israel is thus also a celebration of the present order of things. Feige argues that the park’s layout as a Star of David ‘is based on hegemonic conceptions of the nature of the state, it naturalizes and hides power relations, thereby assisting in making them invisible, taken-for-granted, and therefore, legitimate’ (Feige, 334). The idealized image of the dominant

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mainstream concept of the state also suggests a future devoid of conflicts and opposed to the harsh reality outside the borders of the park. Similarly, Sorkin argues that the Disney strategy ‘inscribes Utopia on the terrain of the familiar and vice versa’ (Sorkin, 226). In this utopia, the visitors are introduced to a narrative in which contradictory elements have been harmonized (Boyer, 200).

The Politics of the Sign: Choosing the Models Shapira selected the individual models. As an experienced tour guide, he knew what visitors and pilgrims would be interested in, ‘whether Jewish, Catholic, Evangelical, Protestant, or Muslim’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). He described the process of decision making about which models to include as comprising several ‘orbits of thought’. The first orbit is what I as an Israeli want to show to my fellow citizens. And then what I as an Israeli want to show of my country to foreign visitors. I said what I as an Israeli and a Jew want to show, but there are also other Israelis who are Bedouin and Druze and Muslims and Circassians and Christians. What interests them, what characterizes them? I had to think of all the models that would represent every potential public in Israel. And what someone will be proud of, if they are a Bedouin with their guest. I think subjectively but also as an experienced tour guide, what is important to the Jewish visitor, the Christian visitor, the Muslim visitor who are not local, who come from abroad, and what they expect to see in Israel, the Holy Land, giving them the elements with which they will identify. (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010)

The question of what tourists expect to see is a key concept in the design of tourist attractions. Sightseeing shapes the tourist’s experience of a foreign country, and tourists have preconceived ideas about the sights they intend to visit (Reisinger and Steiner, 74). As discussed earlier, Culler argues that tourists read cities, landscapes and cultures as systems of signs. The ‘real’ sites require markers such as souvenirs or representations, which mark them as important sights for tourists and as places worth visiting (Reisinger and Steiner, 159). I have argued previously that miniature architectural models which reproduce ‘real’ sights function as such markers or ‘supporting devices’. They act as what Culler calls ‘off-site markers’, which frame the ‘real’ sites as original or authentic. The authentic sites must be

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marked and differentiated using representations, because authenticity is a sign relation (Culler, 1988, 160). Hence I argue that the logic of a theme park of models would be to represent sites that tourists expect to see, and to provide markers so that tourists will recognize the original sites when they see them. Likewise, having visited the ‘real’ sites, the tourist still finds the models at the theme park significant, since they serve to compare the original with its reproductions. As I have suggested earlier, one of the features of the model is the fact that it invokes comparison with its external object of reference. Hence the observer of a model is engaged in exploring the sign relation between marker and source. The miniature model thus becomes part of the source’s ‘symbolic complex’, marking and differentiating the ‘real’ site (Culler, 1988, 162). The advantage of the miniature modelscape over other kinds of markers (souvenirs, brochures, etc.) is that it provides the visitor with an entire array of markers. While the tourist may be primarily interested in and expecting to see Christian sites, for example, the modelscape also displays signs of other themes such as ‘Israeliness’, which will possibly later be recognized by the tourists on their travels in Israel. Similarly, having completed the visit, the tourists will then be reminded of sites which the modelscape frames as typically Israeli. Furthermore, the miniature modelscape provides tourists with representations of places which they may have no time to visit, and offers substitutes for sites which the tourist has missed. Here the tourist is given an opportunity to see aspects of Israel which the tour did not include. Knowledge of a culture often involves travel to locations of collective importance, such as sacred sites, places where key events took place, and the homes of specific individuals (Rojek and Urry, 12). Mini Israel provides ‘instant’ travelling and hence produces a simulation of cultural knowledge through the examination of miniature models of ‘cultural shrines’, conveniently located next to each other. Indeed, Feige suggests that Mini Israel is part of ‘the post-hiking phenomenon’, whereby visitors prefer a simulated visit to an actual one (Feige, 332). Hiking is a popular activity in Israel and is rooted in Israeli culture. Ben-David argues that hiking is a symbolic activity which serves to consecrate space, and teach social and cultural values to the hikers. In Israeli society hiking is a way to legitimize both personal and national identity. The hikers mark out territory and possess it by the act of walking, and thus the hike serves to strengthen ties between Israelis and the land. The possession of the land is marked by the walking body, both physically and by consecration (Ben-David, 129-143).

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The centrality of hiking in Israeli civil religion is represented in Mini Israel by the simulated walk around the miniature territory. Feige suggests that this testifies to the transformation of Israeli society into a post-ideological era, marked by a preference to visit simulated representations of reality over actual visits to places (Feige, 332). The change from the Zionist hiking ethos into ‘post-hiking’ is mediated in Mini Israel by the physical presence of the miniature models which offer a symbolic journey to an idealized national landscape. Thus Ehud Gross, the park’s director during 2009-2011, relates to the park not only as a substitute for actual hiking, but also as a means to know the country better: How many of us are familiar with the Land of Israel? How many know it? How many have seen it? Even those who know the country, have they seen it all? We provide an opportunity to see the country in threedimensions. If you can appreciate an aesthetic experience, then it is clear that seeing a model at 1:25 gives you some advantages. First, you see how the building was constructed. Second, you see what you cannot see in reality because your eyes do not have an angle wide enough to see the whole structure at once. Here you have a chance to see at a glance any angle of the building that you may want to see. You can see in one glance things that would normally require walking and wandering around the building. So clearly there is an extra value here, you have advantages that you lack in reality. Plus, here everything is close, at a distance of two meters. Even structures that are in the same city may require walking or driving between them and here you can see them together. (Gross, personal interview, 21 February 2010)

The relationship of the models to their source objects is exemplified by two models whose reference sites are visible from the park. One of them is the Armored Corps Memorial at Latrun. This is one of two sites which Shapira had insisted on having at the park, the other being the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial site which will be discussed below. Shapira described the model of the Armored Corps Memorial as ‘a symbolic focus of a site commemorating the fallen soldiers’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). The model is thus a sign not only of the nearby ‘real’ memorial, but also of a typical commemoration site. Furthermore, it is also a sign of a typical Israeli national site. The status of commemorational sites in the Israeli ethos, which will be further discussed in Chapter 5, is so important that Shapira thought every visitor to the park must see them. He thus described the park as a site of ‘edutainment’, combining education and entertainment. The authority of

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Figure 16 The Latrun Monastery (at the far background) seen with its model

Photograph by Y. Padan

the model of the Armored Corps Memorial as a faithful representation is supported by the presence of its source object, visible from the park. In this sense, the physical proximity enhances the process whereby model and source object confirm each other as markers of national importance. The other model which can be seen in the modelscape together with its source object is the Monastery of the Contemplative Trappist Monks in Latrun (fig. 16). A special platform had been constructed opposite this model, which enables the visitors to view it with the real building directly

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behind it. This again highlights the process in which the models in the park are defined by exterior ‘real’ sites, while simultaneously marking those ‘real’ sites as authentic places worth visiting. In the case of the model of the Latrun Monastery, an inversion of the rules of depth in the visual field occurs. The closer object is larger, but in fact it is a miniature model of the small object in the background. I relate to this inversion using Merleau-Ponty’s concept of depth, where an object seen from a distance ‘does not offer a sufficiently rich configuration’, and therefore does not afford the spectator with a good perceptual ‘grip’ (Merleau-Ponty, 304). In other words, ‘distance is what distinguishes this loose and approximate grip from the complete grip which is proximity’ (Merleau-Ponty, 305). Rather than teaching the viewer about measurable size, depth for Merleau-Ponty means ‘the thing is beginning to slip away from the grip of our gaze and is less closely allied to it’ (Merleau-Ponty, 305). This perception of depth is ‘in relation to a certain “scope” of our gestures, a certain “hold” of the phenomenal body on its surroundings.’ (Merleau-Ponty, 311). The Latrun Monastery model offers the visitor a good perceptual grip, while the actual building seen in the distance is only perceived well enough to notice that it is the same monastery represented by the model. Hence the miniature park here literally performs for the viewer what Merleau-Ponty would call ‘establishing a better grip’ on the world. In this case the visitor, viewing the blurred monastery in the distance, would like to approach it and see it better. However, by approaching the monastery close enough to view details of its architecture, the viewer would lose sight of the entire building. At the park, the model brings the building closer to the viewer, rather than the viewer closer to the building. Paradoxically, by objectifying and miniaturizing the actual building, the model enables the viewer to see its details without losing sight of the building’s entirety. The models of the Armored Corps Memorial and the Latrun Monastery also function as exemplars of the reliability of the rest of the modelscape and thus help to construct the imagined geography as more realistic. Gross explained that although the park distorts the actual map, it nevertheless retains the basic order and orientation of the country’s layout (Gross, personal interview, 21 February 2010). Shapira had dedicated each of the six triangles of the Star of David to a certain region: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Central Israel, the North and the South. This division represents a view of Israel’s main geographic points of interest as well as of social concepts regarding their hierarchical importance (Feige, 334). The areas

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Figure 17 Typical figures at Mini Israel

Photograph by Y. Padan

allocated to the different parts of the country in the model have no relation to their actual size in reality. Within the symbolic layout of the modelscape, peripheral regions are minimized in size, while central areas are exaggerated. The modelscape displays 385 individual models, most of them at a scale of 1:25. They are grouped together in different ways and represent 280 sites. About 20,000 miniature trees simulate the typical vegetation of each area. In addition to typical buildings, the modelscape displays different ‘scenes’ using some 30,000 mini figures, 5 to 7.5 cm tall, and 4,500 of them are in motion. Different social groups are represented by traditional dress, and situated in designated areas (fig. 17). In addition, some scenes are accompanied by ‘typical’ sounds such as prayers in different languages, folk dances at the kibbutz, children laughing on the snowy slopes of Mt. Hermon. The modelscape has been criticized for representing the diverse population of Israel stereotypically (Feige, 338; Berger, 2008, 170). Gross rejected this criticism, stating that ‘this place gives you the entire State of Israel with all its variety and attitudes on the palm of your hand’ (Gross, personal interview, 21 February 2010). Shapira too thinks the figures accurately represent the diverse population:

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The Jews alone have eight or nine different archetypal characters. As for the Christians: there are Franciscans, Trappists, Dominicans, Carmelites, Benedictines, and these are all Catholics. Then […] Greek, Russian, Armenian, Ethiopian and Coptic monks. We went into details that you won’t find in any other miniature city in the world. This creates the very personal level of identification of the visitor. And each figure is in its own place. You can’t place the Lutheran Pastor in the Monastery of the Trappist Contemplative Monks. This allows for the deepest and most emotional level of identification that the visitors feel with their own reality as represented in the model. (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010)

Nevertheless, Shapira admitted that some models on his list haven’t been built and therefore representation at Mini Israel is not entirely balanced. According to him this is due to lack of funds rather than to social bias. As an example he mentioned a missing model of an Arab village: For Israel’s Arab residents there are mosques and Muslim sites. And there is another model which must be built in my opinion. It has an allocated space, but no budget. At one point the investors said, we have spent enough, and we want to see profits. The park is not finished, true, but 80 percent is complete, let’s start to get some revenue. Therefore, I had to change my priorities. And one model whose building was postponed because it was big and expensive and would take a long time to make, is an Arab village. (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010)

The typical village chosen by Shapira is Peki’in, ‘because it has Druze, Christians, Muslim and Jewish residents’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). This model, although unbuilt, was supposed to represent the harmonious coexistence of different peoples in Israel. However, 75 percent of the residents at Peki’in are Druze,22 22 percent are Christians, about 3 percent are Muslims and a few Jewish families make up less than one percent.23 Hence it is not a typical ‘Arab village’, and the coexistence of its inhabitants is not based on equal sectors of the population. 22 Source: Central Bureau of Statistics website, http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader/?MIval=%2Fpop_ in_locs%2Fpop_in_locs_h.html&LocalityCode=56. Accessed 15 May 2012. 23 Source: website of the Circassian-Druze Experience in the Galilee and Carmel http://www. jabel.org.il/Kfarim/Templates/showpage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=2&TMID=84&FID=3 3. Accessed 15 May 2012.

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Figure 18 A Bedouin tent at Mini Israel

Photograph by Y. Padan

In the absence of an Arab village, Shapira used models of religious and folkloristic images, such as shrines and touristic sites to represent the different sectors. For example, he explained that the models of the city of Beer Sheva represent the Arab population. Beer Sheva had been an Arab city until 1948, but today most of the city’s nearly 200,000 inhabitants are Jews.24 Thus the models of Beer Sheva in the modelscape are distorted representations of the Arab population which simultaneously ignore the large Jewish population. These representations include several detached models showing sites of folklore and ‘heritage’. One of these is the Bedouin Market, which today no longer has much to do with Bedouins. Another is a Bedouin tent (fig. 18), which similarly is used nowadays mostly to provide a touristic experience. These models do not represent the Bedouin population’s real situation. Since 1948 the State of Israel has displaced most of the Bedouins from their lands and has attempted to force them into seven townships. About half of the 140,000 Bedouins have refused to leave their lands and regard the townships as problematic places, detrimental to the Bedouin way of life and social structure. As a result, the dispute between the state and the Bedouins has become one of the central 24 Central Bureau of Statistics, website, http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader/?MIval=%2Fpop_in_ locs%2Fpop_in_locs_h.html&LocalityCode=56. Accessed 15 May 2012.

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social and planning problems in Israel (Yiftahel and Noah, 72-73). This harsh situation is absent from the Mini Israel modelscape, which offers instead a nostalgic picture of ‘Bedouin life’. Other models of Beer Sheva show Ottoman buildings as well as the remains of an ancient well which folklore attributes to the Patriarch Abraham. Shapira decided to omit the less interesting modern areas, which form most of the present-day city. The former director Ehud Gross has suggested a more flexible approach when he said a model of the Ben Gurion University at Beer Sheva could be added should the university finance it (Gross, personal interview, 21 February 2010). Indeed, sponsored models are highly visible at the park. Different commercial logos appear on buildings, vehicles and miniature billboards. Feige remarks that commercial firms are represented in the park as part of the ‘Pantheon of canonic Israeli sites, on a par with the Western Wall, the Knesset and Masada’ (Feige, 337). Similarly, Larry Abramson suggests that the conspicuous presence of giant corporations in the park is a symbol of Israel’s economic power and ambitions to participate in the global capitalist market, but it is also ‘a symbol of the giant corporations themselves, whose sponsorship of Mini-Israel indicates their sponsorship of the state as a whole’ (L. Abramson, 2006a, 212). In the introduction to the park’s guidebook, Gazit explains that its opening was made possible ‘due to a dramatic encounter between vision and money’. He goes on to state that the vast sums that were invested in the park (about $20,000,000 according to Ronen, 19 Sept. 2002) indicate ‘a value-laden vision beyond purely economic considerations, especially at a time when tourism has seriously declined.’ (Gazit, 6). Likewise, in many heritage sites enterprise and heritage are seen as compatible (Rojek and Urry, 13). The profitable side of sites displaying national and cultural values is also discussed by Culler who argues that tourism conceals the capitalist drive behind it but also reveals aspects of this economic reality and its mechanisms (Culler, 1988, 167), as is clearly visible in Mini Israel. Many of the explanations in the Mini Israel guidebook represent the sponsoring companies. For example, the central model of ‘a city under construction’ bears the logos of the historic Workers Union construction companies ‘Solel Boneh’ and ‘Shikun Ovdim’. In addition to these companies’ past contribution to the nation-building project, the guidebook also lists their current commercial developments. Both companies were merged and privatized in 1996, and today they belong to the Arison Group, which is one of the park’s sponsors. Similarly, other commercial sites are undifferentiated from heritage sights, and appear to be of uniform importance. Thus the Coca Cola Factory and the House of the First President are equally represented in the ‘Central Israel’ section.

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Nearby, also in the centre of the Star of David, is the Ben Gurion airport, where the planes are sponsored by airline companies. Shapira explained that an airport is a major attraction in all miniature cities, with the airplanes moving on their runways (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). However, it seems that the centre of Mini Israel has a deeper cultural significance than the similarity with other miniature theme parks. Berger suggests that the airport and its location in the very centre of the modelscape imply a way out of Israel, with its conflicts and problems (Berger, 2008, 175). Larry Abramson views the centre of the Star of David as comparable with the centres of ideal city plans. Instead of the expected religious shrines or governing institutions, Larry Abramson identifies in Mini Israel models of the founding myths of modern Israel. Thus the kibbutz is a symbol of the pioneering conquest of the land and of social redemption. The airport, and next to it the station for satellite communication and the particle accelerator of the Weizmann Institute of Science, are symbols of technological progress. And the ‘city being built’ is a symbol of the Zionist ethos of covering the land with new settlements, while also mirroring Mini Israel’s own desire to construct the ideal Israeli city (L. Abramson, 2006a, 212-213). This representation of an ideal Israel does not include the Occupied Territories in the West Bank and their Palestinian inhabitants, but their absence is nevertheless a political statement. Larry Abramson suggests that this was done in order to maintain the utopian idea of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (L. Abramson, 2006b, 151). However, when asked about it Shapira explained that this is not the case. The West Bank is represented by ‘two Jewish heritage sites […]: Rachel’s Tomb and the Tombs of the Patriarchs’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). In Mini Israel these sites are detached from their context and represented in their historical appearance. For example, Rachel’s Tomb is depicted nostalgically as it looked before the Israeli army constructed massive barriers around it. The conflict with the Palestinians and its history are evident in Shapira’s considerations about representing the settlers and the Palestinians, whom he sees as parallel sides of an equation. When settlers showed interest in having a miniature model of a settlement, Shapira wanted it to be one that ‘has a historical background that relates it with an ancient Jewish settlement.’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). In addition, he wanted to build a Palestinian village next to the Jewish settlements: ‘It has to represent both sides. I wanted to make it balanced, because I will not go into the political trap here. They did not agree and so there is no settlement’ (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010).

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Figure 19 Figures of worshipers covered with protective box

Photograph by Y. Padan

Nevertheless, ‘the political trap’ comes up in the modelscape in unexpected places. Instances of vandalism have been noted, for example when some Jewish visitors broke crosses off churches, and when visitors threw stones and broke the Muslim moving figures which ‘pray’ besides the Dome of the Rock. The park’s management had to cover these figures with a clear plastic box in order to protect them from further vandalism (fig. 19). Shapira sees these instances as testimonies to the intensity of identification which visitors feel towards the models and the figures: Sociologically, you see the visitor’s reaction to an image he sees as the enemy. It’s his personal enemy which he must take revenge on, and with such a degree of violence. It just shows you the level of identification with the detail, with the character, with the window, with the building, and that’s what’s nice about the park here, which is different from all other parks in the world (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010).

Such incidents testify to the capability of modelscapes to represent an external reality and to empower the visitors in relation to the fragile models. Visitors can experience the models as ‘real’ buildings. Furthermore, the sense of control which the visitor has over the model is extended to a sense of control over its source. Thus the attempts to damage models reflect a frustration with the harsh reality outside the modelscape and a desire to

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influence it. In addition, as discussed earlier, modelscapes are associated with playful objects, and thus instances of vandalism in Mini Israel are an expression of ‘participation’ in the game. The reminders of the harsh Israeli political and social reality in the park were not intended by its founding team. As mentioned above, Mini Israel has been widely criticized for creating a depoliticized image of Israel (Berger, 2008; Feige, 2008; L. Abramson, 2006a, 2006b). These critics have pointed out that the spatial presence of the model masks the conflicts that shaped its symbolic layout, rejecting discussion and criticism and encouraging existing concepts of identity. But in spite of its declared affiliation with reality, the park is devoted to giving its visitors a good time in exchange for their money: The aim of this project was to have people come and smile. Therefore, we have no hospitals, no ambulances. People should visit the park and be optimistic and smile. If this reflects my distorted view of Israel, let it be. Perhaps it is a utopia. (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010)

These words exemplify the notion, typical of modelscapes, of proposing and physically representing a model future, a future designed by human thought which will be better than the present. Such thinking embodies modern concepts of the future: manmade, improved, and exemplary. As discussed, modelscapes are capable of giving shape to utopian realities and of projecting them back to the world. Furthermore, many modelscapes are used as tools to envisage national territories and provide a tangible representation of collective identity. I argue that the Mini Israel modelscape is an example of both these notions: its capacity to represent an idealized reality is used in the construction and representation of Israeli nationality. Its spatial organization and internal logic are oblivious of the social and political situation. Hence it makes a political statement and participates in constructing a pluralistic ‘big picture’ in which a folkloristic and nostalgic image replaces the anomalies of the state.

The Political Economy of Mini Israel The idea of the Mini Israel modelscape as an optimistic version of Israel nevertheless requires some connection with reality.25 This connection is strengthened by devices that invite the visitors to act, simulating actions 25 A further in-depth discussion of the relationship between modelscapes and nationality from the angle of political economy is beyond the scope of this book. Such a discussion is relevant and will contribute to the analysis of Mini Israel as well as other modelscapes.

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they would perform in the original site. For example, next to the model of the Western Wall there is a ‘Wishing Box’, and a sign on it reads: ‘Notes will be transferred to the Western Wall’. A different type of action performed by the visitors is evident in the promotion of private events at the park. As an example the park’s former director Ehud Gross has described the park as a perfect setting for a wedding: Consider for example, a wedding: the food is placed at four or five different points in the park. This requires the guests to walk around the park if they want to enjoy the food. And then it is evening, the models are illuminated from within. The guests stand at the Western Wall Plaza, and there are steps leading up to Mount Scopus, a red carpet, spotlights, a white canopy, everything else is dark. And let me tell you, as someone who was born on Mount Scopus, this wedding which took place here on Mount Scopus has really touched me. (Gross, personal interview, 21 February 2010)

I joined a guided tour of the park on 25 June 2010. Upon reaching the Jerusalem models from the Old City area the guide, too, told the group about the possibility of having private events at the park. She had been hired to guide the guests around the park at two wedding parties before the ceremony. In addition, she said that Bar-Mitzvah’s and Bat-Mitzvah’s were also very popular, especially among religious Jews, who wished to add meaningful content to their event. Hence ‘post-hiking’ seems to be capable of providing the guests at family events with an instant tour of Israel, celebrating the symbols of collective identity before celebrating the private one. Private events are expected to make the park more profitable. Most mini-cities, Gross told me, cannot rely on the miniature models alone for commercial success, and have other attractions on the side. In order to attract visitors to return to the park after an initial visit, Mini Israel offers its visitors art and craft activities, a 3D film about Israel, and various play facilities such as a carousel, a multimedia simulator, and boats on the lake. The park also offers educational tours for schoolchildren, focusing on different subjects. Again Gross stresses the advantages of the simulated tour of the country (Gross, personal interview, 21 February 2010). Feige argues that hiking as a way to know the land was one of the central rituals of the Zionist nation-building project (Feige, 332). Gross, on the other hand, suggests ‘post-hiking’ as both a method for learning about Zionism as well as a means to encourage people to visit the actual sites.

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A real-sized statue of Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, was placed in the modelscape, surveying the miniature land and supplementing its claim to represent the Zionist ethos. This exemplifies the shift in the park’s focus from tourists and pilgrims, who were initially expected to form 70 percent of the visitors, to Israeli visitors. Shapira still believes tourists are essential for the profitability of the park, being a reliable source of first-time viewers, and thinks it is therefore important to add the missing model of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, for example (Shapira, personal interview, 2 March 2010). On the other hand, in 2008 a model of the house used for the Big Brother House reality television series was added to the park. The director at that time, Haim Rogatka, explained this in a newspaper article about the park: One of the challenges to a place like Mini Israel is the need to be topical and contemporary, while on the other hand to maintain the high values ​​ of a museum. So we need to be constantly linked to Israeli values. What characterizes the media today? Reality shows. If Mini Israel represents the large Israel, we must update it. These TV shows have the highest ratings. People may not like it, but this is irrelevant. What is relevant is that Mini Israel should represent the contemporary. Isn’t Big Brother an Israeli experience? (Sadeh, 21 October 2008)

Hence political and cultural issues have influenced commercial considerations concerning the contents of Mini Israel. The park had managed to attract 688,000 visitors in the first year, considerably more than the 350,000 expected. However, since the first year the number of visitors has constantly decreased. Shapira and the first director-entrepreneur Eiran Gazit had been replaced after the first year following personal changes within the group of investors. Shapira is still an external advisor to the park in curatorial matters of themes and contents. The current director Sharon Ninyo is the park’s fifth manager since 2002. The frequent changes in management attest to the park’s financial difficulties. Gross estimated that 20-40 percent of the Israeli visitors have returned to the park (Gross, personal interview, 21 February 2010). Later financial reports indicated that the park had lost about 12.6 million NIS in 2011 and a total of 130 million NIS since its opening (Rochverger, 13 March 2012).

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The Politics of the Exhibition: Mini Israel at the Israel Museum In 2006 an exhibition entitled ‘Mini Israel’ was held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, initiated as a response to the Mini Israel theme park. The curator, artist Larry Abramson, invited forty-five artists to present their own view of their personal and social reality in Israel using models. The exhibition explored the use of the format of the model in works of art, and the political dimensions of the relationship between miniature model representations and their external referents. It showed a critical stance towards Israeli reality, as well as towards its representations at the Mini Israel theme park. Therefore, while the Mini Israel theme park classifies as a modelscape, I analyze the exhibition as a ‘meta-model’, which provided an intriguing critique of modelscapes. The exhibition, like the theme park, made use of individual miniature models in order to create a meaningful entirety, which framed an alternative view of ‘Israeliness’. The choice of signs and markers of exterior objects worth further investigation in the exhibition, challenged the visitors to reflect about Israeli physical and conceptual space. Like the park, the exhibition did not model the physical geography of Israel, but used a spatial solution to suit its ideological standpoints. The critical stance of the exhibition was enhanced by the qualities which contrasted it with the park: unlike the park, it was a temporary installation, part of the current art scene in Israel. Unlike a public seeking popular entertainment at the park, it was viewed by an audience of museum visitors, many of whom were likely to be interested in elitist modern Israeli art and culture. Larry Abramson observed the growing significance of the format of the model as an artistic medium over the years. One reason for this exhibition is that for several years I have noticed that many young artists work with models. I began to think about the nature of this medium, what is this format. I wrote about the politics of the model. The model is a concrete object on one hand, and on the other hand it always represents some reality that is outside the museum, and that makes it a political object. Part of its power is the model’s apparent innocence, like a child’s toy. (Larry Abramson, personal interview, 1 December 2009)

The toy-like quality of models used by artists is a theme explored in Microworlds, a book about works by contemporary artists using miniatures. The authors suggest that miniatures offer a vertiginous shift in scale, which

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generates childhood memories of play. Miniaturized works of art ‘reproduce this alertness, this playful fascination with the world’s infinite possibilities’ (Valli and Dessanay, 8). Artists have been using the format of the model throughout the 20th century, but there has been a dramatic rise of artists’ interest in the specific genre of architectural models since the 1980s (Grasskamp, 62). Architectural models have featured in art exhibitions such as the Documenta, an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. Grasskamp suggests that the 8th Documenta, held in 1987, exemplified the realization that ‘a genre once considered merely ancillary to architecture now has a place of its own in art exhibitions’ (Grasskamp, 62). The complex and imaginative scenarios that children create with toys are ephemeral installations, to be knocked down and reassembled in a different way. Art critics have found this quality in artists’ use of architectural models as well. Larry Abramson suggests that the model features its own destruction as an inherent part of the media. Similarly, Grasskamp argues that the model ‘is a rendezvous where the alliances and programs doomed to failure on a large scale are tested on a smaller one’ (Grasskamp, 62). Architectural models used in works of art function as representations of the exemplary, which is impossible to realize and therefore contains its own negation. Hence Grasskamp argues that the model is the location of a utopia, which is ‘trapped within the stasis of its predictable failure’ (Grasskamp, 66). As argued earlier, utopia is an important concept that comes up when discussing architectural models and modelscapes, as well as their use in artistic creations. However, contrary to architecture and its representations, utopia literally means ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’. The fundamental contrast between utopia and the tangible architectural model is therefore that architectural models are usually intended to represent a place, even if it is yet unbuilt. The distinction between utopic ‘no places’ and real places where some aspects of utopia may exist was discussed by Foucault in his text ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’. First of all, the utopias. These are arrangements which have no real space. Arrangements which have a general relationship of direct or inverse analogy with the real space of society. They present society itself brought to perfection, or its reverse, and in any case utopias are spaces that are by their very essence fundamentally unreal. (Foucault, 352)

However, Foucault suggested that there are some real places capable of reflecting society ‘reversed’. He used the term heterotopia to define such

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places, which exist in reality but nevertheless function somewhat like utopias. There also exist, and this is probably true for all cultures and all civilizations, real and effective spaces which are outlined in the very institution of society, but which constitute a sort of counter-arrangement, of effectively realized utopia in which the real arrangements, all the other real arrangements that can be found within society, are at one and the same time represented, challenged and overturned: a sort of place that lies outside all places and yet is actually localizable. In contrast to the utopias, these places which are absolutely other with respect to all the arrangements that they reflect and of which they speak might be described as heterotopias. (Foucault, 352)

Foucault’s concept of heterotopia has been used in the scholarly discussion of both the Mini Israel theme park as well as the ‘Mini Israel’ exhibition in different ways. The Mini Israel theme park could possibly be a heterotopia, because ‘[m]ore than any other place in Israel, it combines conflicting places in close proximity, and the different sounds emerging from them intermingle in the ears of the visitors’ (Feige, 340). Furthermore, like other places of entertainment Mini Israel belongs to the type that Foucault had described as ‘transitory heterotopias’, such as the fairground and the holiday village (Foucault, 355), that have some common features with theme parks and modelscapes. Feige argues that in spite of the potential of the site, the park does not function as a heterotopia, but is rather a ‘homotopia’, which resists the possibility for inversion and reflection upon other real sites: If a heterotopia is a place that includes and juxtaposes various places, thus enabling, if not enforcing, dialogue, hybridity, and reflexivity, homotopia is the place closed within itself, not allowing other places to penetrate its hermetic wholeness. Mini Israel is at its best in constructing stable, unchanging, uniform locations, populated with the appropriate people. (Feige, 338)

Berger has suggested that the objects at the ‘Mini Israel’ exhibition belong not to the genre of the utopian model but rather to that of the dystopian retrospective model. This model exposes reality’s flaws by exploring its monuments and symbols:

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In extreme instances, the dystopian retrospective model is an anti-model in the two primary senses of the word: example and ideal. It denies the possibility of appropriate representation (example), and it rejects ideology (ideal). It is ironic not only in relation to reality, but also in relation to its own affiliation with the classic concept of a model – in other words, its own probability. (Berger, 2006, 140-141).

Larry Abramson wanted the ‘Mini Israel’ exhibition ‘to hold an inverting “counter mirror” of otherness up to Israeli reality and its utopian representations.’ (L. Abramson, 2006b, 150). The presence of such an exhibition at the Israel Museum is particularly interesting, since this is the same museum that houses the Second Temple Model, which is part of the phenomena criticized by the Mini Israel exhibition. Furthermore, both the Second Temple Model and the Mini Israel exhibition gain a sense of authority and legitimation by their inclusion within the museum. This leads to another important point, that museums are themselves defined by Foucault as heterotopias, and hence they are appropriate places for displaying different kinds of models: The idea of accumulating everything […], of creating a sort of universal archive, the desire to enclose all times, all eras, forms and styles within a single place, the concept of making all times into one place, and yet a place that is outside time, inaccessible to the wear and tear of the years, according to a plan of almost perpetual and unlimited accumulation within an irremovable place, all this belongs entirely to our modern outlook. Museums and libraries are heterotopias typical of nineteenthcentury Western culture. (Foucault, 355)

Nevertheless, specific models exhibited in museums seem to claim full autonomy from the enclosed museum area. Such is the case of the models in the ‘Mini Israel’ exhibition: their reference to exterior source-objects marginalizes the physical presence of the exhibition space. The act of inserting a model into a museum is therefore ‘a construction of a counter site, a specific “other” locus’ (Topalovic, 45). This new site exists within the museum but refers to a different reality: ‘For this new space of possibilities to materialize, the museum has to vanish. The artists wage a battle against the museum, precisely in order to win an access to reality’ (Topalovic, 45). Thus in contrast to the Star of David layout at the Mini Israel theme park, which gives a very clear national context to the different models within it, Larry Abramson wanted to achieve a feeling of a spontaneous arrangement

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Figure 20 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson) 2006, installation view

Israel Museum, Jerusalem (photo: Theolonius Marx)

of the models (fig. 20). However, this ‘unintended’ layout was obviously carefully planned: If I could, I would take them all, throw them in the air and let them stay where they land. But of course in reality you can’t have an exhibition without curating. But it was my aspiration, it was the utopian horizon of the exhibition, that things will work themselves out. As if there was no curator. Each artist will come and find a way to get along with the others. I call it an ongoing negotiation. I didn’t think of the space as fixed, like in Mini Israel. There the form is fixed, the Star of David has its centre and its margins, and it is set in advance and fixed. I imagined a space where at least symbolically each object is all the time in a state of inevitable equilibrium as it were; it has no choice but to work with the neighbour. It should acknowledge its neighbours and deal with them. It’s that kind of space. Now, these arrangements also created endless chains of meaning. (Larry Abramson, personal interview, 1 December 2009)

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Nevertheless, there were curatorial decisions behind the seemingly noncurated exhibition. Larry Abramson had reasons for placing the models in specific areas and next to other models. Some of these reasons were dictated by the museum’s standards of exhibiting, which required for example a certain minimal distance between works of art. Other reasons were the contents of specific models and the wish to display them together with certain other models. The result was therefore no less planned than the theme park: both displayed intentional placings of individual models to form a meaningful complex. However, Larry Abramson argues that the exhibition would have had a similar effect had it been arranged more randomly, forming an ‘unregimented space’, which represents ‘an alternative model of reality that is based on a multitude of differences and on simultaneity, rather than on such a unifying unity’ (Larry Abramson, personal interview, 1 December 2009). Thus the exhibition was an attempt to create a space of heterotopia which would function as a non-space of utopia: Paradoxically, in its drive to deconstruct utopia, the exhibition becomes itself a form of utopia, a meta-model for an inclusive space that is composed of a simultaneous network of many possible worlds, and that proposes tolerance and perpetual negotiation as the essential organizing principles of Israeli reality. (L. Abramson, 2006b, 149)

The exhibition, like the theme park, assigned crucial importance to the accumulation of models, rather than to each individual model within it. While models were built especially for the Mini Israel theme park, using uniform materials and techniques, in the exhibition an opposite strategy was used. Larry Abramson selected pre-existing works of art which he judged to be models of reality. Contrary to the declared a-political stance of the Mini Israel theme park, which nevertheless is imbued with political meaning, Larry Abramson chose the format of the model because he regards it as a political tool. In the catalogue he diagnosed that previously ‘the political discourse in Israeli art was mostly apologetic, as though art and politics were separated by a deep chasm’ (L. Abramson, 2006b, 149). Working in the format of the model was a way for artists to deal with political issues: The playfulness of the model enables them to overcome the empty banality of both artistic discourse and political rhetoric, and the model’s hybrid nature provides them with a medium for the expression of their complex emotional and ideological attitudes towards the fundamental conflictuality of Israeli reality. (L. Abramson, 2006b, 149)

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The Politics of the Model: A Partial Inventory Indeed, some of the models at the exhibition dealt with explicit political issues. One of these is a work by Ravit Cohen Gat and Moshe Gerstel, entitled ‘Next year in Jerusalem Rebuilt, 2005’ (fig. 21). The work depicts two segments of the separation wall, known as the Israeli West Bank barrier. This is a wall built by the Israeli government, partly along or near the ‘Green Line’, which marks the Jordanian-Israeli armistice line of 1949, and partly through the West Bank, diverging eastward from the ‘Green Line’. Its construction began in 2002 and is not yet complete. The separation wall has become the new skyline of Israel. Isn’t the wall, which seeks to become transparent and make the entire Palestinian people transparent, a metaphor for ourselves and our eternal sense of impermanence? In our work we built a painted wooden model of the real Figure 21 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson) 2006, installation view

Israel Museum, Jerusalem

At the centre: ‘Next year in Jerusalem Rebuilt, 2005’ by Ravit Cohen Gat and Moshe Gerstel (photo: Theolonius Marx)

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concrete wall, intending to bring the wall right into the space we actually inhabit – into the living room, the theatre lobby, the museum – and to remind ourselves of the reality that lies beyond the illusion. (Text by Cohen Gat and Gerstel, in L. Abramson, 2006b, 86)

Another explicitly political model is a work by Maayan Strauss, entitled ‘Settlement Evacuation, 2002’. Larry Abramson identifies an important property of the model in this work, namely its ability to represent a future reality. He therefore detects in Strauss’ work a prophetic quality, since it was made in 2002, before the actual evacuation of the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, which took place in 2005. Strauss had built a Playmobil scene of the evacuation (fig. 22). Her text in the exhibition catalogue describes the use she made of the logic of Playmobil games, which depict on each box an ‘optimal’ scene of its contents. Inside

Figure 22 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson), 2006, installation view

Israel Museum, Jerusalem. ‘Settlement Evacuation, 2002’ by Maayan Strauss (photo: Theolonius Marx)

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the box, she remarks, you find the perfect representation broken down to its components: Playmobil is suitable for creating complex scenes like: two bearded figures assaulting a photographer; a woman with her baby in her arms, standing opposite a bulldozer; a crane lifting the wall of a house; policemen pushing back children. (Text by Strauss, in L. Abramson, 2006b, 122)

Another participating artist, Joshua Simon, displayed several models of Israeli buildings built from Lego bricks. Playmobil and Lego are interesting materials for models, since they represent the modern emergence of prefabricated objects. They embody the idea that what you can assemble quickly can also be easily taken apart. Such toys ‘carry within them both the code of construction as well as that of dismantling. The whole thing is modular’ (Larry Abramson, personal interview, 1 December 2009). Hence like Grasskamp, Larry Abramson argues that the works by Strauss and Simon exemplify the model as a representation of utopian thinking that is simultaneously aware of its power to create a reality as well as to disintegrate back into its modular pieces (Larry Abramson, personal interview, 1 December 2009). Furthermore, Larry Abramson argues that to some extent, these models represent the Israeli modern modular building method, unlike the traditional Arab vernacular. This is particularly evident in the prefabricated housing units used by the settlers to establish ‘facts on the ground’. Other works at the Mini Israel exhibition are also concerned with the simultaneous deconstruction of both the model as image and the Israeli building ethos. One of these is the work by Haimi Fenichel, entitled ‘Complex, 2002-5’ (fig. 23). This work depicts an apartment tower and a semi-detached house, both typical developers’ building types. They are sculpted from Ittung, an industrial building material which comes in blocks. However, this real building material is unsuitable for fine detailing, and the precision of the model is also the cause of its disintegration, making it into a representation of a ruin rather than of a building. What is the precise point at which solid turns into dust? When does industrial building material, with the utopian fantasy it embodies, turn into an image of a fragile and friable home? The image is constructed and deconstructed with the disintegration and reconstitution of the material itself. Deconstruction is inherent in the very act of construction, construction in the act of deconstruction. (Text by Fenichel, in L. Abramson, 2006b, 106)

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Figure 23 “Mini Israel”: 70 Models, 45 artists, One Space (exhibition by Larry Abramson), 2006, installation view

Israel Museum, Jerusalem. ‘Complex 2002-5’ by Haimi Fenichel (photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by Meidad Suchowolski)

This is a model of a ‘typical’ housing project, which focuses on questions about the relationship of building and ruin to modelling and utopia, rather than replicating a specific building. Such ‘generic’ representations are to a lesser degree architectural models, and more artefacts that derive their properties from the format of the model (Vervoort, 75). The transformation of an architectural model into an abstract work of art involves two phenomenological experiences. First, the model/work of art functions as an architectural model that refers to a familiar external object, although sometimes nonspecific. Second, it is an autonomous object. Based on familiarity with the source object, the viewer makes an analogy between his or her own body and the model. At this point the model functions as a marker, representing an exterior reality and enabling the viewer to participate in a sign relation between marker and source object (Culler, 1988, 160). Furthermore, the visitor not only compares the model with his or her body, but also the model with its external object, and in turn the external object with the visitor’s body. The body of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is inseparable from its surroundings, creating a ‘co-extensive spectatorship, a perception that encompassed, that made inextricable, the body and what it perceives’ (Meyer, 161). Any perception of a thing, a shape or a size as real, any perceptual constancy refers back to the positing of a world and a system of experience

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in which my body is inescapably linked with phenomena. But the system of experience is not arrayed before me as if I were God, it is lived by me from a certain point of view; I am not the spectator, I am involved, and it is my involvement in a point of view which makes possible both the finiteness of my perception and its opening out upon the complete world as a horizon of any perception. (Merleau-Ponty, 354)

This kind of bodily awareness and involvement is produced in the visitor by models. In the Mini Israel exhibition, the viewers were made aware of their bodies by the scale relationship with the models as well as with their objects of reference. The different scales of the models in the exhibition sharpened this awareness, contrary to the standard scale of most models at the Mini Israel theme park. Larry Abramson had also contributed a work to the exhibition, which dealt not with the Mini Israel theme park of models but rather with the Second Temple Model. He created a video-artwork called ‘Built-up Jerusalem’, showing the dismantling of the Second Temple Model and then screening the film backwards, creating an endless loop in which miniature Jerusalem is taken apart and reassembled. He thus explored the issue of the model as a work that encompasses its own construction as well as deconstruction.26 By analogy, he also examined the deconstruction of the national and religious symbol of the Jewish Temple and the violence that has accompanied it both historically and in the present yearning for its reconstruction by radical political groups. The ‘Mini Israel’ exhibition was criticized on the grounds that it represented chaos and that it would be better to reject model realities altogether, such as this utopia which is undesirable and may deteriorate into anarchy: The labyrinthine feeling and the sense of chaos emerging from the Mini Israel exhibition may have a legitimate place inside the museum, but is questionable as a model for the real life outside […]. I doubt that Israeli society, which has only recently escaped the attempt to realize the Zionist utopia and to impose a uniform model of the ‘new Jew’, today needs a model that would radicalize the process of its dissolution and fragmentation, while relying on the ‘privatized’ individual’s good will. (Sternhell, 24 July 2006)

26 The video can be viewed at: http://vimeo.com/11864542.

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While the Mini Israel theme park attempts to call the attention of its visitors to ‘all the beautiful, the good, the important and the special that we have in this wonderful country’ (Gazit, 6), the logic of the ‘meta-model’ of the exhibition was to question this approach and to call the visitor’s attention to a less glorified and more chaotic Israeli reality. However, as mentioned above, the public targeted by the museum was likely a different audience than the visitors of the popular tourism and entertainment venue. The social inequality and difference in context raise doubts as to how many people visited both sites, and were able to compare them. Yet the exhibition nevertheless provided an interesting theoretical impact for the analysis of Mini Israel in particular, and modelscapes in general. Its importance lies in the questioning of ‘the power of the model’, and its implications on the perception of the exterior world: The power of the model lies in the fact that it is a map, an abstract representation of space, but you move inside it with your body. And once you move in a model, you move differently in the city as well. The model gives a “spatial training”, that is also spiritual training. The model points out what is important and what is unimportant; the model tells you what to see in reality, since in reality there are endless things to see. (Larry Abramson, personal interview, 1 December 2009)

To sum up this chapter, the Mini Israel theme park is a miniature modelscape, displaying selected individual models arranged into a meaningful complex which represents a consensual hegemonic version of Israel. The interaction between the individual models and the entire modelscape, which provides a context, is essential for the visitor to grasp the meaning of the site. Unlike the Second Temple Model that represents an entire ‘real’ city, the Mini Israel theme park displays individual models which acquire meaning from their location within a new imaginary context. The park tells a story which is simultaneously commercially profitable. This approach typifies theme parks of the ‘local’ type, which aim to represent and support a sense of local identity as well as provide a tourist attraction. Economic considerations in the park intermingle with national ideas and values, and the park is regarded by its initiators as a semi-official national site. They not only consider enterprise and heritage to be compatible (Rojek and Urry, 13), but also include replication and representation of heritage as means to capture a share of the market. The state itself has acknowledged the park as a semi-official representation of Israel by sending the Israeli ambassador to the opening of the ‘Shalom

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Madurodam’ exhibition, and by occasionally bringing official guests to Mini Israel. However, as shown in this chapter hegemonic national values and ideas which are within public consensus are so internalized in the park that it requires no official connection to the state and its institutions. Indeed, the park has attempted to integrate itself within the Ministry of Education’s plan of visits for school children. Meanwhile it offers the visitors an opportunity to celebrate their private events within a national setting. Mini Israel theme park is a political space in spite of its declared a-political stance, which aspires to represent Israel as ‘a named community of history and culture, possessing a unified territory, economy, mass educational system and common legal rights’ (Anthony Smith, 1996, 106). Israeli national identity is depicted in the modelscape’s folkloristic and nostalgic approach: common myths, values and memories, symbols, customs and traditions, bonds of allegiance and belonging (Anthony Smith, 1996, 6), as well as institutions which are represented by models of monumental buildings. The line of thought voiced by Anthony Smith posits nationality as a modern extension of pre-modern ethnic and cultural traditions, rather than as a political construct of social forces (Anthony Smith, 1996, 226). Hence its material representation in the Mini Israel theme park suggests that it is possible to portray Israeli nationality as ethnic and cultural, and therefore a-political. The ‘Mini Israel’ exhibition provides an alternative and a questioning of the discourse represented by the park. It criticizes the attempt to ‘show it all’ in one enclosed totality and to give a complete picture by copying individual sites, on one hand, and creating a symbolic layout on the other. While the visitors to the park are expected to respond uncritically to the totality represented by the modelscape, the ‘Mini Israel’ exhibition proposes to deconstruct this logic. Individual models in the exhibition are interpretative and symbolically incomplete. Problematic issues are exposed by the individual models and by the relationships between them. Many models in the exhibition are not realistic representations of their source objects, and this creates a distance between them, as works of art, and their external referents. The lack of totality and of completeness allows the visitors to respond and to interpret the exhibition in potentially infinite ways.

5

The Valley of the Communities ‘Our preoccupation with the vast geographic expansion and wide range of communities […] illustrates the overall story – a large Jewish Diaspora versus a small community forming in Israel’. − Ministry of Defense Website27

The Valley of the Communities is a landscape project located at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. The Valley is a memorial to the Jewish communities which existed before the Holocaust and were mostly destroyed in the Second World War. It was planned by Lipa Yahalom – Dan Zur, landscape architects, and completed in 1992. It consists of a labyrinthine shape whose plan roughly resembles a map of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as North Africa (fig, 24). The Valley is dug into the ground and open to the sky, surrounded by walls of rock about 5-8 meters high, which bear the names of the Jewish communities. These names are carved more or less according to their geographical location, with different fonts indicating the size of each community. Much has been written about the question of how historic events become part of collective memory, the process in which some events are chosen to be remembered while others are left to oblivion, as well as about the question of who determines the contents of collective memory, and how this memory changes over time.28 I concentrate here on the aspect of giving this memory a concrete shape, particularly using public sites and monuments. The translation of memorial objects into narrative is not obvious. Young suggests that monuments are an artistic genre, and points out that both figurative and abstract works of art are often self-referential, exemplifying their own materiality and the process of their making. Such works typically refer to other works of art, creating an internal dialogue within the medium (Young, 11). Hence the questions arise: can this medium refer to an external historic event? And how is this reference achieved? An examination of Yad Vashem and its different monuments raises another fundamental question about the possibility to represent memory at a location which is both physically and temporally distant from the sites where the actual events of the Holocaust occurred. This question is a key 27 http://www.izkor.gov.il/Page.aspx?pid=59. Accessed 19 September 2012. 28 For an overview see for example Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy (2011).

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Figure 24 Plan of the Valley of the Communities

Source: Map available to visitors at the site, 2010

issue in the Valley of the Communities, which represents the Jewish world in Europe before the war, and attempts to virtually take the visitor to the place and time of remembrance. I argue that the Valley of the Communities is a special representation, being a landscape project that is simultaneously a memorial, a monument, and a modelscape. There is a difference between memorials and monuments: memorials are instruments for remembering, but they have different

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formats, such as memorial days, activities, or books. The memorial may also be an object such as a sculpture, but it doesn’t necessarily have a material shape. On the other hand, a monument is a physical object which has a tangible presence. Young refers to memory-sites as memorials and to their material components as monuments (Young, 4). Therefore, I argue that based on Young’s definition the Valley of the Communities is both a memorial in the wide sense of ‘an instrument for remembering’, as well as a monument in the narrower sense of a tangible space. Defining the Valley of the Communities as a modelscape is not obvious. In contrast to the modelscapes analyzed in the previous chapters, the Valley of the Communities has not been referred to as a model. However, I argue that it functions as a monument and a site of memory because it has features that characterize modelscapes. The basic quality of modelscapes is that they are meaningful complexes constructed in reference to an external reality, and therefore they differ from self-referential types of art and abstract monuments. Thus the key feature that marks the Valley of the Communities as a modelscape is the physical and symbolic reference to its external source, which is the map of Europe. The Valley is essentially a miniature representation of European geography. I examine it using the main theoretical questions posed at the outset of this book as guidelines, asking how it addresses the visitors, how it conveys meaning, and how the visual and bodily experience at this model is translated into narrative. This site is analyzed on two different levels, both as a landscape project in its own right, and as a monument within the entire memorial complex of Yad Vashem. This included a study of the Valley’s design process and its location in relation to the rest of the complex. In addition, it entailed observations of the ways people use this site as part of their visit to Yad Vashem. By participating in the Linking Path March I gained further insights about the spatial and oral interweaving of the Valley into the wider national narrative of remembrance.

Collective Memory and its Sites Preserving the memory of the Holocaust is becoming an increasingly central issue as distance grows from the event itself, and Holocaust survivors and witnesses are aging. What has in the past been part of everyday life in Israel, where people were constantly made conscious of the Holocaust by the presence of tens of thousands of survivors, needs now to become an organized collective experience if it is to be remembered. Hence the continuous building of sites and monuments devoted to the memory of

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the Holocaust, commissioned by Yad Vashem – the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, as well as by different survivors’ organizations (Padan, 247-249). These sites and monuments are intended to give material shape to the narratives of the memory of the Holocaust. The centrality of physical spaces for the communal act of remembering is underlined by Halbwachs who argued that collective memory unfolds within a spatial framework and therefore its perception requires material images (Halbwachs, 140). Furthermore, commemoration requires mediating factors, because while commemoration means ‘intensified remembering’, the commemorator ‘remembers through’ specific ‘commemorative vehicles’ (Casey, 218). These include various media such as texts, rituals, and physical spaces that evoke the memory of events which took place within their boundaries. The act of commemoration necessarily occurs after the events have happened, and thus it is an act of retrieving the past. Casey points out that commemoration is not limited to the sites of the occurrence of historic events, but rather in many cases sites of commemoration are constructed in order to bridge the distance in space, as well as in time, from the events. As I argue about the Valley of the Communities, such sites provide a tangible substitution for absent or distant placess. Thus a physical site, whether ‘original’ or simulated, provides a space for constructing a sense of continuity in time, and enables the community to participate in a project of ongoing connection with the commemorated events (Casey, 251). Memorial spaces belong to what Nora calls ‘sites of memory’ (lieux de memoire). He suggests that such sites are constructed in order for a society to anchor its tradition of memory and its memorial consciousness. He differentiates between a ‘tradition of memory’ and ‘history’. ‘History’ for Nora is an intellectual and secular representation of the past which claims universal authority. ‘History’ works against ‘traditional memory’ which is ‘An immense and intimate fund of memory [that] disappears, surviving only as a reconstituted object beneath the gaze of critical history’ (Nora, 12). Consequently, Nora suggests that the sites of memory appear when ‘spontaneous’ or ‘true’ memory no longer exists. ‘True’ memory is manifested ‘In gestures and habits, in skills passed down by unspoken traditions, in the body’s inherent self-knowledge, in unstudied reflexes and ingrained memories’ (Nora, 13). Thus Nora argues that with the loss of ‘true memory’ the need arises for organized places and activities to replace it. The replacement sites are instruments of collective memory, such as monuments, archives, memorials and ceremonies. They are nostalgic attempts to revive ‘the rituals of a society without ritual’ (Nora, 12). Sites of memory are therefore conceived,

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according to Nora, in an attempt to buttress an identity which is threatened. Furthermore, while ‘true memory’ has a collective dimension to it, history does not. Nora criticizes history as being ‘[v]oluntary and deliberate, experienced as a duty, no longer spontaneous […], never social, collective or all encompassing’ (Nora, 13). While I disagree with Nora’s tendency to idealize the ‘spontaneous’ memory of traditional society and to condemn critical history for its destruction, I agree with his criticism of the new sites of memory, which attempt to reconstruct a sense of collective identity and continuity. These new sites of memory act on three different levels, as noted by Nora: they give memory a material shape, they have a symbolic role in representing memory and its significance, and they act as functional places for the passing on of memory (Nora, 19). Each site of memory is a result of a will to remember, ‘to stop time, to block the work of forgetting, to establish a state of things, to immortalize death, to materialize the immaterial’ (Nora, 19). The interplay between history and memory results in a concrete space which is dedicated to an interpretation of an ‘event’, because ‘memory attaches itself to sites, whereas history attaches itself to events’ (Nora, 22). Following Nora’s definitions, I argue that the Valley of the Communities functions as such a type of ‘memory site’. It combines memory with history in an attempt to replace ‘living’ memory, which is disappearing as the number of Holocaust survivors who can communicate their experience of the war in both formal and informal circumstances is decreasing with time. The Valley of the Communities is therefore a site constructed to give memory a material as well as a symbolic shape, and is also a functional space for the transmission of memory. Furthermore, it is used as part of a wider set of memory sites in order to reinforce collective identity, and indeed to construct a collective ritual which is part of civic society’s ‘invented tradition’ (Hobsbawm, 2012; Liebman and Don-Yehiya). The need to perform the memorial ritual at the Valley of the Communities results from the fact that the ‘living’ memory of the survivors is different from what Nora refers to as tradition or heritage (‘true memory’) which is being transformed into a ‘lifeless’ representation by ‘critical history’. In the case of the Holocaust survivors, ‘true’ memory was characterized by stories of their individual experiences, rather than by some shared ‘traditions’. Thus the sites of memory of the Holocaust in Israel reflect not a ‘historical’ critical view of ‘living memory’ but rather the changing formal attitude of the state towards the survivors and their memories. Therefore, in contrast to Nora’s assumption, memory does not exist outside of history, but rather history and memory are mutually dependent (Tai, paragraphs 25-26).

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As argued by Yael Zerubavel, collective memory navigates between historical records and current political circumstances. Furthermore, shared memories are constructed by an array of formal and informal commemorations as well as by the scholarly writings of professional historians. ‘History and memory, therefore, do not operate in totally detached, opposite directions. Their relationships are underlined by conflict as well as interdependence’ (Yael Zerubavel, 5). Furthermore, Tai argues that the distinction between history and memory is too simplistic, since ‘even atomized memory uses the milestones of official, national history to construct or reconstruct the past’ (Tai, paragraph 34). War memorials are a specific type of representation of collective memory. The particular genre of war memorials is a visual sign of modernity. Koselleck suggests that by commemorating violent death, these specif ic memory sites provide a means of identification (2002, 292): First, the deceased, the ones killed, and the ones killed in action are identified in a particular respect: as heroes, victims, martyrs, victors, kin, possibly also as defeated; in addition, as custodians or possessors of honor, faith, glory, loyalty, duty; and finally, as guardians or protectors of the fatherland, of humanity, of justice, of freedom, of the proletariat or of a particular form of government. The list could be expanded. Secondly, the surviving observers are themselves put in a position where they are offered an identity: an offer to which they should or must react […]. The war memorial does not only commemorate the dead; it also compensates for lost lives so as to render survival meaningful. (Koselleck, 2002, 287)

Therefore, Koselleck argues that the war memorial is intended to shift the memory of the dead into a contemporary functional context, which is relevant for the future of the living. The meaning of death is forced back on to the survivors, by means of a physical representation from the ‘political world of images’ (Koselleck 2002, 291-293). Furthermore, memorials stress an equality between the dead and the survivors; an equality which links them all to a common ethnic or national identity (Koselleck 2002, 314). The construction of the past in relation to the collective present and future corresponds with a more general tendency of late modernity. Huyssen argues that modernist Western culture had been preoccupied with breaking its links to the past and turning towards the future and its influence on the contemporary, which he terms ‘present future’. This contrasts with an orientation that has developed since the 1980s towards memory as a key concern

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which creates ‘present pasts’. Huyssen claims that the increasing availability of memory through different media is the cause of a contemporary collective anxiety of forgetting. To overcome this fear, strategies of public and private memorialization are put into use (Huyssen, 431). However, this reliance on memorial media does not guarantee remembrance. Rather, it paradoxically encourages forgetting (Nora, 1989; Huyssen, 2012). As argued by Young: ‘Once we assign monumental form to memory, we have to some degree divested ourselves of the obligation to remember. In shouldering the memory-work, monuments may relieve viewers of their memory burden.’ (Young, 5). Memory devices have therefore become part of the contents of memory itself. Huyssen further argues that the memory of the Holocaust is today inseparable from its cultural representations, which are inevitably part of the contemporary commodity culture or ‘memory market’. Hence films, museums, memorials and other representations endlessly commodify the Holocaust (Huyssen, 431-433). Furthermore, anxiety from the time-space compression of digital culture creates a need for spatial and temporal anchoring. Thus within global culture, memory works to create distinct ‘local futures’ (Huyssen, 434-436). In this context I argue that the Valley of the Communities is part of the cultural construction of this type of a ‘local future’ in Israel. In order to understand the meaning of the Valley of the Communities as a site of memory and its role in the Israeli collective vision of the future, it is necessary to examine the evolution of the Israeli hegemonic views of the Holocaust over time, as well as the construction of the physical memorial sites at Yad Vashem and the Mount of Remembrance. Official Holocaust Memory in Israel As noted above, the memory of the Holocaust in Israel forms a fundamental part of Israeli national identity and civil religion. Civil religion is a symbol system that provides sacred legitimation of the social order (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 5). The formal representations and ceremonies of Israeli civil religion have been shaped by official agencies throughout the state’s history, and Holocaust memorials function as powerful symbols within it. Their importance lies far beyond remembrance of the genocide of the Jewish people that took place during the Second World War. Memory itself had become a central ideology of the state, an important national politicalsecular resource (Zertal, 90). As argued by Liebman and Don-Yehiya, during the early years of the State of Israel (from 1948 to the late 1950s), statism was the dominant civil

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religion. Statism is a civil religion which ‘gives rise to values and symbols that point to the state, legitimate it, and mobilize the population to serve its goals’ (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 84). Statism’s approach to Holocaust memory was characterized by few off icial ceremonies and patterns of collective remembrance. Furthermore, Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion was at first reluctant to establish Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. According to Don-Yehiya, this reluctance was due to Ben Gurion’s view that historical events were important for Israeli collective memory only inasmuch as they contributed to the unity of the people and deepened their commitment to the Zionist state-building project. The memory of the Holocaust did not contribute, in his opinion, to these goals (Don-Yehiya, 88-89). The early state, therefore, faced a simultaneous need to remember and to forget. The need to forget was an attempt to restart history with the newly-established state, erasing the memory of what was perceived by the Zionist movement as the shame and dishonor that had been experienced by the Jews for centuries and culminated in the Holocaust. In this sense, the act of forgetting would serve as an act of redemption (Young, 210). Friedlander and Seligman suggest that this view emanates from the traditional Jewish concept of history as a sequence of ‘catastrophes and redemptions’. Within this mythical pattern of historical memory, the official national secular discourse had interpreted the historical events that happened prior to the establishment of the State of Israel as part of the process of destruction and redemption. The Holocaust was inserted into this process and the destruction of European Jewry was linked with redemption in the form of the establishment of the state (Friedlander and Seligman, 149-152). In the eyes of statism, part of the tragedy of the Jews resulted from the fact that most of the victims had failed to join the Zionist movement, which offered an alternative to Jewish life in the Diaspora. Liebman and Don-Yehiya point out that statism was not interested in symbols of the Jews as defenseless victims. Rather, it focused on symbols of victory and achievement, and on basing Israel’s relations with other nations on terms of equality and mutual interests (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 104). Therefore, in the official discourse of the state a distinction was made between two simultaneous narratives, that of the helplessness of the victims and that of the fighters’ resistance (Zertal, 51). The active resistance of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and in other places were assimilated into the official Israeli narrative, which stressed the themes of physical courage and armed rebellion (Liebman and DonYehiya, 103). The fighters were exemplary figures for the new state, and

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their uprising and struggle were seen as linked with the Israeli fight for independence, as well as with Israel’s later wars. As mentioned, early Israeli political leaders perceived the Holocaust as memorable to the extent that it demonstrated ‘the hopelessness of Jewish life in exile, and the proven need for a state to defend Jews everywhere’ (Young, 270). The story of the surviving rebels who had come to live in Israel was readily incorporated into the advocated collective vision of the past as well as the future, while the rest of the survivors were regarded with contempt (Young, 270). The decline of statism in the late 1950’s brought about a change in the collective attitude towards the memory of the Holocaust. Statism was not generated by the civil society but rather resulted from the top-down agenda of the political elite ‘to overcome the legacy of conflict among the subcommunities […] and to socialize the new immigrants to its perceptions of Zionism and the needs of a modern state’ (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 222223). Statism failed to provide a meaningful symbol system, and therefore it was replaced by a new civil religion, which expressed more sympathy and identification with Jewish suffering and criticized the indifference of the world. The association of the Diaspora with religion became more positive (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 152-153). The change in the Israeli official attitude to the memory of the Holocaust is evident in the Law for the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and Heroism passed by the Israeli Parliament almost eleven years after the establishment of the state, on April 7th 1959 (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 270; Zertal, 44-67). The memory of the Holocaust in Israel is therefore located not only spatially in sites of memory, but also temporally on the calendar. Young points out that the fixing of memorial days on the calendar ensures their annual recurrence and makes the memory and meaning of these events seem to be molded by time itself (Young, 263). The Remembrance Day of the Holocaust and Heroism was fixed by the Israeli Parliament according to the Jewish calendar on the 27th of Nisan. As argued by numerous scholars this was not an arbitrary decision, but the result of careful consideration and negotiation, since this date occurs five days after the end of Passover, the biblical festival of freedom, and seven days before Remembrance Day for the fallen soldiers which is in turn followed by Independence Day.29 The ordering and sequence of these annual events therefore begins with Passover and the story of biblical deliverance of the Jews by God from exile. It is then linked with the Holocaust victims and fighters, and 29 Friedlander and Seligman, 152; Young, 269; Liebman and Don-Yehiye, 152; Handelman, 1990, 191-233; Yael Zerubavel, 219.

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finally culminates in the fight for and establishment of the State of Israel. The temporal link between these events creates a sequence of meaning, whereby the biblical Passover, the Holocaust and the fallen soldiers all seem to move through history towards national revival in the form of the independent state. Furthermore, as noted by Handelman, Israelis accept this sequencing as a natural, unquestioned temporal order. He suggests that this is an example of ‘a statist version of modern Jewish history, but one of cosmological, temporal harmonics that are embedded in Zionist ideology’ (Handelman, 1990, 199). This temporal sequence is physically manifest in the layout of the sites on the Mount of Remembrance (Handelman, 1990, 201).

The Valley of the Communities in the Context of Minimalist Memorials The Valley of the Communities is an abstract memorial that belongs to a large class of memorials, including some Holocaust memorials, which have made use of non-representational, minimalist forms. While there is a vast literature on many of these sites, I focus on the ways in which they communicate meaning, in order to compare them to the Valley of the Communities which is a minimalist yet referential monument. Such a comparison can also provide insights about the qualities of the modelscape, which distinguish the Valley from other war memorials, and how they are used as a tool for constructing collective memory. Two relevant and well-known examples of contemporary abstract war memorials which I use as references are the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The designers of modern sculptural memorial monuments face some characteristic dilemmas: First, how does one refer to events in a medium doomed to refer only to itself? And second, if the aim is to remember – that is, to refer to – a specific person, defeat, or victory, how can it be done abstractly? (Young, 11).

In their analysis of war memorials, Beckstead et al. argue that they are social constructions of intentional worlds, which provide socially mediated meaning through their material aspects. Furthermore, the cultural messages offered by war memorials are supported independently of the visitor’s ability to ‘read the signs’ (Beckstead et al, 198-199). This point is important

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since both the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Berlin Memorial were subjects of intense discussions, controversy and criticism concerning their spatial design as non-figurative representations, which lack ‘readable signs’. Young argues that while contemporary art is often self-reflexive or concerned with its own material presence, public monuments commemorating the Holocaust can be neither. Rather, they are expected to refer to history in a way that viewers can understand, and evoke a process of memory. These memorials are not made in order to ‘call attention to their own presence so much as to past events because they are no longer present. In this sense, Holocaust memorials attempt to point immediately beyond themselves’ (Young, 12). Similarly, Pickford argues that there are two minimal conditions of adequacy which abstract war memorials must fulfil. The first is to have a historical relation, which means reference to some historical facts. The second is to have an aesthetic relation which would posit it as a public artwork (Pickford, 420). However, I find that the notion of public artwork is a controversial question. As argued by Kelly, discussions of public art should aim towards debate and dialogue rather than towards consensus. In the case of memorials, usually a small group of experts decides about the suitable ‘public art’, whereas different groups within society interpret the public’s identity and the relevant ‘public art’ in different ways (Kelly, 15-16). Yet Pickford relates to the abstraction of the Berlin memorial as a work of public art that is not sufficient to raise the questions of agency and causality, which are essential for understanding the catastrophes of the political history in Germany (Pickford, 426-428). Thus in his view the memorial fails to establish a definitive relation to historical specificity and does not produce genuine historical consciousness. Pickford further argues that this is a weakness of many abstract Holocaust memorials: Such a strategy can all too easily fall into theological transcendence (the Holocaust is unique, unrepresentable) or, even worse, an aesthetic myth. Such “black holes” provide an all too convenient “closure” by foreclosing historical causality and agency. The memorials mark a limit event that in its absolute otherness implies that the Holocaust was itself extraterritorial to its historical genesis. (Pickford, 422)

Therefore, Pickford criticizes some memorials for being so abstract that they merely represent either ‘undifferentiated universal mourning’, or ‘sublime negativity’. They focus on the aspect of public art and neglect the aspect of reference to historical facts: ‘What is missing is the historical differentiation

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that, especially in the land of the perpetrators, might actually enable or promote historical consciousness and thus make a difference toward Auschwitz not happening again’ (Pickford, 422). This problem is related to a wider question about the kind of experience produced by minimalist memorials. Do they guide the meaning-making process of the individual visitor towards catharsis and healing? If this is the case, such memorials tend to have ‘a therapeutic purpose, providing a space in which to remember and work through the traumatic events of the past’ (Beckstead et al, 210). They therefore have a potential to direct individuals and societies in a desired manner (Beckstead et al, 211). In contrast, can they generate a transformative social critique? As argued by Daniel Abramson, they may involve their visitors in such a way as to arouse interest in memory, information and history (D. Abramson, 708), and provide sites which could be used for potential political action and interpretation and for developing individual and social change (Dekel, 18). I argue that such minimalist memorials are therefore spaces which in their abstraction depend on the social context of the visitor’s experience. This context determines whether the experience of the memorial directs the visitors in a desired manner, or provokes critical thought. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington was designed by Maya Lin and completed in 1982. It is located at the northwest part of the Mall, and comprises two black granite walls sloping into the earth, which are engraved with the names of the 58,156 Americans who died in the Vietnam War. The list of names is arranged chronologically, beginning with the first casualty in 1959 and ending with the last in 1975. The two black walls meet at an angle of 125 degrees. One of them points towards the adjacent Lincoln Memorial, and the other towards the Washington Monument. Although this is one of the most visited monuments in the United States, initially there was substantial opposition to its design. Karen Feldman points out that it was criticized as representing the wrong, inappropriate or offensive kind of object; for example, a bat, a boomerang, a scar or the letter V (K. Feldman, 297-299). Others objected to the monument as not representing any object, or as not being object enough (lacking presence, prominence and visibility) to fill the purpose of memorializing. This critique claimed that the memorial is non-representational, non-heroic and non-objective. In both cases the critics ignored the names of the dead on this memorial, which are essential to convey its meaning. The centrality of the names and of their reading as an intimate act performed within a public site (K. Feldman, 299-301) is the reason for the minimalist design, which is meant to make the materiality of the monument ‘dematerialize’ in order to provide the setting for its text (D. Abramson, 695).

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Furthermore, the act of reading is ‘the performance and the statement most particular to and definitive of this memorial’ (K. Feldman, 300). Thus the decent along the wall, the reflective polished black granite surface and the names engraved in it ‘create a sacred space for the private act of reading’ (D. Abramson, 692). Beckstead et al. argue that the minimalist design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial ‘encompasses the ambiguity surrounding the memory of the war and encourages diverse perspectives’ (Beckstead et al., 202). However, they nevertheless suggest that the design focuses the visitors on the loss of lives, rather than on political or ideological differences. This point is also stressed by D. Abramson who argues that as a space for reconciling the memories of social and political conflicts during the war, the memorial constitutes a particular ideological representation, sublimated and integrated into American historical consciousness (D. Abramson, 680-681). According to him, reconciliation is achieved by a graphic and spatial representation of chronology: the first and last deaths are recorded next to each other at the apex of the walls, symbolizing the war’s temporal closure. This closure depicts the war as both decisively and therapeutically over (D. Abramson, 680-681, 688-702). The time-line also inserts the monument into a linear sequence of historical time, ‘securely anchored to traditional and stillpowerful icons of American culture’ (D. Abramson, 703). This integration is further achieved by the memorial’s reference to the monuments around it. The question is to what extent does the historical context serve to produce critical consciousness of the political and social circumstances which determined the Vietnam War, as opposed to integrating the war into the seemingly natural chronology of events? Pickford considers the reference to the other memorials as a necessary feature of the memorial, and argues that although the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is abstract and minimalist, it nevertheless successfully enables the visitor to place it in the context of American history (Pickford, 433). In contrast, Daniel Abramson argues that the relation to the Lincoln memorial and Washington Monument places these as ‘symbols that equilibrate the vertiginous trauma of the Vietnam War and bracket all attempts at historical understanding’ (D. Abramson, 702). The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was unveiled in 2005, after eighteen years of public debates and controversies. It is located at the city center between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz. It comprises 2711 concrete slabs of varying heights, set in a grid pattern on a ‘topography’ which covers a 20,000 square meter plot. It was designed by architect Peter Eisenman of New York. Beneath the memorial there is an

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underground information center. Its Starting Hall shows an overview of the Nazi terror policy during 1933-1945, the Room of Dimensions has letters of victims, the Room of Families shows pre-war photographs of fifteen Jewish families and descriptions of their fates, the Room of Names presents names of victims, and the Room of Sites shows the geographical extent of the Holocaust. In addition, there is a portal offering information, and a video archive showing interviews with survivors. The memorial’s location is important for several reasons. Like the Vietnam Veterans memorial, and like the Valley of the Communities, it is an ‘invented space’, rather than an ‘authentic’ site. It is located in the former no-man’s land along which the Berlin wall ran and not far from the former headquarters of the Gestapo and Hitler’s bunker (Pickford, 424). Its central location constructs the memorial as an urban entity, which has social, economic, political and touristic aspects (Dekel, 18). Åhr argues that this location was chosen both because the public could not help but encounter it, and also because the ‘authentic’ sites of the concentration camps are located at a distance from population centres (Åhr, 289). Similarly, Dekel points out that because of its central location, people sometimes stumble upon the memorial that wouldn’t choose to visit a memorial for murdered Jews. Thus they get a chance to perform their own personal position in relation to the memorial (Dekel, 15). Interestingly, one of the catalysts for organizing the initial international competition for the design of the Berlin memorial was the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. in 1994, which provoked memory politics in Germany (Åhr, 289). Following the unification of East and West Germany in 1989-1990, Holocaust recognition and engagement with the past became pressing issues that would result in the creation of a German official national memorial to the Jews murdered by the Nazis (Åhr, 289). Pickford argues that this problematizes the memorial since it is ‘not really for the murdered Jews at all, it is for the present-day audience in Germany (citizens, tourists, etc.), so that they might be “invited” or “demanded” to remember’ (Pickford, 426). A striking feature of the Berlin Memorial is that, in contrast to the wall at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial where the names of the war dead and the act of reading are central features, in Berlin the slabs bear no text. Interpretation of the site depends on the underground information centre as well as on hosts which are employed at the memorial, whose job it is to explain the memorial and to monitor order at the site, and on guides who give guided tours and workshops (Dekel, 4). Pickford argues that the lack of text above ground causes this memorial to fail its historical function, as

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it is unclear who is to be remembered at the site (Pickford, 426). He states that the memorial and the information centre are virtually independent of each other, and fail to work together. While the field of slabs is a space of emotional experience, the information centre is a space of factual documentation and information (Pickford, 429). However, Dekel suggests that there is a dialectic relation between the remnants and reminders of the Holocaust, presented in the information centre, and the abstract field of slabs above it, which together represent ‘opposition-in unity’ (Dekel, 11). The discussion of the memorials in Berlin and in Washington D.C. touches on some points which are relevant for the analysis of the Valley of the Communities. These points concern the legibility of the memorial and its historical relation. I argue that the Valley of the Communities is referential and therefore understandable. It is a minimalist (and miniature) representation of the map of Europe. Furthermore, it is inscribed with text, which clarifies the direct reference to an external geography. I suggest that these features make this memorial into a modelscape, and ensure that it is not merely an abstract memorial or a work of ‘public art’. Furthermore, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Valley of the Communities is located within a wider memorial site. I argue that the context of Yad Vashem and Mount Herzl places this memorial within a historical national narrative. Thus the Valley of the Communities has both an aesthetic aspect of a public work of art, and a reference to historical facts which produces historical consciousness and provides meaning. However, I demonstrate in this chapter that this meaning is culturally and socially mediated and potentially directed towards selected goals. Yad Vashem and the Mount of Remembrance As discussed earlier, the memory of events of communal importance is often associated with the places where they occurred, linking collective memory with specific spatial frameworks. However, in the case of Holocaust memorials in Israel, temporal distance from the events is coupled with physical distance from the places of occurrence, leaving memory in the realm of narrative, with no specific location. Therefore, ‘places of memory’ are intended to create settings for the projection of memory onto physical spaces. The relationship between memory and place was explored by Yates in her book The Art of Memory, a study of a mnemonic system first developed by the ancient Greeks. The art of memory was based on the assumption that visual images were most easily remembered, and therefore the subjects of remembrance were memorized together with familiar architectural spaces.

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These places could later be revisited in the mind, evoking recollection. However, the choice of architecture did not assume a connection between the contents of memory and the buildings. On the contrary, the same set of spaces could later be reused for remembering different materials, because the contents of memory were less fixed in the mind than the visual image of places (Yates, 17-41). The contemporary Holocaust memorial functions as a built container for memories, a device meant to generate recollection. However, the link between the spatial experiences and memory is not intended to be merely coincidental or functional, but to give memory a distinctive shape that cannot be reused for remembering other materials. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, was established in 1953 by a special act of the Israeli parliament called the ‘Law of Remembrance of the Shoah and Heroism – Yad Vashem’ (Zertal, 126). This law was made in order to formally organize the official Israeli national memory of the murder of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. The name Yad Vashem literally means ‘a memorial and a name’, taken from the biblical phrase: ‘I will give them, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons or daughters. I will give them an everlasting name which shall not perish.’ (Isaiah, 56:5). The importance of creating a place for memory finds an expression in the evolution of Yad Vashem over the years. Since its inauguration in 1953, a historical museum, an art museum, different outdoor monuments, research and educational institutes have been built on the site. The site’s amalgamated character has changed and grown as buildings and memorials were added, reflecting the state’s changing attitude towards its memory of the Holocaust. The latest addition to the site was the completion of a massive expansion plan known as the ‘Yad Vashem 2001’ master plan. Its main feature is the new Historical Museum designed by architect Moshe Safdie which opened in 2005. In addition, a new entrance plaza and visitors’ center were built, as well as a new Holocaust Art Museum, a hall for temporary exhibitions, a learning center and a Holocaust visual center (fig. 25). Young argues that the aggregation of sites at Yad Vashem has led to a view of the Holocaust as ‘culminating in the very time and place now occupied by the memorial complex itself’ (Young, 244). Liebman and Don-Yehiya suggest that Yad Vashem, is ‘second only to the Western Wall in its sacredness as a shrine of the Israeli civil religion’ (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 151). Yad Vashem is characterized by the use of representational metaphors, as a way to deal with the memory of events which happened elsewhere. ‘The absence of the iconic body creates a dynamic of representation to fill that emptiness with presence, the presence of absence’ (Handelman, 2004,

Source: Yad Vashem website, http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/visiting/map.asp. Accessed 18 September 2012

Figure 25 Site plan of Yad Vashem. The Valley of the Communities is no. 14 in the upper left corner

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154). Further, Handelman argues that Yad Vashem itself must represent a place that is discontinuous with the Israeli landscape, in order to convey the Holocaust, and this place must be a ‘totalizing, highly specialized simulation’ (Handelman, 2004, 165). Young points out that the continuous building and refurbishment of different museums, monuments, landscape projects and educational buildings at Yad Vashem ‘has spanned the entire history of the state itself, paralleling the state’s self-construction’. He argues that ‘[i]t seems clear that the building of memorials and new spaces will never be officially completed, that as the state grows, so too will its memorial undergirding’ (Young, 250). The development of the memorial complex at Yad Vashem over the years shows Europe and the Diaspora as the places of death which threaten Jewish identity. In this narrative Israeli nationalism is constructed by contrast as representing life and hope. Such connections between collective memory and state objectives have typified the official approach towards Yad Vashem since its inauguration. Ben Zion Dinur, Israel’s Minister of Education and Culture who had proposed the law for the establishment of Yad Vashem, stated that one of its objectives was to assist the melting pot of immigrants from many different places into a national collective, motivated by a shared memory as well as by a common vision of the present and the future (Young, 250). Yad Vashem thus became ‘an integral part of Israel’s civic infrastructure. It would both share and buttress the state’s ideals and self-definition’ (Young, 243). Hence all official guests of the State of Israel are taken to visit the site, and the annual Remembrance Day of the Holocaust and Heroism is opened by an official televised ceremony at Yad Vashem, followed by a special educational day in all the country’s schools. Yad Vashem is therefore a ‘site of memory’, constructed for the purpose of recalling an official memory of history. Furthermore, its immediate geographical context strengthens this notion. Yad Vashem is located in Jerusalem on the western slope of Mount Herzl, where the state’s ideological founder is buried, as well as other founders and leaders of the nation. It is also adjacent to the city’s Military Cemetery. The entire complex was named Har Hazikaron (Mount of Remembrance) in 1954, when the foundation stone for Yad Vashem was laid (Young, 250). Cohen Hattab argues that Mount Herzl was constructed as a secular pilgrimage site in the first years of the state. This was part of the statist efforts to strengthen the position of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as well as to provide alternative pilgrimage sites instead of the holy sites in East Jerusalem which became inaccessible to Israelis following the war in 1948 (Cohen Hattab, unpublished, 2). Indeed, ‘The Committee for Mount Herzl’ had described it in 1968 as ‘[a] mountain of vision,

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overlooking the realization of Herzl’s vision of a Jewish State: the dream of the people of Israel, great in its country, come true’ (Weitz, unnumbered). The proximity of Yad Vashem to the Military Cemetery and to the graves of the founders and leaders of the nation combines martyrdom with national heroism and suggests a link between the state, the Jews murdered in the Holocaust and the soldiers who were killed in Israel’s wars. As mentioned, the spatial layout of the Mount of Remembrance exemplifies this connection: destruction is represented at Yad Vashem, on the lower part of the mountain. Ascending upwards, the fight for the state is represented by the Military Cemetery, which is located higher on the slope. Further upwards the top of the mountain is dedicated to symbols of triumph (Handelman, 1990, 201).

The Valley of the Communities It is within this context that the Valley of the Communities was constructed. The project was initiated in 1979, when Yad Vashem and the Israeli Landscape Planners’ Association announced a competition for planning a landscape-type memorial to the Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. This initiative was part of Yad Vashem’s mission to commemorate ‘the communities, synagogues, movements and organizations, public institutions, institutions of culture and education, religion and charity that were destroyed’, as specified in the ‘Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Law – Yad Vashem, 1953’. Unlike other Holocaust memorials around the world, at Yad Vashem a special emphasis is placed not only on the events of the Holocaust itself, but also on its integration within the history of the Jews (Young, 216). The Valley of the Communities represents the Jewish world that existed before the war. About twenty projects were submitted to the competition. The first prize was awarded in May 1980 to the winning entry by the late landscape architect partners Lipa Yahalom (1913-2006) and Dan Zur (1926-2012). Yahalom-Zur had been the landscape architects of Yad Vashem since 1955, and therefore had a special interest in designing the site. The project was defined in the competition instructions as a ‘gal-ed’, a memorial, literally ‘a witness pile of stones’.30 Yahalom and Zur began by considering the meaning of a memorial to the communities: 30 Following the Biblical phrase ‘And Laban said: “This heap is a witness between you and me this day.” Therefore it was named Galeed’ (Genesis 31:48).

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We need to commemorate this great trauma. Our ideas evolved from this: we wanted to dig into the ground, to the grave. My partner Lipa Yahalom was a scholar […] he knew the Bible, and he connected it to the Valley of Slaughter.31 (Zur, personal interview, 4 February 2010)

Yahalom also described the process of thinking about the monument and his sources of biblical inspiration: The site chosen was a mostly bare and rocky ridge. We walked around it for days and weeks. We felt reluctant to build another monument like all the memorials scattered across the country. Until one evening, when we walked around the site, a verse from Ezekiel echoed in my mind: “And set me down in the midst of the valley.”32 Then we knew clearly that we were going to propose the “valley of the destroyed communities” and that the site would be a ruin within this valley. (Quoted in Gadish, 99)

Indeed, the Valley of the Communities is ‘constructed in a landscape language, with a spatial form and use of materials which link the dead to Israel’s landscape and nationhood’ (Helphand, 25). The fundamental characteristic of this project is therefore its attempt to simultaneously represent both a foreign and a local landscape. The Valley is strongly rooted in local images of landscape, culture and history, as further noted by Helphand: The maze is resonant of Wadis and their canyons in the Judean Desert and Negev, while the stone walls speak symbolically as a fundamental source and as a marker, a connection to the Wailing Wall of Solomon’s Temple, ancient quarries, catacombs, headstones, sacred tablets, and the ruins of a city. (Helphand, 25)

Furthermore, its sensitive and skillful location on the hillside makes the Valley seem like an integral part of the landscape. Many man-made monuments and memorials gradually come to be perceived as extensions of the land (Young, 220), and thus although the Valley of the Communities and other Holocaust memorials in Israel signify events that have taken place 31 ‘So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call it Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter, for they will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room’ (Jeremiah 7:32). 32 Yahalom referred to the vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones as described by Prophet Ezekiel: ‘The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones.’ (37:1).

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elsewhere, these structures have come to play the role of landmarks in the Israeli national landscape. The Valley resembles a symbolic excavation, an archaeological site embedded in the local ground. As noted earlier, however, a basic feature of the Valley of the Communities is that it refers to the map of Europe and North Africa, and therefore I have suggested that it is a miniature modelscape of these places. The reference to European and North African geography was present in the design from the start, since the chairman of Yad Vashem at the time, Dr. Yitzhak Arad, had envisaged a memorial arranged according to the communities’ geographic location (Gadish, 99). This was made explicit in the competition instructions: ‘The organizing principal for the site will be the location of the communities in Europe, so that visitors originating from the different communities will be able to use it for gatherings and contemplation.’ Arad had made a list of the communities to be commemorated according to their locations. The initial thoughts of Yahalom and Zur had revolved around creating a memorial and a garden, with possibly some paths organized according to the geography of Europe. However, they were not content with paths: ‘We made a maze. It’s all laid out like a maze which you wander around. That is what creates the impact of the place.’ (Zur, personal interview, 4 February 2010). By referring directly to geography, the configuration of this monument gives an almost literal expression to the idea of making a ‘place for memory’. The labyrinthine ‘map’ is dug into the ground, surrounded by walls of rock (fig. 4). The visitor wanders in and out of ‘rooms’ representing each country, and the massive walls block all views except the sky. The local landscape, into which the Valley is so well integrated, is invisible and the visitor can be transported elsewhere. Although lost in the sunken labyrinth, the visitor maintains some sense of orientation by the possibility of geographically locating a specific community name. The combination of an abstracted pit with a geographic map is effective on two levels. One is the immediate sense of dislocation and insecurity; the other is based on knowledge of the map and recognition of the logic of movement inside the maze. The Valley of the Communities thus displays some important features which characterize modelscapes. A central quality of the modelscape is its reference to an external reality, and this was a basic requirement which shaped the Valley’s layout. In addition, like other modelscapes, the Valley is characterized by scale relations with the source object on one hand, and with the visitors on the other. It is simultaneously a miniature representation of Europe and North Africa, and a gigantic space in relation to the human body. The visitors are dwarfed by the walls which are about five to eight meters high, built of huge stones that further affect the perception

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of scale. At the same time the visitors are aware that they are symbolically moving between countries, and thus the body is gigantic by comparison, able to cross entire countries in a few paces. Scale is also used in order to deal with the aspect of numbers. One of the difficulties in representing the memory of the Holocaust is its scope, since the immense numbers of victims and sites make them impossible to grasp. In the Valley of the Communities the landscape architects used scale as a memory device, giving a notion of the relative location and size of the Jewish communities as an indication to the number of victims. The rock walls signify the lost world by bearing the names of over 5000 communities, and the size of the fonts indicates the size of each community. Yahalom wanted the names to be carved in Hebrew letters, representing the way the Jews wrote the names of their places of dwelling in Yiddish (Gadish, 100), but the Yad Vashem management insisted on adding the Latin versions of the names: They wanted to have everything in Latin and Hebrew. And we thought there should be only Hebrew. At the end, a uniform Latin font was used, while in Hebrew different styles appear. The Hebrew resembles the writing of a scroll, and represents the size of each community. But the Latin is entirely uniform. My partner was very sensitive to that. He was extremely opposed to having Latin characters. (Zur, personal interview, 4 February 2010)

Thus the Hebrew inscriptions seem to be partly epitaphs and partly ancient engravings (fig. 26). The fonts were designed by graphic designers David Grossman and Yaki Molcho: We developed a form of lettering based on ancient Hebrew engravings over 2000 years old. These letters were surprisingly similar to modern forms; in fact, they seemed to be more modern than those we had seen on gravestones in Europe. For the Latin characters, we chose classical and neutral letters. These names are signatures inscribed on stone for future generations; a historical testimony. We tried to find a particular position for each name. A small, special place for each so that no community would be overshadowed by another; each community was after all a separate world. We took great care that the names wouldn’t appear in straight columns like a telephone book; instead they are scattered to emphasize their individuality. (Grossman, Yad Vashem website)33 33 See http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/valley/walls.asp. Accessed 21 July 2016.

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Figure 26 The Valley of the Communities, engravings of community names

Photograph by Y. Padan

As a monument bearing names, the Valley of the Communities also acts as a surrogate graveyard. Casey suggests that monuments are closely connected with texts, because the words upon monuments enhance the power of the tangible medium of commemoration, by enabling it to ‘speak’ (Casey, 231). However, he argues that even a ‘speaking’ monument remains somewhat abstract: While alleviating what might otherwise be an almost complete opacity of a commemorative medium such as unsculpted and uninscribed stone, a text never succeeds in making this medium fully transparent: it remains translucent at best. (Casey, 233)

This point relates the Valley to the discussion of other abstract war memorials, and the question of their legibility. In the Valley of the Communities, the words are not commemorative sentences or personal names, but rather abstractions of the places themselves. This abstraction was a source of disagreement between the landscape architects and the management of Yad Vashem, who wanted more explanations and texts on site. Yahalom and Zur insisted that the Valley remain somewhat abstract and minimalist

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(Gadish, 99). Journalist Esther Zandberg referred to this in the obituary she wrote about Yahalom: Yahalom said that he was not completely satisfied with the Yad Vashem complex and the memorial ritual in general. During the planning stages he waged a struggle with Yad Vashem “over the value of modesty, of not saying everything” in the Valley of the Communities, and he protested the kitsch that he felt had taken over the mountain. As he stated in an interview afterward, he was only partially successful in this struggle. (E. Zandberg 19 September 2006)

Gadish described how the artist Menashe Kadishman was called upon to give his opinion about the dispute with Yad Vashem over the minimalism of the monument. He wrote to Chairman Arad: ‘Whoever adds – subtracts. Please do not add any more creations to this masterpiece’ (Gadish, 99). Architectural critic Ran Shechori also voiced his opinion about the minimalist aspect of the Valley of the Communities: The extreme minimizing of the number of components, and the avoidance of any descriptive and narrative interpretation of the Holocaust give this memorial an intensity of expression and an ability to deal with its weighty subject. On the one hand it is a huge project which covers a large area and includes dozens of geographic units. On the other hand, listing the name of each community allows the visitor an intimate and immediate connection with the past, and eliminates the risk of overreaction to the unspeakable proportions of the Holocaust. (Shechori, 18 December 1989)

Initially, the site was called ‘The Valley of the Destroyed Communities’. However, this name was later deemed inaccurate, as some of the communities were not destroyed (for example the Jews of Denmark). Therefore, it was decided to name it instead ‘The Valley of the Communities’, which refers to the Jewish communities that existed before the war, but includes in addition to the destroyed communities also the few which survived (Goldman, 117). This inscription was therefore placed at the entrance to the Valley: This memorial commemorates the Jewish communities destroyed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and the few which suffered but survived in the shadow of the Holocaust. For more than one thousand years, Jews lived in Europe, organizing communities to preserve their distinct

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Figure 27 Sketch for the Valley of the Communities. Lipa Yahalom – Dan Zur, Landscape Architects

Source: Collection of L. Yahalom-D. Zur, Judaica Division of Harvard College Library

identity. In periods of relative tranquility, Jewish culture flourished, but in periods of unrest, Jews were forced to flee. Wherever they settled, they endowed the people amongst whom they lived with their talents. Here their stories will be told.

The change of the site’s name is significant for the question, discussed later in this chapter, of the commemoration of the diaspora in Israel. The Valley of the Communities, which represents the diaspora, is embedded in the Israeli soil, which is otherwise absent from the Valley. Designing and Building the Site Yahalom and Zur made many sketches of the Valley, in which the design process can be seen. ‘The idea was to create ruins, a sequence of courtyards. We worked a lot with the topography, and looked for the right configuration’ Zur explained (Zur, personal interview, 4 February 2010). At first the design sketches were geometric and abstract, referring mostly to the ideas of a maze and a sunken excavation. Gradually the Valley took on a more fluid shape in the sketches, which corresponded more to the map of Europe (fig. 27).

Source: Collection of L. Yahalom-D. Zur, Judaica Division of Harvard College Library

Figure 28 Competition entry, Lipa Yahalom – Dan Zur, Landscape Architects

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Figure 29 The Valley of the Communities seen from above when approached by foot

Photograph by Y. Padan

The final layout of the plan can be seen in the competition entry which Yahalom and Zur submitted (fig. 28). In the drawing entitled ‘Master Plan’ the approach to the Valley on foot is via an observation point adjacent to the circular road around Yad Vashem. This viewpoint leads on to a small entrance plaza which was later named ‘The Founders’ Wall’ and dedicated to the donors of the project. From there a path winds its way down the slope with several viewpoints from which hints of the sunken Valley can be seen from above (fig. 29), merging with the vegetation on the mountain. Yahalom and Zur called the landscaping outside the entrance to the Valley the ‘Commemoration Garden’, which guides the visitors into the Valley of the Communities (marked ‘Commemoration Valley of the Destroyed Communities’ on the plan). Several buildings are integrated within the Valley, whose roofs are covered with vegetation and whose exteriors are part of the Valley’s stone walls. These include service rooms, toilets, an office, and an exhibition building called ‘The House of the Communities’. The project was intended by Yahalom and Zur to continue with a path leading out of the Valley onto the next hill, marked as the ‘Garden of Resurrection and Rebirth’. Within this final garden, two ancient agricultural structures were to be reconstructed,

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Figure 30 Visitors next to stone slabs

Photograph by Y. Padan

marked as ‘Restored Antiquities’ on the plan. In addition, several viewpoints were marked as ‘Windows to the Landscape’, overlooking the Jerusalem hills. However, as will be explained in the next section, only the Valley itself has been built. Work on the construction began in 1983, and lasted almost ten years. Its inauguration took place on October 15, 1992, in the presence of the Israeli president Mr. Chaim Herzog. The project was financed by contributions from the American Society for Yad Vashem, survivor organizations and other donors, at a cost of over 10,000,000 US Dollars (Zur, personal interview, 4 February 2010). The initial idea had been to excavate into the mountain, leaving mounds of rock which would form the walls within and around the Valley. However, it soon became obvious that the local rock was too soft, and could only be used in a few places. It was decided to dig up the entire area of the project, and build the mounds from concrete. The concrete mounds were then roughly clad with slabs of stone which came from different quarries in Israel (fig. 30). The slabs are the rough exterior portions of quarry blocks, etched with deep scratches made by the excavation machines. Between the slabs were integrated 107 walls made of smooth gray stone panels, on which the names were engraved. The hollow concrete mounds were filled with earth, and new

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vegetation was planted on them in order to merge them with the mountain (Zur, personal interview, 4 February 2010). Remembering and Forgetting As mentioned earlier, in their competition entry Yahalom and Zur referred not only to the plot allocated for the Communities Memorial, but also to the adjacent hill, which they named the ‘Garden of Revival’, and described it in the competition entry as ‘the garden of resurrection and rebirth’. As a symbolic physical ‘answer’ to the Valley, it corresponds with the traditional Jewish concept of history as a mythic sequence of ‘catastrophes and redemptions’, as well as with the Zionist interpretation of the State of Israel as the redemption following the catastrophe of the Holocaust (Friedlander and Seligman, 150-152). Furthermore, it fits into the general layout of the entire Mount of Remembrance, where the Holocaust is connected with the state and its landscape. The text by Yahalom and Zur which accompanied the competition documents explains how the concept of revival will be translated into the vocabulary of landscape architecture: At the end of the tour, at the edge of the Valley, a path will ascend to the Garden of Resurrection and Rebirth. This garden will be designed with maximum consideration of the topography. To strengthen its Israeli character, re-seeding and re-planting of vegetation will be carried out, as well as rehabilitation and reconstruction of the agricultural shomerot and the ancient remains. Trees and flowering shrubs will be added, and in spring the entire site will be covered with abundant flowering of cyclamen, anemones, buttercups, irises, etc. The paths in the garden will lead to observatories overlooking the landscape and the settlements around, and strengthening faith in the resurrection and eternity of Israel. (Text by Yahalom-Zur, which was submitted with their competition entry. Source: Collection of L. Yahalom-D. Zur, Judaica Division of Harvard College Library.)

The jury of the competition was impressed by the project in its entirety, including the exit from the Valley into its counterpart, the Garden of Revival. In a text explaining the members’ choice of the winning entry, they wrote: The plan highlights the planners’ intention to lead the visitor gradually, moving from one experience to the next. Beginning with an initial

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gathering for explanation, followed by an entry to the Memorial Valley through an area of low vegetation, then the Memorial Valley communion experience, and finally the exit into the Garden of Revival and Rebirth and a view towards the landscape of the renewed and flourishing Israel.34 (Text written by the competition Jury. Source: Collection of L. Yahalom-D. Zur, Judaica Division of Harvard College Library.)

However, a close examination of the site reveals that the ancient remains and the shomerot (stone structures which were used as guard posts to protect agricultural plots during the harvest season, especially vineyards) mentioned in the landscape architects’ text are actually agricultural structures that had belonged to the Palestinian hamlet of Hirbet Hamama which was destroyed by the Israelis during the war in 1948 (J. Feldman, 2007, 1161). Remnants of destroyed Palestinian villages are scattered all over Israel, ignored by the hegemonic narrative of the state (Fenster, 285-302). The self-affirmation and legitimation of the state demands that such problematic traces of the past be excluded from the commemorative narrative (J. Feldman, 2007, 1161). Thus a space of commemoration does not include more than one national narrative, because commemoration is part of the struggle for symbolic and military possession of the land (Boyarin, 1997, 223). The Garden of Revival was not built, but as noted by Zur, it may be built in the future: ‘We wanted people to come up here after the Valley […]. But it wasn’t built, there wasn’t sufficient funding, so they said – in the next generation’ (Zur, personal interview, 4 February 2010). In their vision of the Garden of Revival, Yahalom-Zur ignored the traces of the hill’s past, and repeated the dominant narrative of reconstructing the ‘ancient remains’ and the local vegetation in order to ‘strengthen its Israeli character’. However, in the prize-receiving ceremony, Yahalom expressed ambivalence towards the symbolic struggle over the land: I, who belong to a generation brought up in complete denial of the [religious Jewish] community and its leaders, who rebelled and tired of it, know and witness that the way to revival passes through the Valley. Only if we keep and not abandon the wonderful values created throughout 34 The judges were Mr. Arieh Elhanani – architect, Dr. Yitzhak Arad – Chairman of Yad Vashem, Mr. Arieh Armoni – landscape architect, MK Gideon Hausner – Chairman of the Yad Vashem Committee, Mr. Yosef Zohar – landscape architect, Dr. Haim Pazner – Vice Chairman of Yad Vashem, Mr. Moshe Ziffer – sculptor, Mr. Moshe Rivlin – Chairman of the directory of the Jewish National Fund, Mr. Eliezer Shmueli – General Manager of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

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the generations, the big presence created out of absence, without a homeland, without independence, without territories, only then will we have redemption and distinctiveness in this country. (Gadish, 100)

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, Zandberg (who interviewed Yahalom after his retirement) argues that he had become more critical of his own work and the work of other Israeli landscape architects, as well as of what he called ‘the memorial ritual in general’ (E. Zandberg, 19 September 2006).

The Memorial Ritual at the Valley of the Communities As noted earlier, the entire complex of the Mount of Remembrance, including Mt. Herzl, the Military Cemetery and Yad Vashem, is isolated from the daily lives of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. These are not monuments encountered on the way to work, school or shopping; rather they must be visited intentionally. Each of them is characterized by its own set of massive entrance gates, which separates them from the mundane. As discussed, the Valley is an interesting case of Holocaust memorialism because it is both integrated into the landscape and discontinuous with it. The size of its scaled-down space creates a new imagined landscape, on which memory is literally imprinted. The blocking of all exterior views except the sky makes it possible to transfer the viewer into this imagined landscape and away from the reality outside. Since it is excavated into the landscape and located at the edge of Yad Vashem, it is practically invisible from a distance, and this is one of the reasons why not many people visit it even when they intentionally come to Yad Vashem. In addition, few people have the time or energy left to explore the Valley after a visit to the Historical Museum, which is both time consuming as well as overwhelming. The Museum offers knowledge in the shape of historical research, statistics, documents and other information. In contrast, the Valley of the Communities is a memorial rather than a source of information, and has an emotional effect while providing only abstracted knowledge of the communities represented. Zur remarked that the Valley is not well-connected with the rest of Yad Vashem. The question of orientation and accessibility within the vast complex of various buildings and monuments had occupied Yahalom and Zur in their role as landscape advisors of Yad Vashem since the 1950s, and more so following the design of the new museum and entrance plaza:

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When they consulted with us after deciding to build the new museum, the question came up as to what kind of entrance Yad Vashem should have. They decided to build this great entrance plaza. We didn’t like it; we are more connected to nature. So we thought, why not start from the Valley? If you enter Yad Vashem from here, the Valley is like a fissure in the landscape that leads upwards and connects [to the museum]. (Zur, personal interview, 4 February 2010)

Indeed, an entrance to Yad Vashem through the Valley of the Communities would have made sense, since chronologically the history of the Holocaust begins with the Jewish communities that existed before the war. However, Yahalom and Zur didn’t promote this idea since they thought that the Yad Vashem management would not consider it a viable possibility. Therefore, the Valley remains the site which is furthest from the entrance. Although there is a shuttle that connects the Valley with the entrance plaza, most visitors devote their time to other parts of Yad Vashem. The visitors who do go to the Valley of the Communities are mostly groups on organized tours; these groups usually perform commemorative rituals within the Valley. These rituals reveal the meaning of the site and its impact on the visitors. Casey argues that the basis of remembering through a memorial is ritual, which involves bodily actions that orient us within the site. Furthermore, he suggests that ritual requires collective participation, that is, the presence of others (Casey, 221-223). Monuments are shaped by social values, and the act of memory within them is performed by the visitors which are in turn inspired and shaped by the monuments (J. Feldman, 2007, 1150). Hence through the ritual performed within it, a monument is capable of being a potential source for communal and political actions (Young, 13). Different kinds of rituals and tours are performed within the Valley of the Communities. Its relative isolation and seclusion, and the inscriptions reminiscent of epitaphs, allow families and groups to mourn the dead who have no gravestones. Some hold ceremonies and prayers, which are not limited to the Remembrance Day of the Holocaust and Heroism. A tour guide who specializes in guiding English-speaking tours for groups and families explained that family groups which she guides sometimes perform their own personal ceremonies next to the wall where the name of their family’s place of origin is inscribed. She further indicated that organized groups are offered an option to hold a ceremony by their travel agents. Groups that include a Rabbi usually hold a religious ceremony. Family ceremonies typically include a ‘Kaddish’ (the Jewish prayer for the dead), sometimes a

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poem or short pieces of prose, or the personal story of relatives. They often end with Israel’s national anthem, linking personal family memory not only with a wider Jewish identity but also with the State of Israel (interview with M., 29 June 2010). The Valley of the Communities is also used by different Israeli educational institutions for didactic and historic tours, as part of a wider agenda called ‘knowledge of the country’. Most of these visitors come in organized groups, including teachers, soldiers and members of the Police Force. Young schoolchildren are also taken to the Valley, because they cannot visit the Museum (only children over 10 years old are permitted in the Museum). On the Remembrance Day of the Holocaust and Heroism, different ceremonies are conducted at the Valley. When I visited the site on this day in April 2010, several wreaths were laid near some place names during ceremonies held by government workers, army units, and survivors’ organizations (fig. 26). These groups had used the Valley as a substitute for a graveyard, and left flowers as is the custom to do on both military monuments as well as on tombstones. In the next section I focus particularly on a different type of ceremony; a recently established yearly public ritual called ‘The Linking Path March’. This is a symbolic procession which leads from the Valley of the Communities to Mt. Herzl and is performed by groups of schoolchildren from all parts of Israel. I chose to focus on this ritual because it is an institutionalized procession, launched by the state through the Ministry of Education and several other agencies (Yad Vashem, the World Zionist Organization and the Unit for the Commemoration of Fallen Soldiers in the Ministry of Defense). In addition, it is a large-scale project, involving hundreds of pupils each year, who form the majority of the visitors to the Valley of the Communities. Performance and Ritual within Memorial Monuments As mentioned above, collectives use memorial spaces for gathering and creating a common past of shared memories, and hence communal narratives are formed. Commemorative ceremonies must be performative in order to achieve their goal (Connerton, 5), and the activity of communal remembering may in itself become shared memory (Young, 6-7). Based on this notion I argue that rituals of commemoration performed within the Valley of the Communities during the Linking Path March similarly create not only a shared sense of the past, but also an experience in the present which is memorable to its participants. This is due not only to the contents of the collective memory, but also to its form. The impact of

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large numbers of young people gathered in the Valley in a single morning and their movements within it affect not only the intellect, but the senses as well. The sound of voices and of hundreds of feet stepping on the gravel, the sense of disorientation in space, the risk of being lost in the crowds, are all inseparable from the collective act of commemoration performed within the Valley of the Communities during the Linking Path March. One of the basic experiences in acts of commemoration is the link between body and place, which is achieved by orienting the body within the space of commemoration (Casey, 221). Furthermore, the body plays a central role in ritualistic commemoration because it performs the specific motions which constitute the act of remembrance. The body is assigned the task of bridging the gap between that which is commemorated and its relevant meaning in the present: ‘The body assumes a quite liminal role in many commemorative ceremonies, being the borderline between actual and virtual movement, present and past, sacred and profane.’ (Casey, 245). This observation is particularly relevant for the Valley of the Communities, which represents both ‘here and there’, Europe and Israel. This simultaneous representation is characteristic of modelscapes, which are concrete objects that exist in the present time and space, but they also point to a reality beyond themselves. In the Valley of the Communities the connection between past and present time is inseparable from the connection of the spaces of ‘here and there’. As noted earlier, Handelman argues that in order for the Holocaust to be communicated, the entire site of Yad Vashem is in fact a representation of Europe. ‘Only within this simulated whole – Europe through time, in Israel through time – do the various parts of the Holocaust acquire their fuller, awful significance.’ (Handelman, 2004, 170). Within Yad Vashem, the Valley of the Communities provides a sense of the ruined space and a continuation of time which are otherwise lost and destroyed. Such a sense of continuing connection is achieved by body memory as well as by place memory (Casey, 251-253). Remembering is structured by social ‘rules of remembrance’ that define what should be remembered and what is to be forgotten (E. Zerubavel, 222). Social rules of commemoration help integrate members of the society into the social narrative, so that they may experience events that had happened to the group in the past as though they were part of their own past (E. Zerubavel, 224). This experience is an important part of social identity, as the past becomes part of us and shapes our consciousness. Hence ‘newcomers’, such as children and new immigrants, are not merely informed of the group’s shared past, but are also ‘emotionally orientated’ towards it (Shudson, 289).

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Memorials provide spaces for bodily rituals of commemoration, in which emotional experiences supplement the verbal transmission of past events. In some cases, the ritual is an officially instituted and organized activity which is intentionally invented and constructed. Such ‘invented tradition’ is formalized and ritualized, and its regular recurrence makes it part of the collective past (Hobsbawm, 2012, 4). Thus institutionalized performances are means of preserving the national meaning of memorials over time (Koselleck 2002, 325). Although this is a top-down process, it should not be viewed simply as an artificial creation, imposed on the public by state agents. Connerton suggests that the notion of ‘invented tradition’ can explain the creation and organization of new rituals but not their persistence. The endurance of some ‘invented traditions’ can only be fully understood when taking into account the performativity of ritual, because the performance of the body is culturally shaped and therefore it is crucial for conveying and sustaining memory (Connerton, 103-104). Similarly, the Linking Path March is based on the movement of the body within and between specific sites. Like other rituals, in spite of its reference to the past, it is also relevant to the present. Institutionalized memorial sites and the rituals that take place within them ‘iconically link past and present and, in the process, reproduce dominant visions of the national imaginary’ (White, 52). These activities perform the national narrative, and create emotional involvement in the nation, to the point of merging self and nation (White, 54). An important aspect of this involvement is the power of participation in this collective experience: For commemorative ceremonies also are preserved only through their performance; and, because of their performativity and their formalization, they too are not easily susceptible to critical scrutiny and evaluation by those habituated to their performance. Both commemorative ceremonies and bodily practices therefore contain a measure of insurance against the process of cumulative questioning entailed in all discursive practices (Connerton, 102).

Pilgrimages to Holocaust Memorials Since 1988 the Israeli Ministry of Education has organized and encouraged Israeli high school group visits to Holocaust sites in Poland. The Ministry of Education website stresses the importance of this journey which takes place under the national education system and forms a kind of rite of passage

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into the world of adulthood.35 The emotional intensity of this journey is emphasized since it takes place ‘against the backdrop of the journey to adolescence, which develops independence, identity and interpersonal relationships’.36 Schools are central agents in the socialization of national traditions, and ‘contribute to the formation of a master commemorative narrative that structures collective memory’ (Y. Zerubavel, 6). Thus they partake in the creation of ‘a basic “story line” that is culturally constructed and provides the group members with a general notion of their shared past’ (Y. Zerubavel, 6). Furthermore, collective memory provides ‘basic images that articulate and reinforce a particular ideological stance’ (Y. Zerubavel, 6). Hence the high school trips to Poland are viewed by Jackie Feldman, who has taken part in several such visits, as ‘pilgrimages’ performed by observers of civil religion. He points out that these pilgrimages are primarily emotional experiences, in which the students face the demonic ‘other’ in a ritual encounter, and symbolically conquer it using national icons. Their victory over the ‘other’ using national symbols makes the death camps seem like the birthplace of the state. It raises in the students an awareness of the constant threat to their own world, giving their everyday life in Israel new meaning. This experience creates and deepens their commitment to the Israeli basic cultural and national values (J. Feldman, 2001, 173-175). Like the journeys to Poland, I argue that Holocaust memorials in Israel reproduce a similar experience of collective identity. The Linking Path March In addition, and perhaps as a possible substitute for the Poland trips, the laying out of a trail between Yad Vashem and Mt. Herzl marked the beginning of the annual Linking Path March. It begins in the Valley of the Communities and ends at a monument called the ‘Last of Kin’ on Mt. Herzl, which commemorates fallen Israeli soldiers who were the only survivors of their families after the Holocaust. Although Yad Vashem and Mt. Herzl are 35 See ‘The Journey to Poland: A Journey of a Human Following Humans…’. Edited by Michal Lev, Hana Shadmi and Judy Ben-Ezra. An undated publication of the Ministry of Education with the Psychological Counseling Service and the Society and Youth Authority; 11. Available at: ://cms.education.gov.il/educationcms/units/shefi/kishureichaim/shoa/hamasalepolin.htm. Accessed 13 July 2012. 36 Ministry of Education, Society and Youth Authority’s website, available at: http://cms.education.gov.il/educationcms/units/noar/katalogpirsumim/hashoahvehaketuma/hamasalepolin. htm. Accessed 13 July 2012.

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both part of the memorial complex on the Mount of Remembrance, they were not initially linked together. A visitor to Mt. Herzl and the Military Cemetery had to exit the complex and take a separate road that leads to the gates of Yad Vashem. This separation was not accidental; as discussed earlier, the memory of the Holocaust was not emphasized in the early years of the state, when statism was the dominant civil religion. Entering Yad Vashem was a symbolic departure from Israel, since Yad Vashem was a representation of Europe (Handelman, 2004, 162; J. Feldman, 2007, 1154). The change of attitude towards the memory of the Holocaust which has taken place since the decline of statism in the late 1950s has thus culminated in the physical act of linking Yad Vashem with Mt. Herzl in 2003. The creation of the Linking Path was more than a technical act of connecting two points. The ascent from Yad vashem to Mt. Herzl ‘enables the body to experience itself as moving through history and accept that movement as “natural”.’ (J. Feldman, 2007, 1151). The Linking Path winds through ‘historical space’, and ceremonies such as the march infuse this space with meaning (Handelman, 1990, 201). This meaning is clearly explained in a brochure entitled ‘The Linking Path’, available at Yad Vashem: The Linking Path connects the memorial site of the Holocaust and Heroism with the Military Cemetery, the Nation’s Great Leaders plot, and Herzl’s Tomb. The walk along the path, which was paved by the manual labor of members of youth movements in Israel, is a symbolic journey in time, from Holocaust to Revival. It is a journey from the Diaspora to the Jewish homeland, from exile and destruction to a life of the building and hope in the State of Israel.37

The Linking Path thus exemplifies the notion of the move from destruction to redemption, originally proposed by Yahalom-Zur in their competition entry, which included the ‘Garden of Revival’. However, the garden was intended for observation of the landscape and contemplation, whereas the Linking Path leads to the Military Cemetery, suggesting national revival through active participation of individuals, culminating in self-sacrifice. As

37 Undated brochure written by Dr. Mordechai Naor, with Dr. Ofer Bord and Prof. Alon Kadish. Published jointly by The Ministry of Defense – Bereaved Families and Commemoration Department and Unit for the Commemoration of Fallen Soldiers, Yad Vashem, the Shelah Division of the Ministry of Education, the World Zionist Organization, and the Council of Youth Movements in Israel.

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noted earlier, Yahalom later expressed a more complex approach towards the problematic notions of national revival and collective rituals of memory. The march begins when buses carrying pupils from around the country arrive at the Valley of the Communities, which is the starting point representing Jewish life before the Holocaust. From there the march continues through Yad Vashem, stopping at the Cattle Car Memorial to the Deportees. This is an original train car used to transport Jews to the death camps, and it symbolizes death and destruction. The marchers are thus introduced to the Diaspora Jews and their fate during the war. Following this they pass on to symbols of resistance and fighting, beginning with the Warsaw Ghetto Square. As mentioned earlier, the active resistance of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and in other places were assimilated into the early official Israeli narrative, which stressed the themes of physical courage and armed rebellion (Liebman & Don-Yehiya, 103). At this point the marchers leave Yad Vashem, which represents Europe, and ascend to Mt. Herzl which symbolizes independence and redemption in Israel. Jackie Feldman points out that this ‘physical climb (aliyah) embodies the act of immigration (aliyah) of the Jews on the way from Holocaust-land to homeland’ (J. Feldman, 2007, 1156). The first stop at Mt. Herzl is the Memorial to the Last of Kin, described in a brochure by the Ministry of Defense: This monument commemorates fallen soldiers who were last of their kin, as all other members of their families perished in the Holocaust. They made Aliya, volunteered in the army and fell in the battle for the newly founded state of Israel.38

On Mt. Herzl several other stops are included in the march, which represent self-sacrifice and nationality.39 The final stop in the Linking Path March is the Nation’s Great Leaders plot, where Israel’s Presidents, Prime Ministers, heads of Knesset (Parliament) and their wives are buried.40 Hence the Link38 Mount Herzl Military Cemetery Visitors’ Trail. Planning, editing and production by Ministry of Defense Bereaved Families and Commemoration Department, Unit for the Commemoration of Fallen Soldiers. Published by the Ministry of Defense Publications, Tel Aviv 2003, 20. 39 One is the Common Grave for the Ma’apilim (illegal immigrants) aboard the Salvador. These were 352 Jews who managed to escape from Europe in 1940 aboard the ship Salvador, which sailed from Bulgaria and sank on its way to Israel following a heavy storm. Another is the Memorial for the Yishuv Paratroopers to Europe in World War II. This monument is dedicated to 32 volunteers who left Palestine in 1943-44 and parachuted into Europe in order to join partisan resistance fighters and to save Jews. Twelve of them were captured and seven were executed. 40 For more information, see Mount Herzl Military Cemetary: Visitors’ Trail.

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ing Path March consists of the movement of the body between various stops which simulates a symbolic journey in time and place. The march takes place each year in the week between Remembrance Day of the Holocaust and Heroism and Remembrance Day for the Fallen Soldiers, thereby entering the temporal sequence of commemoration days described earlier. About 1500 pupils between the ages of twelve and fifteen attended the first March which took place in April 2003, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 41 The event also marked the dedication of the Memorial to the Last of Kin, which forms a conceptual link between Yad Vashem and Mt. Herzl, as it commemorates people who were both Holocaust survivors and fallen Israeli soldiers. The Linking Path March is based on this monument: the students are given names of different ‘Last of Kin’ soldiers, and are required to research their life histories. In the Valley of the Communities, they find the name of the community of the soldier they have learned about, and subsequently perform a memorial ceremony to this soldier next to his name at the monument of the Last of Kin. As explained in the website of the Ministry of Defense: The program [of the march] presents the story of the Jewish people through personal stories of individuals. The casualties of the ‘Last of Kin’ were selected to represent the personal aspect. Their tragic life stories represent more than anything the historical connection between the Holocaust and the creation of Israel. According to the program, each class performs a memorial ceremony at the Memorial for the Last of Kin.42

In April 2010 I attended the Linking Path March, and in this section I will focus mainly on the part which took place within the Valley of the Communities. 43 Between nine and eleven in the morning, groups of secondary and high school students arrived on site by buses. According to the organizers’ estimation there were about 2700 students in all. Each student was given a map of the Valley of the Communities and an information sheet about the march. The handout literature listed ‘required stations’, where all groups visited during the first part of the day. Some groups were guided by Yad Vashem staff, and some by teachers. 41 Source: Ministry of Defense Spokesperson, April 13 2010. www.mod.gov.il/WordFiles/ n31904101.doc. Accessed 12 July 2012. 42 Website for the Commemoration of Fallen Soldiers, Ministry of Defense, http://www.izkor. gov.il/Page.aspx?pid=59. Accessed 13 July 2012. 43 For a comprehensive study of the Linking Path March, see Jackie Feldman (2007).

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Figure 31 Dramatizing activity at the Valley of the Communities during the Linking Path March, 2010

Photograph by Y. Padan

The classes were led to watch two different dramatizing activities which took place in ‘rooms’ within the Valley of the Communities. The dramatizing consisted of young guides who performed texts which had been written in advance. In the Hungarian ‘room’ two young Holocaust survivors met in Budapest after the war (fig. 31). Both were the last survivors of their families. Later they came to Israel and joined the army, and both were killed, one in the War of Independence and the other after the war. This performance demonstrated to the students the relationship between The Valley of the Communities that simulates where the survivors came from and the Memorial for the Last of Kin, which commemorates their death as Israeli soldiers. It was performed over and over again as different classes came to view it. In another ‘room’ within the Valley a guide recounted his own family story. He showed the students photographs of members of his family and mentioned their names. Through their personal stories he talked about the shooting of Jews in the forests, and about some Jews who managed to hide there. He spoke about his grandmother’s sister who survived and immigrated to Israel.

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Figure 32 Candles and flowers placed by students on the walls of the Valley of the Communities during the Linking Path March, 2010

Photograph by Y. Padan

In a different ‘room’ a teacher explained about the Valley of the Communities and invited several students to tell the stories of some of the Last of Kin soldiers, whose communities are located in that ‘room’. The students read the stories from information sheets they had prepared in class, and showed the names of the communities on the walls. Many students brought candles and flowers and placed them on the walls (fig. 32), using the stone slabs as substitutes for graves. Some held flags (fig. 33). In one ‘room’ a student told the story of her family next to the name of their community. Other students read their own research or compositions. Several read from ‘Shorashim’ (‘Roots’ papers, written in previous classes). 44 In a different ‘room’ the communities of North Africa 44 ‘Roots’ work is a personal family heritage record project done by seventh grade students in Israel. The project includes making a family tree, documentation of the personal history of family members, personal interviews with them, collecting images and documents, documentation of significant objects for the family, and more. Over the years, the project has encouraged families to collect and document information and objects connected with the family, and knowledge that could disappear and be forgotten with time. The project has also encouraged the generation

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Figure 33 Students carrying the Israeli flag during the Linking Path March, 2010

Photograph by Y. Padan

are listed. One of the guides explained to the students that when the Nazis reached North Africa they began to persecute the Jews there. Another guide led his class to Libya, explaining that the Nazis were on their way to Palestine. He talked about ‘Project Masada on Mount Carmel’, an initiative of the British Mandate in Palestine during the Second World War. The plan was to position Jewish Palmach fighters on Mount Carmel in Haifa in order to stop a possible Nazi invasion of Palestine led by Erwin Rommel in 1942. The lesson, said the guide, is that we all could have been there, in the Valley of the Communities, as victims. Another guide took a class to the Greek section and praised the Saloniki community, saying that the Greek Jews tried to use physical force to survive. He ended the story with Yehuda Poliker, an Israeli singer of Greek origin, who had made a film about his family during and after the Holocaust. The of Holocaust survivors to break their silence which had lasted many decades and to open up and tell their grandchildren what they had been through (For more information see http:// he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%95%D7%93%D7%AA_%D7%A9%D7%95% D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%9D. Accessed 24 November 2012).

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guide then talked about the mayor of Zakynthos who saved the local Jewish community, and mentioned that such instances of assistance to the Jews were rare. The Valley itself was explained to the students in several different ways. One of the guides told a religious group that the excavation-like monument symbolized that even in the depths there is an opening to heaven. Another guide said that the Valley is underground, hidden in the mountainside, just as the Jews had to go into hiding in order to survive. Another guide chose a particularly narrow place for his explanation, and spoke of the gas chambers, pointing up to show how the Zyklon B gas was poured down, like pebbles (pointing down on the white pebbles on the ground). The students, too, related to the Valley of the Communities. Several remarked that it is a beautiful place, while others were worried that they might get lost. The vast numbers of students which crowded the Valley made this risk quite possible. Indeed, there were a number of lost students, who were found using cell phones. The march continued through other stops and up the path to Mt. Herzl. At the Memorial for the Last of Kin a ceremony was held, in which the Assistant Defense Minister at the time, MK Matan Vilnai, gave a speech. He referred to the Linking Path March as a symbolic journey from Holocaust to Revival. The lesson, he said, is for us all to commit ourselves to the state, thus making sure our fate will not be like that of the Jews of Europe. He mentioned contemporary instances of rising anti-Semitism in Europe, as well as the threats made by the Iranian President. Vilnai urged the students to enroll in the army and take responsibility for the defense of the state. Hence the link between past and present, between here and there, reaches its culmination through the ritual of the Linking Path March. The Valley of the Communities is a simulated space of Europe, showing the different communities from which 147 last-of-kin men and women originated. They had physically made the journey from Europe to Israel, a journey which the students perform symbolically with their own bodies. After the students had entered the memorial space which exemplifies the destruction of the communities, they are ‘rescued’ by the physical ascension to Mt. Herzl, where they can find meaning in the nation, the establishment of the state and military service. The choice of the ‘last of kin’ as exemplary figures is reminiscent of the early statist view of Holocaust memory: although these men and women were not chosen for acts of heroism or rebellion during the Holocaust, they were chosen for volunteering to fight in Israel’s war of Independence. They are commemorated as soldiers rather than as survivors. Their death

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in action links the Holocaust with sacrifice for the state (J. Feldman, 2007, 1156). Moreover, the students are expected to remember this link a few years on, when they become Israeli soldiers. The Israeli narrative of battles for the nation-State is recast as part of a specifically Jewish narrative of eternal suffering and victimization. The discontinuity between the soldier who dies in combat and the victim of the Holocaust is narrowed. In the new landscape, they leak into each other. Both are seen as having sacrificed themselves on the altar of the State. (J. Feldman, 2007, 1160)

In addition to an embodied experience, the Linking Path March also produces an emotional effect in its participants. White argues that the emotional response to war memorials results from ideological framing, and it is the performances of rituals of memory, ‘from personal reflection to grand state ceremony – that work to refashion and validate ways of feeling, especially ways of feeling that link self and nation’ (White, 60). The ceremony at the Memorial to the Last of Kin suggests that the redemption offered by the state demands self-sacrifice, which is not a matter of the past but rather continues in the present. The merging of past and present in this context creates ‘reversed memory’, a term suggested by Zandberg et al, (66). They argue that it is used, for example, on television news items shown around Holocaust Remembrance Day, which tend to blur the distinction between past and present. This kind of memory ‘commemorates the traumatic past by narrating the triumphal present and thus cultivates the understanding of past events as continuous ones, constantly extending into the present’ (Zandberg et al., 66). Hence a mythical continuum is created which ‘suggests that history repeats itself, and that Israelis (today) just like Diaspora Jews (in the past) are victims whose very existence is being constantly threatened.’ (Zandberg et al., 74). Such interweaving of past and present creates a ‘past continuous’, a view of the past which binds it to the present and depicts memory as cyclic and recurring. Thus a dialectical relationship is created which rejects the separation of times: on one hand the present sets the tone for interpreting the past, and on the other hand the past is controlled by its association with the reality of life in contemporary Israel (Shenhav-Keller, 348). The commemorative narrative evident in the Linking Path March uses the memorial space of the Valley of the Communities as a ‘mnemonic marker’ (Tilley, 204) in the process of socializing young people into the civil religion (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 167). As argued by Koselleck, the political and

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social meanings of war memorials tend to fade over time, leaving only the aesthetic aspects of the monument (2002, 325). The Linking Path March is part of an effort to maintain the political meaning of the memorial space of Yad Vashem and Mt. Herzl. To sum up, nations construct and reconstruct the past as part of their official national narratives, and organized remembrance is concerned with countering a collective anxiety of forgetting, characteristic of contemporary Western culture (Huyssen, 431). As a result, monuments, sites, and other media are created for anchoring a sense of continuity of place and time, and these mediating elements have become part of the contents of memory itself. In many cases sites of memory are removed from the commemorated events not only in time but also in location and this complicates the task of providing an impression of spatial continuity through time. Furthermore, many memorials deal with sites that have been destroyed and often no longer exist even as ruins. Such are Holocaust memorials in Israel, which are not located at the sites of the war, and therefore are required to commemorate the past as well as to represent distant or absent places. The Valley of the Communities is a unique monument since it functions as a modelscape representing Europe and North Africa and their geography before the war. It does so by displaying the basic quality of models in general, namely their reference to external objects; and it is this reference to the Jewish communities which creates a powerful evocation of the absent places. Furthermore, the Valley represents other qualities of modelscapes: it provides a structured experience by enclosing and isolating the visitor, and by using scale as a tool for conveying meaning. Hence it is a place for memory that is both a replica of an existing geography as well as a new place in an entirely different context. The national narrative over the years since the establishment of Yad Vashem has posited Israel as the living state in contrast with the destroyed Jewish communities elsewhere. Several scholars have argued in this context that national identity in Israel suppresses and rejects the importance of Jewish life in the Diaspora both before and after the Second World War, and contrasts them with the State of Israel as the only option.45 Conversely, the Valley of the Communities may express a new respect for the particulars of diasporic memory (Boyarin, 1996, 70). However, although it was intended to recall the living communities before the war, the Valley represents their destruction, 45 Friedlander and Seligman, 153; Jackie Feldman, 2007, 1156; Handelman 2004, 170; Boyarin 1997, 217.

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evident in the evocation of tombstones, of epitaphs and of descending into a burial place, and this emphasis on the absence of the communities is further strengthened in the texts, rituals and actions which take place in the Valley. Because of this approach, Israel is absent from the Valley of the Communities, as noted by Handelman: ‘so long as Israel is not made into the diaspora, these disjunctions will continue to generate sentiments of ambivalence and compassion, alienation and identification.’ (Handelman, 2004, 170). The Valley of the Communities is used for different commemorative activities and rituals. These are instances of ‘active remembering’, as opposed to the passive watching of institutionalized ceremonies which take place in Yad Vashem’s main square. Gillis suggests that institutionalized rites of memory belong to the ‘era of national commemoration’, and are no longer a main form of remembrance. He argues that memorial sites which invite the visitors to walk around and experience them are part of the ‘post national’ era, in which ‘memory work’ is performed by individuals at times and places of their choice (Gillis, 13). However, as shown in this chapter, these different forms of commemoration are not necessarily opposed, but rather exist side by side. Individual ‘active remembering’ through the body and institutionalized memories are experienced simultaneously during the Linking Path March. This communal march is used in constructing a shared sense of the past as well as a collective view towards the future. As argued previously, the march is an expression of history viewed as a mythical continuum, an interweaving of the past into the present and its extension into the future. Political and social meaning is passed on to the next generations. As argued by Zertal, the shifting of the crimes from their historic place to their symbolic ‘places of memory’ in Israel poses a danger of a banalization of the terrible events (Zertal, 96). Similarly, Liebman and Don-Yehiya suggest that in particular, the notions of victimization and of isolation which characterize the new civil religion influence Israelis’ world view, and offer them an explanation of Israel’s political problems in the present (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 224). As in the cases of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin discussed above, the question is to what extent abstraction can prevent the memorial from being a totalistic environment. In the case of the Valley of the Communities, its reference to geography is far from being a copy and close to the mimetic qualities of a creative and interpretative representation. Thus I argue that the qualities of the modelscape shape the Valley of the Communities and allow it to give the visitors a space for contemplation and for imagination.

Conclusions A modelscapes is a specific mode of representation, made of constellations of architectural models which are displayed to the public. The term ‘modelscapes’ refers to the multiplicity of objects which make up such clusters and reflect a totality of meaning that no individual model can offer. This term also suggests an awareness of a panoramic experience, which is necessary in order for the visitors to feel that they are presented with an entire picture. It is obvious in miniature modelscapes, but it also exists in larger ones which the visitors can enter, as many of them provide raised viewpoints over their sites. Unlike some other ‘-scapes’ such as townscapes or landscapes, modelscapes are planned creations of individuals or institutions according to an interior structured logic. Their spatial layout and the relationships between their components reflect a social and cultural context. The modelscape claims to provide an authoritative and credible representation, which is revealed to the visitors by moving around or inside it with their bodies and gaining different views as well as a physical involvement in the space. Consequently, the visitors are integrated into the modelscape, and invited to participate in its suggested reality. Furthermore, this model reality is intended by the planners to be conceptually projected onto the exterior life-world which it represents. Thus the modelscape is a tool for constructing reality and collective identity. The alluring attractiveness of such ‘realities’ was explored by analysing the basic characteristics which condition our understanding of modelscapes. Modern modes of perception provide the cultural frame for the experience of modelscapes. In addition, their ‘correct’ perception is the result of interpretations which are conditioned by the social and cultural contexts in which they are made. The bodily experiences which modelscapes offer support the narratives which they communicate and participate in the construction of modern subjectivity and perception of the self and the world. Thus although many modelscapes seem to be naive sites of entertainment, they represent an ideological stand. Because models refer to external sources, the viewer is invited to make comparisons between the model and its reference object. However, since the modelscape is an intentionally planned environment it is capable of representing selected aspects of its external referents. Hence it provides a simplification of reality into manageable space and time, which become more legible and controlled. The visitor is offered an experience which

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provides a concrete expression for abstract ideas and narratives. This capacity of modelscapes to represent idealized realities as well as abstract concepts is used in the construction and representation of collective identity and nationality. Following the theoretical analysis of modelscapes, I have examined three different case studies from Israel. These are the Second Temple Model of Jerusalem, the Mini Israel theme park and the Valley of the Communities at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. The analysis of these different cases has provided insights into the ‘correct’ ways in which their creators and managers expect their visitors to understand them. As shown throughout the different chapters, these ‘correct’ understandings are framed by the Israeli cultural, social and political contexts.

Representational Modes Modelscapes are inspired by different representational modes and institutions. They represent existing or imaginary places, using elements of architecture, geography and topography, and are related to the format of the map. They are characterized by deliberate groupings of objects, using aspects of collection, classification and display, as well as their own interior temporality, and therefore are conceptually related to museums. They are large spatial arrangements, which are experienced by the moving body, and are thus related with the bodily experience offered by landscape parks, especially when they are located outdoors. Hence modelscapes appear to be hybrid creations which employ these features in varying degrees and emphases. The material presence of modelscapes and their hybrid nature enable their creators to produce narratives which are concerned with constructing and legitimizing collective issues such as identity, history and nationality. These abstract topics are given material shape in modelscapes by displaying representations of tangible objects, such as buildings and monuments. Individual models are ‘marketed’ to the visitors as ‘authentic reproductions’ of ‘reality’, and their grouping together gives them additional layers of meaning and context. Representations of national territories and monuments of national importance in modelscapes are used in order to create images of the nation. They construct signs and symbols of nationality by marking out specific sites which represent shared roots or a shared collective and cultural identity,

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and differentiate it from other nationalities. The resulting condensed or miniaturized spatial representation reduces, simplifies and manipulates a complex social and political reality to a size and format that empower the visitors and enable them to participate in the modelscape. In this concluding chapter I examine and compare the case studies, which were analyzed separately, to each other. I focus both on the common features of these sites as well as on the differences between them, in order to draw some more general conclusions regarding the meaning of the format of the modelscape. These conclusions connect back to the theoretical body of knowledge and to the methodological tools used in the analysis of the case studies. I suggest that the theoretical and methodological approaches used in my analysis are also applicable for an examination of the ways in which other modelscapes are designed to function in relation to their visitors and how they convey meaning. The comparison between the case studies places less emphasis on their contents, which have been examined in detail in the previous chapters. Rather, I propose to compare them using four basic representational principles, which came up following the detailed examination of each individual site. I argue that such representational principles can be found in other modelscapes as well, and are therefore useful for their understanding and analysis. The principles which I refer to are the representational aspects of completeness, distance, openness, and interpretation. Completeness refers to the degree in which a modelscape displays a total environment, which the visitors are expected to accept uncritically. Individual models within the modelscape may be complete in the sense that they provide a definitive representation which leaves no place for questioning, or they may be incomplete by encouraging the visitors to respond in many different ways. An entire modelscape made of individual models can thus either provide an authoritative representation of reality, which I refer to as ‘complete’, or alternatively a modelscape may be ‘incomplete’ and raise some questions regarding the reality which it represents. Distance refers to the gap between the representation and its contents. In a ‘complete’ modelscape which represents a total reality, there is no place for the visitor to question this reality or to doubt its representation. In such a case there is no distance between the modelscape and its narrative. When the modelscape is ‘incomplete’, it claims to be less authoritative. In such cases there is a distance between the individual models and their meaning, as well as between the entire modelscape and its meaning, so that they can be read in different ways. Distance is characterized by the separation of the viewer from the viewed, which enables not only a critical viewing of the modelscape but also of the reality it represents.

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Openness and interpretation thus refer to the degree of freedom to imagine and interpret which the modelscape offers its visitors. As argued previously, a central purpose of gathering individual models into a modelscape is to articulate meaning, ideas and narratives. When the modelscape is ‘open’, visitors are invited to participate in the process of interpretation, and to test concepts and ideas. When the modelscape is ‘closed’, interpretation is fixed and the invisible is represented as obvious. Meaning in modelscapes is produced by both the physical presence of the individual models and by their claim to represent absent exterior reference objects. When a modelscape aspires to a complete and total representation, it proposes to act as a substitute for the exterior reality. Visitors are expected to share this conviction and assume that they are presented with an accurate picture whose meaning is fixed. Such modelscapes claim to represent reality, rather than to question it. However, the degree of completeness and totality varies in different modelscapes. This is due partly to their different approaches towards the visitors, and partly to the contents of the material represented. When the modelscape is less dominant in its claim to authority through completeness, potentially many ways of interpreting and imagining are opened to the visitors. An example of this attitude can be found in modelscapes which are constructed for artistic purposes, such as the ‘Mini Israel’ exhibition, that invited the visitors to interpret and think about Israeli reality. This exhibition also differed from the case study modelscapes because it wasn’t a creation of a single author. The many artists who made the individual models presented varied and diverse points of view, stimulating different responses to both the representations as well as to their exterior sources. Another ‘open’ modelscape is the Valley of the Communities, which in its abstraction leaves space for the visitors to reflect upon its meaning. The parameters of completeness and totality, and those of distance, openness and interpretation, are different aspects of a basic dichotomy between passive acceptance of the narrative, and critical thoughts about it. However, this division is not always very sharp. Even in ‘complete’ and ‘total’ modelscapes, the distance of the representation from the original may still encourage discussion, although this is not necessarily a political debate. Thus in the cases analyzed in the previous chapters, tourists or pilgrims may debate religious topics, rather than issues concerned with Israeli national identity. Nevertheless, these are still subjects that touch upon questions of individual and collective identity, relevant to the particular visitor or group. In addition, I compare other aspects of modelscapes, which signify their hybridity, namely their reference to maps, museums and parks. Analyzing

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the combination of these elements in different cases is useful for understanding in which dominant mode the creators of a certain modelscape have chosen to address the visitors. Aspects of maps and museums are used to stress the professional authority of modelscapes, while landscape aspects tie them with the surroundings and theme park elements present them as places of entertainment. The Second Temple Model is characterized by a claim to authority. Since its inauguration in 1966 the model has been advocated as a scholarly and scientific creation, based on the professional authority of the different archaeologists who were in charge of it throughout the years. Thus at the Second Temple Model the museum aspect is emphasized, which posits it as a reliable source for historical information. This was the case when the modelscape was located at the Holyland Hotel, a privately-owned tourist facility, but its new location at the Israel Museum and its placement next to archaeological finds further enhances and continues this authoritative claim, by recognizing the Second Temple Model as a museum exhibit in its own right. The map aspect is also important because the realistic topography of this modelscape supports the idea that the miniature buildings are ‘real’ as well. The Second Temple Model was inspired by the Model of Imperial Rome, which was built by architect Italo Gismondi for the ‘Augustan Exhibition of the Roman World’ in 1937. Formally as well as conceptually, these modelscapes have some common features, evident both in the architectural style of the buildings and in the agendas of their creators. As discussed, the Model of Imperial Rome was intended to represent a national myth of origin by giving material shape to shared ancient roots. The link between contemporary Italy and the Roman Empire functioned in shaping national consciousness in the present. Similarly, the Second Temple Model represents a moment of national glory and refers to a myth of origin which, like the Roman one, is intended to shape Israeli national identity in the present. Furthermore, the Second Temple Model represents the Zionist attempt to resume the interrupted continuity with ancient Israel, and to diminish its roots within the traditional diaspora Judaism (Boyarin, 1997, 217). As argued earlier, this origin myth is of central importance in grounding contemporary Israeli collective identity as a direct continuation of its ancient predecessor. Like the Model of Imperial Rome, the Second Temple Model deals with the ancient past, and both modelscapes represent some unknown elements, which had to be completed based on assumptions and imaginative ideas. In both cases, the entire modelscape, as well as individual models within it, are creative and suggest interpretations of written sources, archaeological

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remains and ancient sites. The totality in both cases is taken to be more important than the precision of individual models, particularly those that represent ordinary buildings such as dwellings. This totality is one of the reasons why these modelscapes have become exhibits in their own right, and both are housed within museums. Yet because it attempts to give shape to the past, the Second Temple Model deals with ambiguity and parts of it are disputed by scholars. Furthermore, the contents of the Second Temple Model distance it in time from the visitors. The relationship of the miniature ancient city to contemporary Jerusalem is not entirely clear, and therefore visitors find it hard to recognize the city that they know and to compare it with the modelscape. Thus potentially the modelscape is open to interpretation, to imagination and to questioning. However, this aspect is mostly limited to professionals and to people who are knowledgeable about the history and archaeology of the period. For the general public who visit the museum, it does not surface in the modelscape nor challenge its reputation as a total representation which leaves no space for critical thought. Both the Second Temple Model as well as the Model of Imperial Rome are examples of how reference to the ancient past can erase problematic political issues of the present. Their analysis shows how they were intended to be read upon their construction, and how their interpretation had shifted at different points in time according to the changing political context. This tendency is also present in the next modelscape analyzed, the Mini Israel theme park. Similar to the Second Temple Model, in Mini Israel the accuracy of the individual models is emphasized. However, unlike the Second Temple Model, Mini Israel represents existing places which the visitors can compare with the models, and appreciate their precision. This modelscape aspires to represent a nostalgic totality. Nostalgia refers to a lost past which is not a specific period in history, but rather an idealized time. Because time is eliminated, the modelscape takes on an eternal semblance, as seen at the Bekonscot Model Village which depicts ‘forever England’. The layout of the Mini Israel modelscape as a Star of David further alludes to its symbolic completeness. But the meaning of the Star of David shape is literal, referring to the basic symbolism of the national icon and flag. Mini Israel maneuvers between this overall one-dimensional symbol and an attempt to represent within it three-dimensional aspects of Israeli life in minute detail. In addition, by signifying a simple but idealized image of the national territory, the Star of David excludes non-Jews from the representation of the state. Mini Israel aspires to represent a totality, ‘all’ that

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is important, worth visiting and knowing in the country, but it promotes Jewish-Israeli collective identity under an apolitical guise. Like the Second Temple Model, the park has undergone some shifts in the focus of its reference to the national narrative. In the 1990s when it was initiated, the Oslo Accords (1994) and the Wye Agreement (1998) inspired a vision of a peace process which would result in the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The Mini Israel modelscape focused on the Israeli state, supporting the political climate of two states. It depicts the future Israeli state as a nostalgic version of pre-1967 Israel, featuring a folkloristic and tourist-oriented version of diversity. However, following many bureaucratic and technical delays, the Mini Israel modelscape was finally opened in a very different political context, which resulted from the Second Intifada that began in 2000. Peace was no longer seen as a viable option, and tourism could not be relied upon as a source of income. In this context Mini Israel emphasized its national narrative by adding new models that included popular sites such as the local reality TV show Big Brother House, while omitting planned models such as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the Palestinian village of Yatta. This shift reflects the park’s re-orientation away from tourists and towards Israeli visitors, which are currently its main source of income. Unlike the Second Temple Model, Mini Israel theme park bases its totality neither on the authority of professionals nor on a representation of realistic geography. Rather, this modelscape claims to represent national distinctiveness. Its representational approach refutes criticism or interpretation by the visitors because of its playful character. The visitors are aware that this is a recreation site, a commercial initiative offering ‘edutainment’. The national picture which it represents displays existing buildings arranged in a new context according to an internal logic that is not particularly intended to be ‘realistic’ and therefore is usually not questioned. The theme park is the dominant aspect of Mini Israel, but the park’s characteristics of a map and a museum surface as well. The map determines the symbolic layout of the park. The museum features in the park’s aspirations to educate. But although the park does not invite critical interpretation, the very fact that it generated a response like the ‘Mini Israel’ counter-exhibition defies this intention. The ‘Mini Israel’ exhibition similarly provided the visitors with a collection of individual models, which were signs and markers of exterior objects. However, it was not a commercial project, but rather an art exhibition shown at a museum. Therefore, it was not intended to provide popular entertainment, but attracted a knowledgeable audience of museum visitors.

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The model of ‘Israeliness’ in this context of the visitors’ social and cultural capital could be very different from the popular and touristic representation of Israel at the theme park. The exhibition is therefore analyzed in this book as a critique of the theme park, and by extension, of the genre of modelscapes in general. Rather than representing a total reality, the exhibition aimed to deconstruct it. The individual models within it were mostly existing different works of art. Unlike the individual models at the Second Temple Model and at the Mini Israel theme park, their primary meaning was determined independently by the artists who created them. In spite of the ironic title ‘Mini Israel’ which alluded to the theme park, neither the entire exhibition nor individual models within it aimed at complete representation. The models in the exhibition, and their relationship to each other, were symbolically incomplete, complex and ambiguous. The resulting modelscape did not attempt to accurately represent an exterior reality and therefore made no claim to authority. The exhibition was not intended to convey a fixed meaning, but rather to allow for critical thought and interpretation on the part of the visitors. It provided an alternative view, and questioned the discourse represented by the Mini Israel theme park. And by doing so, it encouraged the questioning of the modelscape to be extended into critical thought about the source objects of the models, the real Israel outside. The Valley of the Communities is a different kind of representation. I have suggested that it is not merely a memorial, but also a modelscape simulating the map of Central and Eastern Europe and North Africa. Although it does not display individual models, the names of the communities carved on the walls represent real places which once existed, and therefore they constitute the individual representational objects within the totality of the large scale model. The Valley of the Communities was designed by landscape architects Lipa Yahalom – Dan Zur, and displays aspects of a landscape park. It resembles simultaneously a natural canyon as well as manmade landmarks such as ancient quarries, catacombs, headstones, sacred tablets, and the ruins of a city (Helphand, 25). These landscape aspects serve to integrate the Valley of the Communities within the local Jerusalem hillside of Yad Vashem, and to transfer an image of Europe and North Africa to the national territory of Israel. The map is therefore a dominant element within the Valley of the Communities, which is practically an abstracted three-dimensional plan carved into the ground. The textual representation of the communities corresponds with place-names written on a map. In the absence of concrete images of buildings and people, the visitors in the Valley of the Communities are left

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to imagine the lost world. The structure of the Valley supports this act of imagination, by providing both spatial and textual clues. Visitors can grasp the sheer numbers of the communities which were damaged or destroyed. They can compare the size of the communities by noting that some names are larger than others, and imagine their relations by the arrangement of the small, possibly rural names around larger urban centers. By movement of their bodies, visitors are also aware of the different countries in which the communities were situated, and the relative distances between them. Thus the names bridge the gap between the monument and the concrete images of the life-world. The abstraction of image into text provides for a distance between viewers and viewed, a distance that is open for the visitors’ imagination. Furthermore, the gap in time between the past in which these communities once existed and the present in which they are commemorated also functions as a separating element. Thus the Valley is both a complete representation and an open one, where visitors can experience and interpret the space. By listing the names of over 5000 communities, the Valley aims to represent a totality, a lost world in its entirety. Therefore, it excludes all other place names that were the context in which the Jewish communities existed. The process of selection and omission of place-names creates the impact of the map, and frames the Valley as a monument, focused on its memorial meaning rather than merely providing geographical information. A central feature is the scale relation between the visitors and the Valley. The visitors enter the space with their bodies, whereby they lose orientation and are transferred into the absent world. Scale relations render the visitors at once very large in comparison with the continent of Europe, which they can cross in a matter of minutes. But at the same time the visitors are prevented from feeling empowered by this awareness, because physically they are very small within the monument, which towers above and around their bodies. Thus the freedom to wander around and experience the modelscape sometimes threatens the visitors, who react with reluctance to the feeling of disorientation and to the monument’s commanding size. The space for imagination which is produced by the abstraction of the Valley of the Communities is limited by some of the organized rituals which take place within it and have their own objectives. This is particularly obvious at the Linking Path March, discussed in Chapter 5. The large number of participants, the different organized activities and the controlled movements of the groups within the modelscape all create a structured experience of the Valley. The ritual conducts and controls the participants’ imagination, using the powerful space as a setting and a background to

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achieve the desired frame of mind. The relationship between the modelscape and the visitor’s body is used to construct the meaning of national memory. The Linking Path March literally connects the Holocaust with contemporary Israeli nationality by leading its participants from the Valley of the Communities, which symbolizes the past and the geography of catastrophe, to Mount Herzl, which stands for revival and redemption here and now, by means of the state. The ceremony at the end of the March suggests that this redemption demands self-sacrifice of its citizens. As argued in Chapter 5, the March embodies a view of history as a mythical continuum, an interweaving of the past into the present and its extension into the future. Hence the abstract nature of the Valley of the Communities is altered by this organized ritual which offers a ‘closed’ and authoritative interpretation of the space and its meaning. To sum up, the cases studied in this book highlight different ways in which the modelscape can participate, or provide the setting for, the construction and legitimizing of an anticipated vision of the nation. I have used these modelscapes to critically examine the Israeli case, in which the justification of the state’s very existence as well as of its social situation and political agenda is a crucial contemporary issue. These modelscapes are part of a cultural effort to introduce the public to key points in the history of the nation and tie them with the present and the future, offering ways to understand contemporary ‘Israeliness’. As noted in this book, the making of a modelscape is a complex and expensive project. Its creation demands extensive research followed by manual work, which takes vast amounts of time and occupies considerable space. Therefore, a modelscape testifies to the importance attached to its meaning and to the significance of the points in time and space which it represents. Thus I agree with Choay’s warning that the privileged social actors which are capable of constructing modelscapes (or indeed rituals) often use this format as a ‘safety net’, in order to give tangible presence to existing social orders whose identity is threatened in different ways (Choay, 277). In a discussion about maps, Anderson notes that as representations maps are both reflections of an existing reality, as well as the reverse: they may anticipate spatial reality (Anderson, 177). This idea was also developed by Baudrillard, who claims that the simulation is ‘the generation by models of a real’, and thus the map precedes and produces the territory (Baudrillard, 2001, 169). Furthermore, he argues that the creators of simulations ‘try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models’

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(Baudrillard, 2001, 170). Similarly, in this book I have suggested that public scale models of architecture and geography are tools not only to reflect a reality but also to suggest, to anticipate and to generate one. The problematic aspect of this feature is that the model in its total presence, which represents a single chosen preference, prevents other possible views of the future from surfacing (Choay, 152-154). The narrowing of possible views means that specific limited aspects of a complex reality are highlighted. Thus a simple vision is accomplished, which provides for schematic knowledge, control and manipulation, serving the interests of hegemonic power (Scott, 11). The representational aspects of completeness, distance, openness, and interpretation, which characterize modelscapes, are also used to define a vision of the future, whether imposed on the visitors as the only possibility, or creating space and freedom to imagine other possible horizons.

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Index Abramson, Daniel 172-73 Abramson, Larry 21, 47, 52, 107, 121, 132, 142-43, 148-49, 151-59 Aelia Capitolina 105 Anderson, Benedict 58, 62-63, 65, 71, 73, 216 Appadurai, Arjun 17, 73 Arad, Yitzhak 181, 190 Archaeological Sites 19, 79, 87, 91, 100, 103-04, 107, 111, 126, 181, 211-12 demolished 83, 106 idealized vs. real 76, 118-19 Archaeologists 82, 85, 95, 103-06, 109, 116-19 and authenticity 100 directing model construction 84, 95 Archaeology 84, 101-07, 111, 212 national 75-78, 93, 103 reconstructed 107 representation of 98, 103, 107 Architecture 13, 16, 87, 93, 132-33, 176, 208, 217 and International Expositions 68-69, 71 and Models 14, 27, 48-54, 80-82, 85, 138, 149 architecture of vision 34 landscape architects 161, 179, 182-83, 185-86, 190 landscape architecture 189 monumental 106 vernacular 104, 107, 123 Armored Corps Memorial (Latrun) 136-138 Artefacts 14, 27, 30, 34, 36, 49-50, 82, 88-89, 92, 94, 109, 113, 119, 157 Athens 78, 91 Auerbach, Erich 38-39, 97 Augustan Exhibition of the Roman World 82-83, 211 Authenticity 40, 88-92, 94-97, 113, 119, 135 and models 13-14, 39-40, 45, 84, 89-90 as accurate depiction 89-90, 100 in the Jerusalem Exhibit 70 ‘objective authenticity’ 88-89, 94-95, 113 of touristic experience 75-76, 88 Avi-Yonah, Hava 78-82, 86, 91 Avi-Yonah, Michael 75, 78-82, 84-87, 90-96, 100, 109, 114-17 Balibar, Etienne 103 Barthes, Roland 33-34, 50, 73 Bateson, Gregory 47-48 Baudrillard, Jean 35, 40-41, 73, 216-17 Baxendall, Michael 29-30, 32 Bedouins 134, 141-42 Beer Sheva 141-42 Bekonscot Model Village 36-37, 53, 72, 212 Belting, Hans 38-39 Ben Gurion, David 168 Ben Gurion International Airport 143 Desert Hut 126

Benjamin, Walter 39-40, 49, 97 Berlin, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe 170-71, 173-75, 206 Berlin Wall 174 Big Brother House (tv show) 129, 147, 213 Bigot, Paul 82 Black, Max 15 Bourdieu, Pierre 29-32 British Mandate in Palestine 103, 202 Brooke, Rupert 37 Brutzen, Rolf 80 Budapest 200 Cherni, Elsa 84 Cherni, Hillel 108, 117 Chicago Exposition (1893) 69 Choay, Francoise 16-17, 59-61, 216-17 Church of the Holy Sepulcher 129, 147, 213 City of David 96, 111 Cognitive Style 29-30, 32 Coliseum, The 91 Collective Identity 11, 21, 26, 61, 84, 88, 119, 145-46, 165-66, 196, 207-08, 210-11, 213 Constructing of 19, 60, 207-08 Collective Memory 11, 19, 25, 76, 78, 84, 119, 124, 161, 163-64, 166, 168, 193 Constructing of 170, 175, 178, 196 Commemoration 164-66, 183, 185, 206 and possession of land 190, 193-95 Rituals of 25, 193-95 Sites of 64, 136 Communities destroyed 180, 184, 187 imagined 62, 65, 71, 73 see also Jewish Communities Connerton, Paul 193, 195 Culler, Jonathan 46, 62, 68, 101, 134-35, 142, 157 Dead Sea Scrolls 89, 110, 113 Debord, Guy 32-33 Diaspora 103, 168-69, 178, 185, 197, 202, 204-06, 211 Dinur, Ben Zion 178 Disney 90, 122-24, 130-32, 134 Disneyland 41, 123-24 Don-Yehiya, Eliezer 77-78, 165, 167-69, 176, 204, 206 Edutainment 13, 122, 136, 213 Eisenman, Peter 173 Engelhardt, Baruch 80 Ernst Kroch, Jacob 78 Experience 27-28, 33, 35, 38, 43-47, 49, 59-61, 68, 102-03, 172, 189-90, 193-94, 196-97, 206-07, 215 Aesthetic 136

232  Bodily 14, 18-19, 75, 163, 208 Constructed 44, 133 Embodied 204 Lived 49, 54, 99, 124, 133 of Modelscapes 24 Structured 19, 44, 47, 70, 123, 205, 207, 215 Touristic 46, 67, 134, 141 Visual experience 28-29, 32 Fascism 83 Feige, Michael 17, 131, 133, 135-36, 138-39, 142, 144, 146, 150 Feldman, Jackie 196, 198-99, 205 Feldman, Karen 172 Fenichel, Haimi 156-57 Fenster, Tovi 190 Flavius, Josephus 78, 85, 92, 95 Foucault, Michel 149-51 Galerie du Bord-de-l’Eau 65 Garden of Commemoration 187 Garden of Resurrection 142, 189 Garden of Revival 189-90, 197 Gellner, Ernst 62 Gillis, John 63, 206 Gismondi, Italo 82 Goffman, Erving 47 Goodman, Nelson 15, 42 Great Exhibition in London (1851) 68 Hague, The 91 Haifa 91, 138, 202 Halbwachs, Maurice 164 Handelman, Don 46-47, 170, 178, 194, 206 Har Hazikaron (Mount of Remembrance) 178 Hasmonean Palace 86-88 Hausner, Gideon 190 Healy, Patrick 15-16, 44 Hebrew University 78, 84, 103, 113 Heidegger, Martin 32 Heritage 13, 16, 57, 64, 71, 75, 83, 94, 105, 119, 130, 141-42, 159, 165 Cultural 28, 39 Heritage Sites 16, 19, 25, 64, 75, 105, 119, 143 Representation of 19, 56, 159 Shared 57 Herod’s Temple 106 Heroes’ Remembrance Authority 22, 161, 164, 168, 176, 208 Heroism Remembrance Law 179 Herzl, Theodore 95, 147, 191, 193, 196-99, 203, 205 Herzl’s Tomb see Mt. Herzl Herzog, Chaim 188 Heterotopias 149-51, 153 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 62-63, 165 Holocaust 21-22, 161, 163-65, 167-71, 174-76, 178-79, 182, 184, 189, 192, 194, 196-99, 202-04, 216 Holocaust and Heroism 169, 178, 192-93, 197

Modelscapes of Nationalism

Holocaust Martyrs 22, 161, 164, 168, 176, 208 Holocaust Memorials 170-71, 175, 179-80, 195-96, 205 Holocaust Memory 203 Holocaust survivors 163, 165, 199-200, 202 Remembrance Day 199, 204 Remembrance Law 179 Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority 22, 161, 164, 168, 176, 208 see also Yad Vashem Holy Land 69-70, 101-02, 130, 134 Holyland Corporation 86, 119; see also Holyland Tourism Company Holyland Hotel 77, 81, 107-08, 125, 129, 211 Holyland Model 19, 77 Holyland Tourism Company 86, 108, 112-14, 116-17, 125, 127 Hotel des Invalides 66 Huyssen, Andreas 166-67 Identity 61, 208, 216 Contestations over 145, 165 National 11, 19-20, 24, 28, 61-64, 67-72, 93, 97 Personal 36 Traditional 33 see also Collective Identity Imperial Rome (model of) 79, 81-84, 211-12 International Association of Miniature Parks (IAMP, 36 Israel 19 ancient Israel 20, 76, 93, 95, 97, 103-04, 118, 211 collective memory of 19 contemporary culture of 16, 19 history of 19 Israeli-Palestinian conflict 11, 21, 122 national identity of, Israeliness 11, 19, 121, 135, 148, 214, 216 Israel Land Authority (ILA) 128-29 Israel Museum, The 20-21, 25, 77, 86, 88, 94-95, 108-10, 118-19, 121, 148, 151-52, 211 Italy 80, 82-84, 90 Jameson, Frederick 33 Jerusalem 19, 21-22, 75-78, 86-87, 89-93, 95-98, 100-02, 104-05, 107-11, 116, 118-19, 125, 127, 208 1967 conquest of 20, 99, 106-7, 212 Ancient Past of 19, 77 East Jerusalem 77-78, 92, 97-98, 100, 106-07, 127, 178 Jerusalem Hills 188 Jerusalemite Stone 91 Jewish Quarter 107, 115 Municipality 98 Old City 70, 77, 91-92, 98-99, 101, 104, 106-07, 111, 118 Pre-1967 127 Western Jerusalem 77-78, 178 Jerusalem Exhibit 69-70, 102, 146

Index

Jewish communities 21-22, 161, 179, 182, 184, 192, 203-05, 215 Jewish History 106, 126, 170, 185, 205 Jordan 19, 25, 77, 92, 97, 100, 154 Journey to Poland 195-96 Judean Desert 109, 180 Kibbutz Nahshon 128-29 Kibbutzim 128-29 Kidron Valley 126 King Herod 80, 91, 95-96 King Louis XIV 65 Knesset 20, 109, 113, 142, 169, 176, 198 Koselleck, Rainhardt 58-59, 166, 204 Kroch, Hans 75, 77-78, 84, 89-93, 108 Last of Kin 196, 198-201, 203-04 Latrun Monastery 137-38 Le Prestre de Vauban, Sébastien 65 Le Telier, François-Michel 65 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 52 Lieux de Mémoir 163-65, 167, 169; see also Nora, Pierre Lincoln Memorial 172-73 Linking Path 195, 197, 200-02, 204 Linking Path March 25, 163, 193-96, 198-99, 203-06, 215-16 Lipa Yahalom-Dan Zur Architects 22-23, 161, 185-86, 214 Louvre Museum 65-66, 95, 115 Madurodam (Open Air Museum) 79, 91, 125, 127, 129, 160 Malesevic, Sinisa 63-64 Maps 18-19, 24, 51, 57, 67, 82, 102, 159, 161-62, 181, 208, 210-11, 213-16 Memorials 22, 25, 78, 136, 161-64, 167, 170-76, 178-81, 184, 191-92, 195, 197-200, 203-04, 206, 214 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 138, 158 Mevorah, David 111-17 Mini Israel Exhibition (at the Israel Museum) 21-22, 121, 148, 150, 152, 154-60, 210, 213 Mini Israel Theme Park 20-21, 25, 55, 121-23, 148, 150-51, 153, 155, 157-60, 208, 212-14 Mirzoeff, Nicholas 30-31, 33 Mitchell, W.J.T. 30-31, 42-43, 102 Models 13-18, 23-25, 27-31, 36-41, 43-50, 52-55, 59-63, 65-69, 71-73, 75-76, 78-100, 106-18, 121-22, 125-42, 144-60 as constructors of Identity 28, 93, 97, 144, 159, 165; see also Identity definition of, 15-17 in Public Events 46 miniature 13, 21, 29, 37, 40, 43, 45, 49-50, 53-54, 65, 79, 135-36, 138, 143, 146 utopianism in 16-17, 132, 149-50

233 Modelscapes 23-25, 47-48, 55-59, 64-68, 71-73, 75-77, 84-85, 93-94, 118-19, 121-23, 137-39, 143-45, 147-50, 162-63, 207-17 and Israeli national identity 19-21, 26 and local identity 124 and museums 18, 31 as a product 24, 40 as opposed to collections 34-35 as settings for public performance 43, 47 as a unique form of representation 27, 37-38, 40, 209, 217; see also Representational aspects of Modelscapes definition of 17-18, 27-28, 34 experience of 27-28, 34, 38, 41, 43-45, 47 -scapes suffix 17-18, 207 Modernity 27, 31-33, 39, 41-42, 57, 59-61, 63-64, 70, 102, 132, 166 Momchedjikova, Blagovesta 44-45, 50 Monuments 79, 82, 161-64, 172-73, 176, 178, 180-81, 183-84, 191-92, 196, 198-99, 203, 205, 208, 215 More, Sir Thomas 60-61 Mount Carmel 202 Mount Herzl 25, 178, 191, 193, 196-99, 203, 205, 216 Mount of Remembrance 22, 167, 170, 175 Museo de la Civilta Romana 79 Museums 18-20, 31, 34, 45-46, 72, 82-83, 109-14, 116-18, 147-48, 151, 154, 158-59, 192-93, 208, 210-13 as Heterotopias 151 Mussolini, Benito 83 Myth of origin 40, 53, 63, 97, 103, 119, 125, 143, 160, 211 Nationality 20, 24, 28, 57, 63, 65, 68, 71, 88, 93, 145, 160, 198, 208-09 New York 44-46, 50, 173 New York Panorama 45, 68 Nora, Pierre 163-65, 167, 169 Nostalgia 40, 54, 133, 212 Origin myth 103, 212; see also Myth of origin Oslo Accords 213 Palace of Ptolemais 87 Palais des Tuileries 65 Palestinian 100, 104-05, 111, 127, 129, 143, 154, 190, 213 Pallasmaa, Juhani 44, 49 Palmach 202 Panorama 17, 50 of New York City 44-46, 50, 68; see also New York Panorama Paris Exposition of 1887, The 69 Paris Exposition of 1889, The 69 Parliament 20, 109 Parthenon, The 91 Petra 87-88

234  Pickford, Henry W. 171, 173-75 Poland 195-96 Poliker, Yehuda 202 Portman, John 33 Queens Museum of Art 44-45 Representational Aspects of Modlescapes 209, 217 and Completeness 160, 209-10, 217 and Distance 38-39, 46, 72, 78, 136, 138, 160, 209-10, 215, 217 Interpretations of 28, 93, 165, 172, 174, 207, 209-14, 217 Openness in 209-10, 217 Rome 78, 82-83, 87, 91 Rommel, Erwin 202 Rorty, Richard 43 Rue des Nations see The Paris Exposition in 1887 Safdie, Moshe 176 Said, Edward 38-39 Scheffler, Erwin 80, 91, 95 Second Intifada 127-29, 213 Second Temple Model 19-20, 25, 75-82, 84-86, 88-89, 91-95, 97-104, 106-11, 118-19, 121, 125-26, 151, 158-59, 211-14; see also Holyland Model Second Temple Period 19, 78, 80, 86-87, 89-90, 92-93, 99-100, 103-04, 113, 116, 126 Second World War 70, 161, 167, 176, 202, 205 Shanghai Exposition, The (2010) 71 Simon, Joshua 154 Simulation 27, 40-41, 89-90, 133, 135, 178, 216 Smith, Albert 13 Smith, Anthony 62-64, 93, 160 Snyder, James 109, 114, 117-18 Solel Boneh, 129, 142 St. Louis World’s Fair (1904) 69-70 Star of David 21, 122, 130-33, 138, 143, 151-52, 212 Statism 167-69, 197 Strauss, Maayan 154, 156

Modelscapes of Nationalism

Temple Mount 87, 89, 94, 100, 104-07, 116 Tsafrir, Yoram 75, 77-78, 80-81, 84-87, 90, 92-93, 95, 98, 100, 106, 115-17 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 174 Valley of the Communities The 21-22, 25, 161-65, 167, 170, 174-75, 177, 179-85, 187-206, 208, 210, 214-16 Verbal images 42-43, 61 Vesely, Dalibor 31-32 Via dell’Impero (Rome) 83 Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial 170-75, 206 Visual Culture 29-33 Visual experience 28-29, 32 Vitruvius 15 Wailing Wall The 89, 94, 96, 115-16, 127, 142, 146, 176, 180 Tunnel 111 see also Temple Mount, Jerusalem Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 168, 198; see also Holocaust Washington Monument 172-73 Weizmann Institute 132, 143 West Bank 143, 154 World War II 78, 83, 198; see also Second World War Wye Agreement 213 Yad Vashem 22, 25, 161, 163-64, 167-68, 175-79, 182-84, 187-88, 190-94, 197-99, 206, 208, 214 Yahalom, Lipa 22-23, 161, 179-87, 189-92, 197-98, 214 Yates, Frances 175 Zandberg, Esther 184, 191, 204 Zertal, Idit 167-69, 176, 206 Zionism 77, 93, 95, 103, 126, 132, 136, 146, 169-70, 211 Zionist 77, 93, 103, 119, 122, 125, 128, 131-32, 136, 143, 146-47, 158, 168, 170, 189, 193, 197, 211 Zur, Dan 22-23, 161, 179-83, 185-92, 197, 214