The National Transformation of the Historical Memory of Minor Jewish Holidays During the Period of Hibbat Zion

From its very inception, the Jewish National Movement Hibbat Zion turned to the collective past to advance its goals in the present. One of their activities was to reinterpret Jewish holidays and festivals, especially those that did not take a central place in the Jewish calendar. They sought to transform the historical memory of these holidays from a religious memory to a national memory, by matching historical military victories to pioneering projects in the Land of Israel on these dates. Tu B'Av was celebrated, in the 1890's, as the harvest (of wine) festival, commemorating the establishment of the agricultural colony Rishon LeZion and the beginning of Zionist settlement in the Land of Israel. However, in the 20th century Tu B'Av was relegated from the Zionist collective memory, as the holiday of the beginning of the Zionist settlement. In this article I analyse the attempts to re-shape holidays and memorial days to reflect a national spirit by focusing on two early national ‘memory agents’: Avraham Shalom Friedberg and Ze'ev Jawitz, and examine the reasons for the rejection of Tu B'Av, while comparing it with the reception of the myth of the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, MA, in the American collective memory.