Dressing Up: Religion and Ethnicity in Israeli National Dolls

This article considers Israel’s national image both at home and abroad through the framework of Israeli costume dolls, looking specifically at the way that gender played a role in Israel’s national image as it travelled from domestic production to international reception. Initially, predominantly female doll makers produced three main types of Israeli dolls, but over time the religious Eastern European male doll triumphed in the pantheon of national types. Produced for retail sale to non-Hebrew speaking tourists by immigrant woman, the Eastern European religious male doll came to represent Israel abroad while the market pushed representations of the Middle Eastern Jewish woman and the native sabra child to the side-lines. This article examines the shift from the multi-ethnic collection of dolls as representative of the nation’s idea of itself to the privileging of the male Eastern European doll as representative of the normative image of Israel abroad

The Brumberg Sisters

Born exactly a year apart, sisters Valentina and Zinaida Brumberg worked together their entire careers in the Soviet animation industry, becoming known as the “grandmothers of Russian animation” for their work in the fairytale genre (Katz 2016, 248n1). The Brumberg sisters are notable in Russian animation because they were among the first generation of animators in the country during the Revolutionary years, a unique environment that allowed women—even Jewish women—to make their way to the top of the industry. Perhaps their presence is more notable in the international arena as animation was dominated by men in the early decades and Valentina and Zinaida were among the first women in world animation, alongside anatomized pockets of female artists, such as Lotte Reiniger in Germany, Helena Smith Dayton in America, and Hermína Týrlová in Czechoslovakia. The Brumberg sisters were also at the forefront of many technical and aesthetic innovations, such as the projection of animated segments on theatrical stages, the use of paper cut-outs, the integration of folk styles for the stylization of indigenous tales, and the introduction of sound to Soviet animation

Tropical Russian Bears: Jews and Soviet Animation During The Cold War

After Stalin consolidated the major animation studios and closed down smaller regional studios to create a single Moscow-based drawn and puppet animation studio in 1934–36, the animation studio Soyuzmultfilm became the largest animation studio in Eastern Europe. In the 1960s, Soviet Jewish animators focused on the theme of social geography and developed individual characters in relationship to social mapping. This essay analyses the enigmatic Cheburashka, the Soviet Mickey Mouse, whose popularity as a Communist ideal led to his starring role as Soyuzmultfilm’s most enduring logo. It is particularly concerned with the development of the ethnically-unidentifiable Cheburashka against the history of the Moscow Zoo and its inter-species exhibitions.</jats:p