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Hitlerwelle, Führerboom, Hitlernostalgie in the German language; in Hebrew there is the famous La'Hit-Ler (Hitler-Schlager) coined by Israeli poet David Avidan, or what Professor Moshe Zuckermann has just recently called Hitleriada (a combination between Hitler and Olympiad):1 all phrases share the wish to describe the great interest that people often (re-)find in the figure of the Nazi Führer. And this interest usually emerges in waves. During the 1990s, Israeli art showed an obsessive preoccupation with the figure of Hitler that lasted around a decade and is considered to be a turning point with respect to the ways the Holocaust is represented among Israeli-Jewish artists. By focusing on the work of Israeli artist Boaz Arad, Marcel Marcel (2000), which ended this decade, in comparison to the work of German artist Rudolf Herz, ZUGZWANG (1995), this essay wishes to re-think the recruiting of the image of Hitler in Israeli art, in order to introduce the advantages of transnationalism and a comparative approach to the local art discourse with respect to Holocaust related imagery.

In what sense can works of art constitute a community? How can an artist's particular subject position participate in a social connection established by art? Taking issue with current claims that community precedes works of art and determines them ideologically, the article argues that a community is what might be generated by works of art and the subject position behind them. Since my argument revolves around the tension between the social and subjective aspects of works of art, the article begins by returning to two major articulations of the decline of the subjective in Western art. It then examines two canonical essays about Israeli art that embody the tension between subjectivity and the constitution of a community. The solution I offer is based on Freud's notion of social bonds and their relation to the unconscious.

This article treats the topic of political cartooning and the evolution of a genre during the early years of Israeli statehood. It focuses particularly on the work of two prominent cartoon artists, Friedel Stern and Kariel Gardosh (Dosh), who made their careers in Israel in the 1950s and '60s and whose politically charged images have been sanitized over time. It looks at how attitudes towards certain imagery have changed so that political commentary that was seen as relevant and acute during early statehood eventually lost its political edge through historical handling and revision. These two cartoonists provided strong visual symbols of early Israeli national identity, which invariably had political motivations, and yet their legacy as political commentators during a crucial period in Israeli political history is often overlooked.

Looking at Bezalel art from the perspective of Jewish art reveals that, while some of the biblical themes employed had many precedents in the history of Jewish art, others were fairly new in the Jewish context; for example, [Judith], who was traditionally associated with the feast of Hanukkah and the heroism of the Hasmonean family, featured alongside [Ruth] or [Rebecca], who appeared far less commonly in a Jewish context. When referring here to Jewish tradition it is worth remembering that much of the current knowledge about the history of Jewish art was not known at the time of the founding of [Bezalel] and during its first period, especially the important discoveries of images in ancient synagogues. The practice of collecting and displaying Jewish ritual objects was also just in its infancy.(5) Thus, the discussion of Bezalel biblical art must now follow a different path: the role of the Hebrew Bible in the Jewish national revival of which Bezalel was a part. The Jewish perspective in discussing Western art is best seen in an essay on the picture gallery of Dresden by the Hebrew writer and Zionist leader Nahum Sokolow.(26) Sokolow was one of the few Hebrew writers in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century who were not only interested in the visual arts, but who also wrote about it.(27) In this essay, Sokolow describes paintings on themes from the Hebrew Bible executed mainly by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian masters. Although perfectly aware of the artists' Christian perspective in interpreting the biblical stories, he nevertheless criticizes them for being incorrect in historic and geographical detail. With a few exceptions, their work, he thought, was beautiful but false. But fi there were to be great painters from among the Jewish people, and if they were to describe the history of their people, they would surely \"bestow soul\" in their paintings.(28) Sokolow also criticized the Jews who failed to support Jewish artists and complained: \"why should our work be done by others?\"(29) He believed that the heroic period of the kings and prophets, which was neglected by Christian artists, would be depicted in the future by Jewish artists.(30) And then, when there would be great Jewish artists who would draw from the spiritual sources of their people and who would spring, not from a foreign soil, but from the soil of Eretz Yisrael, \"only then shall we see the history of our people in all its glory depicted according to our mind and taste.\"(31) At the turn of the twentieth century, the attitude toward biblical art in Jewish cultural circles had two faces: it was embraced as part of the Jewish heritage, while, at the same time, k played only a marginal role in the work of most Jewish artists. An illustration of this situation is the German Jewish monthly Ost und West, which first appeared in Berlin in 1901. Through essays, stories, and pictures, the journal promoted Jewish nationalism and aimed at uniting Eastern and Western European Jews while keeping the diversity of Jewish identities.(40) In its first few years, special attention was given to art as a component of Jewish cultural renaissance. In features on prominent Jewish artists and in art reviews, an attempt was made to define Jewish art, which was regarded as a new phenomenon.(41) At the same time, many of the illustrations were of paintings and sculptures that were mainly on biblical themes, but by non-Jewish artists. Raphael and Michelangelo, Rubens and Poussin, Rembrandt and Murillo were among the most eminent artists whose works were reproduced in Ost und West alongside lesser known European artists. Of the biblical figures that appeared in the illustrations, Moses was the most frequent, with various scenes of his life. Other popular figures were Judith, Samson, and David. Some Jewish artists, like Lesser Ury (1861-1931), were also represented with biblical figures,(42) but usually works by contemporary Jewish artists showed Jews at prayer or religious study. In promoting Jewish culture, Ost und West presented images of traditional Jews, as seen by contemporary artists, side-by-side with images of the ancient heroic ancestors of the Jewish people, as depicted by well-known masters. By so doing, the journal reclaimed not only the bible but also tied the high achievements of Western culture to the Jewish heritage.(43) The idea that art related to biblical themes is a legitimate part of the Jewish national culture has continued to be upheld: in 1965 the opening exhibition of the Israel Museum was dedicated to Old Masters and the Bible. No Jewish artist was represented.(44)