"הידעת את הארץ ?": ממדף הספרים לשבילי ישראל

When and how was the identification created between the Israeli landscape and the figure of the 'new Jew' rooted in the homeland ? The renewal of the connection between the actual land, with its trees and rocks, and the Zionist project played a decisive role in shaping the new Hebrew culture of the 20 th century . However, few in Israel are aware today of the entangled roots of that identification . The emerging experience of indigenous belonging to the real place was fueled by an archaic text — the Bible — whose sanctity has dimmed, while its authority as a founding historical document and as a geographical document has intensified . Members of previous generations of Jewish society considered the Bible to be a sacred text . The Biblical text accompanied the Jews in the diaspora for many generations, but until modern times only few had the privilege of connecting what was written therein with the real Land of Israel . Only when a handful of Jewish writers and scholars began to look at the Bible with non - traditional perspectives was the way paved for the actual yediat ha-aretz ( 'knowledge of the land', that is : Geography of Israel ) .Moving away from the traditional Jewish discourse allowed the Jews to get closer to the earthly landscapes of a historical homeland . My generation, bornin the 04' s and 05' s of the previous century, personally experienced what could be called a 'Biblical transformation' in its late Israeli incarnation . In the early years of the state, every girl and boy in the secular state education system studied dozens of Bible chapters . The Bible was taught as a literary work, as a historical document, and as a source of knowledge of the historical geography of Palestine . This article points to the origins of the emergence of a 'new Jew' figure, who began to read the Bible with 'Europeanized' eyes and sought to reconnect with the landscape and nature of an ancient country using the tools of 'knowledge of the land' . The article also discusses the effects of cultural transformations and scientific innovations that took place in Europe from the end of the 18 th century onwards, and identifies the contributions of Jewish scholars to the fact that 'knowledge of the land' played a significant role in the realization of the Zionist project in the Land of Israel