ABSTRACT
In 1906, the Zionist movement established Bezalel, a school for arts and craftsin Jerusalem. This was not the first professional workshop in Palestine, as Alliance Israélite Universelle already initiated local workshops, specifically in the fields of carpentry, copper work and weaving, following its establishment in Jerusalem during the mid-1860s; and yet, Bezalel was hailed as a novelty by the Movement. This chapter outlines the history of the first iteration of the school, from 1906 to 1929, demonstrating how it offered an important precedent for the visual language of the JNF archive, and how the problematics of the social relations that will be preserved in the archive began to take shape at this institution.
