Young Israel, in Color
A British soldier’s 1949 home movies
June 23, 2009
In 1949, an English soldier named Bernard Beacham was posted to Israel. To fight off boredom, he brought a movie camera with him, and he captured scenes, in color, of the Jewish State in its nascent year. The footage is stunning. It also contains a shocking revelation: folks in Israel used to wear ties.
Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.