By examining the Jewish holidays, the Israeli civic holidays, May Day, the Soviet November 7th and May 9th holidays, and the rituals concerning the relations between Palestinians and Jews, it is shown that between the years 19 the Jewish Communists created a local, Jewish-Israeli, anti-Zionist patriotic identity. The thesis scrutinizes the identity these cultural practices produced. Through the examination of primary sources, ranging from internal Communist documents and newspaper articles to photographs and posters, as well as interviews with contemporaries and comparison with parallel Communist experiences in the United States and in the Arab world – this thesis examines the myths and rituals reflected in the holidays, as practiced by the Jewish Communists in MKI and the Israeli Young Communist League (Banki). Negating and absorbing the Zionist-Socialist and Israeli statist cultures, influenced by both Soviet and left wing European traditions as well as Jewish traditional elements, the Jewish Communists developed their own cycle of holidays. Marginalized and persecuted for most of its formative years, the Communist Party developed, from 1919 to 1965, its own distinctive subculture. The Israeli Communist Party (MKI) and its precursor, the Communist Party of Palestine (PKP), were a unique Arab-Jewish organization.
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