Eitan Bar-Yosef writes on “Zionism, Apartheid, Blackface: Cry the Beloved Country on the Israeli Stage” in Representations 123

Numerous theatrical productions in 1950s Israel employed blackface to simulate negritude on the stage. Focusing on Habima’s 1953 production of Lost in the Stars—the musical drama based on Alan Paton’s best-selling novel Cry, the Beloved Country—and reading it in the context of Israel’s involvement in postcolonial black Africa, this essay demonstrates how, by reflecting the slippery nature of Jewish whiteness, blackface performances on the Hebrew stage captured the complex relationship between Zionism and apartheid.

Image: You Can’t Take It With You (1947), courtesy of the Yehuda Gabbai Theater Archive, Sha’ar Zion Library—Beit Ariela, Tel-Aviv