Signifying passages: the signs of change in Israeli street names

25 Pages·2002·0.137 MB·English

by  Amit Pinchevski, Efraim Torgovnik

Media, Culture & Society
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Signifying passages: the signs of change in Israeli street names
Amit Pinchevski and Efraim Torgovnik
Media Culture Society 2002 24: 365
DOI: 10.1177/016344370202400305

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Signifying passages: the signs of change in Israeli
street names
Amit Pinchevski
MCGILLUNIVERSITY, CANADA
Efraim Torgovnik
TELAVIVUNIVERSITY, ISRAEL
Introduction
Collective memory, argues Maurice Halbwachs (1992), is dependent upon
time, place and historic circumstance, and always selective. The past, or the
way it is perceived, is always instrumental to the present political and
social goals and needs. Collective memory is therefore a social product
reconstructed in adherence to political, historical and social changes. Thus
the shaping of elements molding the collective memory is a fundamental
component in the construction of a national narrative (Anderson, 1991), as
succinctly phrased by Orwell: ‘Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.’ Being dynamic, the collective
memory requires means through which it can be channeled into mundane
walks of life. Among such means are national symbols, commemoration
days, national ceremonies and memorial sites like museums, monuments
and cemeteries. The latter were called by Pierre Nora (1986) ‘realms of
memory’ (lieux de mémoire), segments of space or time, possibly space
and time, transcending the concrete, invoking sacredness in the everyday
and presenting symbols of unity within social heterogeneity. Recently,
several attempts have been made to conceptualize the exploration of street
names as a commemorative realm, most notably those of Palonen (1997),
Azaryahu (1996) and Ferguson (1988).
While acknowledging the importance of these attempts, we believe that
the semiotic element of street names and the methodological employment
Media, Culture & Society © 2002 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi), Vol. 24: 365–388
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366 Media, Culture & Society 24(3)
of a hermeneutic reading did not guide previous research. In the analysis to
follow we emphasize two aspects. The first concerns the political struggle
and decision-making processes involved in street-naming. These will be
linked to political ideology and the socialization processes of symbolic
elements reshaping the Israeli collective memory. The second research
emphasis will be given to the textual quality of street maps, that is, viewing
street maps as elaborate spatial-texts encapsulating meanings pertaining to
specific periods, places and political administrations. By examining street
maps as spatial-texts, a latent potential for a hermeneutic reading may be
unraveled.
The following questions guide our study:
c Is there a linkage between street names and the period during which they
were given?
c To what extent does political affinity of the name-givers influence the
character of the names?
c Do time and the physical place of the town in geopolitical space play a
role?
c And finally, does the demographic, sociological and political make-up of
the inhabitants affect the nature of names?
Data for our study are drawn from Israel, taking into account its cultural
diversity. The four towns analyzed here – Ramle, Sderot, Ariel and Qatzrin
– exhibit the scope of this diversity in their distinct demographic, social,
political and geopolitical characteristics. As such, this analysis may supply
an insight into the changes occurring in some elements of the Israeli
collective memory and into the symbolic nature of social and political
processes.
Background
The political process involved in naming streets is still, with some
exceptions, very much absent from studies relating to political and cultural
inquiry. Kari Palonen notes this deficiency and claims that ‘Despite the
obvious political significance this research is hardly ever conducted at all in
political science, while traditional onomastics has been afraid of politics’
(1993: 103). The very act of naming something is indeed a political act, for
a name is always given to something or someone by an external force
having the legitimacy to do so. Moreover, naming, as H.G. Duncan
contends, is an important part of the negotiation process of the social
reality striving to achieve ‘symbolic integration’ (1968: 21–2). Naming
streets in particular is a threefold political act. Firstly, being the result of a
political struggle in which one option defeated several others, naming
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Pinchevski & Torgovnik, Signifying passages 367
streets is like any other political contest in having a potential for conflict
(Palonen, 1993: 114). Secondly, the decision is made by political-
bureaucratic institutions having the legitimate monopoly to name, and as
such, they hold what Pierre Bourdieu calls the ‘means of symbolic
violence’ (1991: 239–40). It is therefore a political practice par excellence
of ‘power over space’, a demonstration of the scope of control vested in
the political-bureaucratic institutions having the exclusive right to classify
and attach definitions to an existing social space (Celik et al., 1994: 4).
And finally, decisions over street names are conducted by political actors
who endeavor to engrave their ideological views in the social space, and
further into the collective memory; in this respect, street names might be
seen as mundane media of canonization (Azaryahu, 1996: 321). In Israel
this is even more notably evident since most of the political parties in the
Knesset (parliament) are represented on most of the municipal boards of
Israeli towns and cities.
Israeli street names have received little attention from scholars and
research into them has mostly been limited in methodological approach and
scope. Bar-Gal’s study of street names in 23 Israeli towns presents a
statistical analysis based on name categories. Its conclusions show that
Israeli street names reflect the dominance of Zionist ideology and particu-
larly the Zionist labor movement; on the other hand, names relating to the
ideological right-wing political parties were scarce (1989: 343). In an
earlier work, Bar-Gal (1987) investigated names given in Tel Aviv between
1909 and 1933 focusing on the development of street-naming decision-
making processes. Azaryahu’s study (1993) discusses the institutionalized
commemoration of the 1948 war in Haifa and Tel Aviv and suggests that
the war brought a greater demographic and political change to Haifa than
to Tel Aviv. In a more recent work, Azaryahu (1996) raises some
additional important issues concerning the commemoration elements of
Israeli street names, particularly in old Tel Aviv.
Analytic model
The analytic model used in this study relies on the analysis of Roland
Barthes (1972). Some elements of his analysis served as a theoretical
foundation for investigations into areas such as photography (Barthes,
1977), architecture (Barthes, 1988), monuments (Almog, 1991) and urban
culture (Singer, 1991). Pursuant to Barthes’s analysis, we regard the nature
of a street name as twofold: on the first level, the denotative one, a street
sign serves as a spatial sign attaching a name to a place enabling people to
find their way through the urban maze. On the second level, the
connotative level, the same street sign also signifies an ideological content
transcending the concrete context and transforming the urban space into a
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368 Media, Culture & Society 24(3)
FIGURE 1
A semiotic model of street names
signifying space in itself. In other words, in addition to indicating actual
streets, street signs as spatial signs also signify ideological contents (figure,
event, place, symbol, etc.) independent of the specific street, effectively
appropriating urban space for commemoration,1 as seen in Figure 1.
Viewed from a semiotic standpoint, street names are media through
which the urban space is being canonized, making the ordinary sublime
and vice versa in a dialectical manner. From a hermeneutic perspective,
this duality holds as well for the street map: on the first and prosaic level it
is a small-scale description of the city; however, on the second, the
transcendent level, it might be regarded as an ideological spatial-text
mounted onto the urban space. Furthermore, being formed over long
periods of time and stratified by different periods that have left their mark
upon the city’s streets, this text exhibits an ‘ossified’ state of the ever-
changing production and reproduction of the collective memory.
Method
Studies of street names fall roughly into two main types. The first are
studies in which street names have been analyzed statistically according to
name categories, for example Baldwin and Grimaud’s (1989) study of
American street names, Ferguson’s on Paris (1988) and Bar-Gal’s study on
Israeli towns (1989). The second type is a narrative analysis of some
political and historical processes and changes in terms of street names, for
instance Harris on Morristown, New Jersey (1989), Azaryahu on Berlin
(1997) and Palonen on Helsinki (1993).
Since previous studies tended not to view street maps as textual artifacts,
let alone use appropriate textual methods of analysis, our study will add a
hermeneutic interpretation of street maps by means of textual analysis.
Each town will be examined in two stages. First, an analysis of the local
narrative in terms of street names will be presented. Second, using a textual
analysis method, a hermeneutic reading of street maps as spatial-texts will
be offered. The analysis will be followed by a quantitative summary of
street names according to name categories.
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Pinchevski & Torgovnik, Signifying passages 369
Local narrative
An analysis of the local narrative behind a street map is possible only when
regarding it as a multi-layered whole interweaving time and space. This
‘archeological’ examination endeavors to connect a name to its givers, to
the period in which it was given, and to its specific surroundings. Political
changes in the municipal and governmental arenas would most probably
have had their effect on street names, presumably because every ideologi-
cal period has its own symbols and ideas it aspires to introduce into the
collective memory sphere – and from there into the political consensus.
While focusing on the ‘story behind the name’, special attention will be
given to cases in which new names were given to unnamed streets and also
to cases in which old names were erased and replaced by new ones. The
former indicates prevalent or new meanings given to a blank social space,
whereas the second indicates not only the engraving of new meanings but
also the abolishment of the former. Both cases are, of course, an expression
of ideological intentions. However, the latter bears double the significance
since it indicates a double intention: giving a new name and erasing the
old.
Interpretation of the spatial texts
Space is one of the main elements in a cultural system. As a collection of
cultural artifacts – namely: a text – it might mediate some aspects of the
social system in which it was produced (Duncan, 1990: 17).2 Hence, the
textual facet of space, or in this case the spatial-text arising from a street
map, is readable and interpretable. As Palonen notes: ‘looking at a street
map of a city may be, for the competent reader, sufficient to get a first
glimpse of the history of the city in the terms of the changing political
climates’ (1993: 104). Furthermore, reading the spatial-text is possible in
more contexts than the historical-political one; this text may also be put in
a demographic, geographical or sociological context, thus introducing
additional readings of it. It is likely that there are cases in which a
combined approach is also possible, for instance, a reading taking into
consideration both historic and demographic contexts. It should be empha-
sized that interpretation requires the extraction of the text, or parts of it,
from its seemingly ‘innocent’ surroundings. Hence, the task of a herme-
neutic explication is to join the textual elements in the spatial-text with
distinct contexts, thereby offering a richer analysis. The method chosen for
this task is re-contextualization.3 In this method, the text, or parts of it, is
taken out from its given context and put in another in order to reveal some
meanings that were concealed in the original context (Linell, 1998: 145;
Sarangi, 1998: 306). Let us clarify the idea with a specific example. In the
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370 Media, Culture & Society 24(3)
early 1990s two new neighborhoods were built in the southern town of
Sderot to accommodate Jewish newcomers, especially those from the
former Soviet Union. The two neighborhoods were built north of the older
town, and the road connecting them to the older part was named ‘Aliya
Road’. In Hebrew the word aliya means both climbing or ascending and
returning back to the land of Israel, thus suggesting the prominent place of
the land in relation to other places. Examining this case without positioning
it in the particular demographic context of Sderot would probably not have
raised any deliberations. However, the re-contextualization of this textual
element in the specific demographic-historic context reveals an additional
meaning: the name ‘Aliya Road’ also indicates a symbolic separation
between the older part of the town and the newly inhabited one, a
separation seemingly perpetuating the alienation of the newcomers through
the name of the road leading to their new homes. Therefore, when the
spatial text is placed in a demographic, historical, political or geographic
context it becomes much more than a street map: it bears meanings
transcending the sum of its parts rendering its interpretability. Such
analysis views the spatial-text as a whole capable of mediating shifts in the
governing mindsets, the place of the town in relation to the country,
changes in commemoration patterns, and other messages conveyed via
street names, all this in specific contexts.
Following this analysis a quantitative summary will be presented
according to name categories.4
Ramle: between presence and absence
Local narrative
The former Arabic town of Ramle was conquered by the Israeli Army in
July 1948; consequently, most of its Arab population fled to the east. After
a short period of military administration, Ramle was declared to be an
Israeli town and was opened to Jewish settlers.5 Although one would
expect an Arab-Israeli mix in street names, as the analysis shows, this
expectation was not realized. Arabic Ramle had, of course, many streets,
but only six main streets were known by names: ‘Deir-El-Latin’ (‘Latin
monastery’), ‘Moristan’ (Hospital), ‘Suliman Eben Abed-El-Malek’
(Ramle’s Muslim founder), ‘Omar Eben Abed-El-Khaytab’ (Caliph of the
Islam), ‘Malek Feistal’ (the Iraqi king) and ‘Aqire’ road. These names were
preserved throughout the British Mandate, and as a British map from 1947
shows, these names not only existed but were also acknowledged by the
British administration.6 Soon after Ramle was taken, an administrative
committee was assigned by the Israel Ministry of the Interior to run the
town’s affairs. One of the first actions after assuming power was erasing all
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Pinchevski & Torgovnik, Signifying passages 371
Arab names and putting new names in their place, including all the streets
that did not previously have names. At the first stage, streets were assigned
to the anonymity of alphabetical letters, for example: ‘Deir-El-Latin’ and
‘Moristan’ were labeled ‘N’ (‘Nun’ in Hebrew); ‘Suliman Eben Abed-El-
Malek’ was turned to ‘TA’ (‘Tav-Alef’); ‘Abed-El-Khaytab’ to ‘T’ (‘Tav’);
‘Feistal’ to ‘GN’ (‘Gimmel-Nun’) and ‘Aqire’ to ‘KB’ (‘Koff-Bet’). In this
way all previously unnamed streets were also named.7
The urgency to sort out Ramle’s urban map stemmed from the upcoming
general elections held in 1949, for which a population census was
conducted in preparation for the first electoral register.8 Soon after the state
exercised its power over this urban space, the local administration changed
street labels in old Ramle to names of figures, events and symbols from the
history of the people of Israel (Vilnay, 1961: 40). This was done by the
first town council elected in 1950 and led by a coalition of representatives
from the Israeli Labor Party (Mapai), United Labor Party (Mapam) and the
religious labor party (Ha’Poel Ha’Mizrachi); this coalition remained in
power for almost two decades.9 The names given to old Ramle’s streets
were mainly Zionist and nationalist in nature, such as: ‘Lord Balfour’ (pro-
Zionist British statesman), ‘Eliahu Golomb’ (leader of the Zionist labor
movement), ‘Hashomer’ (a group founded in 1909 to protect Jewish
settlers) and ‘Exodus’ (a ship with 4500 Jewish immigrants attacked and
deported back to Germany by the British). As for the Arab names that were
changed to letters, the main road (previously the Jaffa–Jerusalem road) –
on which Theodore Hertzl passed through on his historical visit in 1898 –
was now named ‘Hertzl Street’; ‘Deir-El-Latin’ and ‘Moristan’ (both given
the label ‘Nun’ in 1949) were named ‘Bialik’ after the national poet;
‘Abed-El-Malek’, or ‘Tav-Alef’, was named ‘Jan Masarik’ after the Czech
benefactor; ‘Feistal’, or ‘Tav’, was now ‘Jabotinsky’; and ‘Aqire’, or
‘Gimmel-Nun’, was changed to ‘Danny Mas’, an army commander killed
in a heroic action.
When new neighborhoods were built, following mass immigration to
Israel during the early 1960s, the names that were given to their streets
clearly reflected the municipal coalition formation. The first neighborhood,
built for factory workers, received street names taken from the socialist
Zionist movement: ‘Ha’Poel’ (the laborer), ‘Katzanelson’, ‘Motzkin’,
‘Shprintzak’ (labor leaders) and ‘Echad Be’May’ (The First of May). The
second neighborhood received names from the Jewish tradition, especially
of renowned rabbis and sages such as ‘Meir Bar-Ilan’, ‘Mohaliver’,
‘Raines’, ‘Uziel’ and ‘Ha’Rambam’. In addition, some biblical names were
given to streets on the southern side of old town changing some of the
remaining street letters: ‘Moshe Rabenu’, ‘Eliyahu Ha’Navie’, ‘Amos’,
‘Yehezkel’ and ‘Zefania’.
1959 saw for the first time the formation of a local political party – The
Independent Party of Iraqi Jews in Ramle – which succeeded in being
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372 Media, Culture & Society 24(3)
elected to the town council and receiving two seats out of a total of 13. In
addition to promoting local interests of the Jewish-Iraqi community, the
party worked to put its unique mark on the town’s map. Consequently, the
names ‘Wachil Yehezkel’, ‘Yosef Haim’ and ‘Ovadia Somech’ (all
prominent Jewish-Iraqi figures) were given to alphabetical streets, and also
a street bearing the letters ‘Tav-Beit’ was changed to ‘Ades Shpik’ after a
Zionist activist who was hanged in Iraq in 1948.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, the foundations for the new Giora
neighborhood (named after Giora Yoseftal, a prominent Labor Party leader)
were laid down. Built to accommodate newcomers to Israel, the street
names given in this neighborhood bore distinctive national characteristics,
influenced, most probably, by the victorious endeavor of the Six-Day War.
Amongst these names are: ‘Ha’Tzanhanim’ (the Paratroopers), ‘Zahal’
(Israel Defense Forces), ‘Ha’Shirion’ (tank forces) and ‘Golani’ (an
infantry battalion).
Up until 1961, Jabotinsky, the founder of the right-wing movement
Beitar, was the only right-wing political figure to be commemorated by a
street in the old town. The military success of the Six-Day War, led by a
national unity government which included a right-wing party and its leader
Menahem Begin, gave a new legitimacy to the right. Thus more names
associated with right-wing political symbols were given, such as: ‘Beitar’,
‘Ha’Etzel’ (the underground activist group that fought against the British)
and ‘David Raziel’ (Ha’Etzel’s first commander) – all given to streets
previously bearing letters. The symbolic transition in street names might
have been a precursor to a political shift in the municipality and in Israel as
a whole. And this political shift took place first in 1971 when Ramle
elected a mayor from the right-wing Gahal party for the first time. The
power of right-wing factions in Ramle’s municipality increased steadily;
since 1989 a mayor affiliated with the national Likud party has always held
office. Accordingly, recent municipal coalitions have mostly consisted of
the Likud party, Ramle’s local political list and the Mafdal religious
party.10
Towards the end of the 1970s, the economic standard of living in Israel
was increasing. Municipalities, including Ramle, wanted to attract well-to-
do people in order to gentrify the area occupied by residents of relatively
modest means. Ramle’s municipality began the construction of a new
neighborhood on the western side of town, Yeffe Nof, designed to attract a
more affluent population. In addition, the municipality proposed that
potential inhabitants have greater autonomy in designing and constructing
their new homes and surroundings. Consequently, potential buyers of
homes specifically demanded to shape their symbolic environment and
presented a proposal for street names for the new neighborhood. All the
names presented were taken from nature and were deprived of any political
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Pinchevski & Torgovnik, Signifying passages 373
or ideological characteristics, mostly being names of flowers, trees and
other natural themes.
Ramle’s three most recently-built neighborhoods represent three distinct
symbolic and commemorative arrays. The new Neve David neighborhood,
inhabited by economically well-to-do people, carries names related to
nature, similar to those in Yeffe Nof. Here residents also insisted on having
apolitical names for their streets, preferring more ‘natural’ topics like
flowers and trees. In contrast, street names in the new immigrant neighbor-
hood of Kiriat Menahem Begin (named after the first Likud party prime
minister) – built to accommodate newcomers, especially from the former
Soviet Union countries during the early 1990s – bear a notably political
character. These street names reflect the political bent of the municipal
committee, chaired by a Likud representative and supported by the mayor,
also a Likud party member. Hence, a greater emphasis on commemorating
figures from the Israeli political right is noticeable: ‘Arie Ben-Eliezer’,
‘Micha Riser’, ‘Shmuel Tamir’ and ‘Haim Landau’. Here the political right
also emphasized what Labor previously undermined. For the first time,
names of figures from the radical right-wing organization Lechi (a pre-state
radical underground group which fought against the British) were com-
memorated: ‘Aba Achimeir’ and ‘Yair Stern’. These actions represent a
penetration of political right symbols into the prevalent landscape, still
bearing names and topics set by the socialist political parties.
The last symbolic array is of local figures. Several streets in the new
neighborhoods were recently given names of local figures, former mayors
and deputy mayors (such as ‘Kremer’, ‘A.S. Levi’ and ‘Buganim’). Ramle
had started to weave its own local history into the street map side-by-side
with the national, the ideological and the apolitical elements.
Interpretation of the spatial-text
The conquest of Ramle was accompanied by a purposeful act of symbolic
appropriation of the urban space – erasing all previous names and quickly
attaching new labels instead, later to be changed into Hebrew names.
Today one third of Ramle’s population is Arabic (those who remained in
Ramle or arrived after 1948), and mainly concentrated in two areas: in the
old town and in the Juarish area, which was built on the town’s western
outskirts to house Arabs mostly from the Juarish family. Yet modern
Ramle’s spatial-text never bore – nor does it currently bear – any name or
symbol of the Arab population. Furthermore: a quick look at the map
shows that the older parts of Ramle, where many Arabs reside, hold the
largest concentration of names signifying Zionist and national elements.
These names comprise almost 23 percent out of all street names (see Table
1), and were mostly given in the first stages of Ramle’s inhabitation during
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