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It's a good afternoon. Good news. Hillary turn, everybody.

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And welcome to the first meeting of of this term of the Israel Studies seminar.

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I'm always happy, as I think I said before, to to host here friends from the university who work on Israel studies.

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This is always a delight to see their entire collegiate work on Israeli studies, and it's a delight in this regard.

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Also to present to you our speaker today, Anita Cohen,

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who is a difficult candidate at the welcome unit for for Israel, for medicine here at the university.

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She's currently doctoral fellow at the Centre of Jewish History in New York City and research affiliated.

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And we use Taub Centre for Israel Studies also between 2014 and 2015.

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Netta was a fellow at the France Rosenzweig Minerva Research Centre in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,

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where she researched the private papers of Heinrich Mendelssohn,

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a renowned zoologist and pioneer of environmental thought in Israel and not unrelated,

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the title of her talk today is When Climate Takes Command Jewish Zionist Scientific Approaches to Climate in Palestine 1900 to 1948 later.

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Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you for the introduction.

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Thank you all for coming. I just want to say a few words before I start this.

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The presentation I'm going to give today is part is actually I'm going to describe my my doctoral project and this is my final year.

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So I'm kind of approaching the last stages of editing and writing the last bits.

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And I'm really, really grateful for any comments, any questions, anything, because I still have the chance to to change things.

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And so I'm very happy that you're here for any feedback.

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So without further ado, my doctoral project occupies the intersection between modern Jewish history,

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climate, environmental history and the history of knowledge and colonial history.

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It focuses on Jewish physicians, architects and botanists as they examined the potential ramification of climate

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on the success of the Zionist project in Palestine between the years 1919 48.

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In my dissertation, I explore the political, social, cultural and cultural ideas and conventions which constructed an informed,

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professional and popular knowledge concerning climate.

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My dissertation is divided into five chapters.

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The introduction chapter generally presents modern Western scientific notions and cultural beliefs which were associated with warm climates.

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Starting from the mid-18th century until the mid-20th century.

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It is important to understand that the recording of weather observations, as well as notions on the implications of climate on plants,

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animals and humans have existed since the times of the Babylonians and the Greeks.

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Yet during the second half of the 18th century, they received a renewed attention.

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During this time, the increasing importance assigned to the study of climate during this period was related to the growing

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transportation of useful medical plants and profitable spices between the METROPOLES and their colonial holdings.

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The transfer of plants and speed in spices led European trade companies to hire

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experts to study the environmental and climatic conditions required to improve crops.

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These experts were usually medical botanist, that is,

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physicians who served as consultant for trading companies and were responsible for both

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bodily and botanical affairs as a result of their double mission and double expertise.

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Descriptions of new environments written by medical botanists tended to emphasise the role of climate not only in relation to flora,

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but also in respect to the physical attributes and moral behaviour of indigenous people.

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Historians name disease has argued that it was during this time that the discourse on societies,

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civility and civilisation, as found in the travel literature, collapsed into the discourse of nature.

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According to her, and I quote Humans became classified and visually represented along the same lines as Flora during the 19th century.

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Information. On climate was made even further widespread and it became prevalent as never before.

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The proliferation of climate research during this period was mostly a result of imperial technological communication,

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communication and infrastructural developments, such as the invention of the telegraph and the railway.

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These developments increased the mobility of data produced on climate to a global scale.

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According to historian Deborah Cohen and Martin Mahoney, during this time, climate research in empires was understood as the ultimate global science,

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both in its subject matters and its practices,

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as it reflected the diversity of empires of all types of climate as a sign for both heterogeneity and unity.

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In the first chapter of my dissertation, I focus on the evolution of climate research in Palestine as well as in other the two nations.

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Just a minute. Let's make this quiet.

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So in the first chapter of my dissertation, I focus on the evolution of climate research in Palestine as well as in other

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destinations deliberated for Jewish colonisation at the beginning of the 20th century.

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This chapter addresses the overall characteristics of Zionist climate research and examines the arguably colonial features of this research field.

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Furthermore,

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it scrutinises the ways in which colonial knowledge and climate was transported to Palestine and internalised by the Zionist organisation.

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While focusing on individual colonial experts who laid the foundation for climate research in this country,

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experts who were recruited for Zionist research expeditions such as German geologist Max Blankenhorn,

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British Boer War veteran Major Alfred Hear Hill, Gibbon, Gibbons and Swiss Orientalist Alfred Kaiser were usually not Jewish.

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Moreover, according to historian Deborah Neal,

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the transfer of knowledge and expertise between different colonial enterprises

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on a global scale was in fact the norm in the period between 1871 and 1914.

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The few Jewish experts who did profess natural sciences were usually not an

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exception to this international and imperial network of experts and knowledge.

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They, too, had often required their acquired their professional experience in other colonial enterprises before serving the Zionist organisation.

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And in some cases they retained other colonial affiliations even after becoming Zionists.

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Research expeditions and scientific excursion were common colonial means to gather practical information on natural and human condition in desirable,

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desirable and unfamiliar locations. Therefore, in this chapter,

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I also examined the ways in which different representations of knowledge and

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climate mirrored and in some tore and sometimes even constructed political,

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cultural and social beliefs in various geographies.

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One example for the use of climate research as a political apparatus can be seen in the work

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of the Zionist research expedition to was an issue in the British East Africa protectorate,

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also known as the Uganda expedition. This location was offered to the Zionist organisation by the British Empire and was investigated

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by a research commission in 1905 to determine its suitability for Jewish colonisation.

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The three reports produced by three different Commission members emphasised the importance of the

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country's natural conditions and rendered a distinct account of its climatic conditions at the same time.

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The general content and display of data in each report,

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as well as each member's interpretation and the final conclusions regarding the climatic conditions,

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were utterly different and in some respect even contradicting.

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In this context, I analysed the literary and scientific style of each report and demonstrate the ways in which climate was

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utilised to promote political views and cultural perceptions under the disguise of a scientific discourse.

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A different aspect of contemporary climate investigation,

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including the scientific discourse of climate change in which Palestine played a central role.

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The main controversy in this context was related to the question of whether the country had become warmer and drier since biblical times.

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And, if so, what were the reasons for this transformation?

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Climate change discourse at this period reflected the central city of the Old Testament in Judeo-Christian culture and science.

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In other words, the discrepancy between the imagined biblical land of the land of milk and honey and

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its disappointing present reality became a central subject for scientific examination.

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One of the most frequently used colonial master methods for solving this so-called

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problem and for improving local climate during this period was afforestation.

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This is also the theme of the second chapter of my dissertation.

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Improving climate through afforestation was related to the Edenic image of the country in

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Judeo-Christian tradition that was that should have been restored according to those who thought so.

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The Jewish National Fund even described the planting of trees as promoting the redemption of the land.

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And as some of you know, the term collateral, it's reminding us yet again how the environment in Palestine was charged with religious terms.

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The first to suggest afforestation in Palestine was in 1894.

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It was Jacob Onyango, director of Mcvay's Agricultural School.

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According to him, afforestation would solve two main issues the high price of timber in the country as well as local climate.

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The improvement of climate would also have implications on the general productive productiveness of the country and in particular on its agriculture.

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In an article describing the work of the Jewish National Fund from April 1921,

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the importance of the forest was explained and I quote Forests take an important role in human history since the beginning of the civilisation.

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A country that has many forests is blessed and can become an attractive settlement.

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This is because forests have a big impact on the three principal conditions needed for settlement, soil, air and water.

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End of quote. Yet big scale afforestation projects during the first half of the 20th century were eventually a result of British initiative.

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The British were occupied with forest eating from the moment they lay foot on the ground in Palestine,

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their resources and knowledge which accumulated and developed throughout the centuries,

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and Kew Gardens, as well as in British colonies located in many climatic zones,

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boosted Zionist afforestation and enabled easy transportation of seeds from many different parts of the world to Palestine.

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The use of many seeds from around the world was also possible because because of the diverse climate,

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sorry, because of the diverse climate region, regions and Palestine itself.

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Climatological accounts in this country frequently presented it as a crossroad of diverse climate regions,

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which were often compared to geographical regions around the world.

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Following a scientific account provided to him by botanists Otto Warburg, Zionist leader Theodor Herzl wrote in his utopian novel No Land in 1901.

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And I quote Where in the world will you find a small country like ours with a heart,

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a temperate and a cool zone so close together in the Jordan Valley you have tropical landscape by the coast,

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the soft beauty of the Riviera and not far away, the snows of Lebanon and Lebanon, Helmand all lying within a few hours of each other by rail.

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Thus, another important consideration for planting trees had to be their suitability and adaptation to local climate.

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Yet both British and Zionist were not familiar with the original forest cover of the country in the past.

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They did not know why the environment, with its arid and semi-arid climate became the way it was,

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and they did not know how to go about returning, so to say, the environment to the way they thought it should.

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It was like in the past what they didn't know was based on knowledge that the British had gathered in India and in the Caribbean and Caribbeans,

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which linked degeneration with deforestation, a problem that was solved in these places by preserving forests as this method was,

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was not applicable in Palestine because there were no.

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Not so many forests. British and Zionists plant.

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Hid in Palestine trees that never existed in the country before.

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Thus radically intervening in local natural processes.

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The third chapter of my dissertation focuses on the role of climate in medicine.

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As I mentioned before, starting from the second half of the 18th century,

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climate was increasingly utilised to explain human, physical and moral attributes.

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Moreover, the abstract and amorphous concept of climate enabled anchoring,

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prejudiced belief and external elements with the support of contemporary scientific explanations.

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Lethargy, for example, was believed to be a result of prolonged exposure to the sun and extent.

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Excessive heat was explained as a result for the emergence of despotic regimes.

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The German anthropologist, Johann Friedrich Blumen Bach, who was commonly referred to who is commonly referred to as the father of racial theory,

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agreed that environmental factors and especially climate, determined the physical form and complexion of people.

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Yet if climate had such a great impact on people,

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then they were supposed to be able to alter their characteristics according to different climates in different places.

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Thus, one of the major questions during the first half of the 19th century was whether European could adapt to life in the colonies.

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And if so, but by what means? In other words, the medical aspects of acclimatisation influenced colonial politics and settlement schemes.

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Turning Acclimatisation, as Michael Osborne writes and I quote into the paradigmatic colonial science notions on climate,

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also received various interpretations in relation to the Jewish people, Europe's internal other.

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However, this paradigm was soon also taken up by Jewish intellectuals themselves.

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Influenced by German romanticism, some intellectuals wish to stress the organic link between the Jews and the natural conditions in Palestine.

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According to them, the Jewish people was created in Palestine and thus its return to the biblical homeland would match its physical and moral nature.

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This rhetoric can be found in the writing of various Zionist thinkers, and it is demonstrated, for example,

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in the work of Russian Jewish Zionist leader Vladimir Bohutinsky in his essay Zionism in the Land of Israel, published in 1905.

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Should Putin's key aim to explain why Palestine was the only logical destination for Jewish colonisation, he wrote,

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and I quote The slow and constant pressure of the natural environment, the landscape, the climate and the flora.

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The flora and the winds of the homeland is what determines the structure of the nation's soul.

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When conceptualising monetarism, we breathed the wind, the the winds of this land.

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When we fought for our independence and biblical time,

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we were surrounded by its air which nurtured our bodies, the nation of Israel and the land of Israel.

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Our won. A different climate, a different flora and other mountains were necessarily distort the body and the soul,

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which were created by the climate, the phone and the mountains of the land of Israel.

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Judea. Six words stressed the potential regenerative impact of climate nonetheless following the mass immigration of Jews to Palestine.

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This positive approach turned into a negative one, and the unknown effects of climate on Jewish European bodies generated fear of its potential.

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Dangerous implications. Zionist medical interests in Palestine can be divided into two main medical branches.

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The first is tropical medicine and the other is medical climatology.

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These two branches also reflected the juncture between two European medical traditions emerging in this country around the same time,

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albeit as a result of separate yet inter interwoven historical developments.

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Tropical medicine concerns health issues that were associated with tropical and subtropical regions and was usually based on Manzoni in medicine,

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typically defined as the research of vector borne parasitic diseases.

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Starting from the 1920s, the British government implemented tropical medicine in Palestine,

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mainly in relation to malaria, to the swift acceptance of the Zionist medical institutions and experts.

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Following the work of historian Joseph Hodge. I argue in this chapter that the analysis of medical discourses, their creation, dissemination.

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Institutional institutionalisation is important to the understand,

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to understanding of how British as well as Zionists viewed themselves and how

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they perceive the people and the land that they encountered in Palestine.

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Specifically, tropical medicine was instrumental in the creation of a white and western identity,

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as well as in defining what was not white and not western.

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Another medical branch which addressed the issue of climate was medical climatology, as I said before this,

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which concerned the physical and mental effects of climatic and weather factors on human beings and was mainly important to Palestine,

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along with German Jewish settlers, among many of whom were physicians during the 1920s and 1930s.

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In Palestine, this medical approach was more prevalent among practitioners than among official institutions,

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and it often focussed on raising public awareness of the intellectual means for the preservation of health in Palestine.

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Moreover, these physicians were preoccupied with the question of Jewish acclimatisation in warm

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climates and with the feasibility of Jewish settlement in Palestine in particular.

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German Jewish physician Theodora's.

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Let's see, for example, explained, and I quote We know that the body can adjust to extreme climatic situations for short periods of times.

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But the question of whether the body can also adjust to and transform itself accordingly during long period is unknown.

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The central concern of physicians regarding the central concern of physicians

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regarded how they could assist Jewish settlers in adjusting to the summer heat.

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After all, Acclimatisation was not merely a theoretical issue.

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Thus, the risk that the research of this physicians examined I'm sorry physicians during in their research,

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physicians conducted experiments that were designed to examine whether and how climate would affect the physical and chemical nature of the body.

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Eventually, most physicians failed to show a significant physiological change in Jewish settlers bodies after arriving in Palestine.

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One physical element that was routinely examined in this context was blood pressure and its potential drop in warm climates.

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As physicians themselves admitted, low blood pressure was traditionally linked with the laziness and indulgence of inhabitants of hot countries.

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However, a decrease in blood pressure among Jewish settlers in Palestine could not be shown in the experimental results.

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Another major concern for physicians in Palestine was they had seen this climatic phenomenon brought dry,

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hot and sandy desert winds, which were believed to cause various physical and mental pathologies lasting.

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Who I mentioned before, wrote more than 20 pages describing this phenomenon and its implications in his book,

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Climatology and Pathology in Palestine, published in 1935, where he described the mental effects of scenes as including,

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and I quote, nervous and mental exhaustion, fatigue, irritation and nervousness, uncertainty, insecurity of memory,

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loss of eagerness, loss of energy, loss of capability to concentrate, loss of courage, loss of enthusiasm for work and life.

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This brings me to the fourth chapter of my dissertation that addresses the various practical solutions which

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were suggested by expert experts to reduce the influence of climate on Jewish European bodies in everyday life.

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These solutions were routinely discussed through two central spheres, the domestic sphere and the sphere of labour.

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Since Zionism tried to break away from conceptions of traditional Jewish life, understood as depending on charity for its survival,

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productive work in general became an extremely important value in the society.

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Jewish physician Jacob Zaida, for example,

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reported that the most productive temperature for physical work was 16 degrees Celsius and for mental work four degrees Celsius.

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Yet accepting these conclusions would imply that the climate in Palestine was not suitable for physical work for more than six months of the year.

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And. Moreover, deeming it categorically unsuitable for mental work.

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Zaina thus had to settle on the results of another experiment, arguing that the best temperature for such activities was not about 24 degrees Celsius.

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Similarly, another physician argued that, according to a different research.

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July and August were the hardest months for labourers in the Jordan Valley.

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He added that this was three times truer for women, even though, as he claimed, and I quote, their work was much less demanding.

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In further treatment of the chop of the topic, Prof.

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Strauss, director of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, recommended a unique Russian shirt that unfortunately I can't show you.

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That picture is actually kind of interesting. He recommended a unique Russian shirt that was supposed to be worn on the outside of the trousers.

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Strauss emphasised that it should also be worn without a belt to permit as much ventilation as possible.

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In addition to what he called horizontal ventilation as enabled by the neck, armpit and stomach area, there should be also vertical ventilation.

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Since this shirt was designed to have small holes in the back.

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Concerns mirroring those of Zionist labourers were addressed to Jewish housewives, for instance,

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a cookbook from 1937 and titled How to Cook and Palestine, published by the Women's International Zionist Organisation.

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The veto suggested replacing the so-called European fat rich foods with local fruits and vegetables.

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As the author Erna mayor explained and I quote, Cooking suitable to the climate must place vegetables, salads and fruits in the foreground.

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Physician Jacob Zada, who I mentioned before,

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likewise suggested substituting the nutritional values of fats with tropical and subtropical vegetables and fruits such as the avocado and Grijalva,

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which he described as good sources for carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.

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Furthermore, the the amount of water one needs to drink and the amount of sweat they produce was measured,

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measured and discussed in hygiene guidebooks for the public.

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Zida wrote that there was no reason to limit the amount of water for a healthy child or adult during the summer saying these.

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This is because the body is able to dispose of extra water but cannot adjust to the lack of water for very long.

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However, pre-empting any misunderstanding,

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he specified the amount of water exactly one and a half litres as a minimum a person should drink during the summer stays in Palestine.

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Meteorologists Fruit of Rudolf Figure, moreover,

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suggests that the addition of cooking salt into water on hot days since excessive sweat could leach vital bodily minerals such as sodium,

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calcium and potassium. In the fifth chapter of my dissertation, I address climate adjusted architectural and urban planning.

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Most planners and architects who arrived in Palestine during the first half of the 20th century acquired

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their professional training in Europe and brought with them spatial aesthetic and technological concept,

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which did not always suit the natural conditions of the country.

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Thus, alongside the ideological, aesthetic and engineering related concerns,

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architects also had to acknowledge and comply with the physical attributes of the unfamiliar landscape of the country,

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and they were especially concerned with the issue of climate.

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Starting from the 1930s, they devoted considerable thought to questions of hygiene and health in planning residential buildings,

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healthy houses, healthy streets and healthy cities were commonly used terms in architectural professional publications.

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In 1946, an editorial column published in the Journal for of the Association of Engineers and Architects called upon town planners,

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architects and industrial engineers to improve the climatic conditions of cities and buildings.

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Since, and I quote, it is these conditions that will determine our future in this country.

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The main architectural focus on climate was by positioning living spaces within the flat in accordance with the prevailing winds and sun directions.

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The discussion of wind direction was most central to the architectural discourse and at.

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Even led to different flat orientations in places with different topographical and climatic characteristics.

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Nevertheless, in this chapter, I argue that the theory and practice of Jewish architects and planners in Palestine was much more often based on

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European metropolitan and colonial knowledge than it was based on the study of local material and building techniques.

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To conclude, the Zionist approach towards the climatic and environmental conditions in Palestine was not always consistent.

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On the one hand, the aim to establish a settler nation was based on the belief in an utter quietness belonging to the land.

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This approach was more common during the turn of the century.

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It was influenced by romantic ideas and reflected Jewish national ideology, which contained a long tradition of reverence towards the land of Israel.

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On the other hand, following the actual encounter of Jewish settlers with the natural realities in Palestine,

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and especially especially after the establishment of the British mandate and the emergence of the Arab Jewish conflict in this country,

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discussions on climate gradually lost their romantic attributes and became

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increasingly associated with colonial scientific ideas on the perceived degeneration.

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The dangerous implications of non temperate climates on European bodies and minds.

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In my dissertation I argued that Zionist scientific preoccupation occupation

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with climate was not simply because Palestine was particularly cold or hot.

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Rather, it was deeply grounded in a wide colonial discourse of anxiety about radically different climates in the colonies.

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And it relied upon Western knowledge and expertise to confront and ameliorate the so-called enervating influence of climate on European bodies.

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By adopting the colonial scientific paradigm concerning warm climates,

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Jews in Palestine became concerned with the alleged degenerating effects of the new environment

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and even began perceiving themselves as occidental people arriving in an oriental geography.

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Thus, through the prism of climate investigation,

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I explore not only the ways in which experts transported scientific knowledge from Europe and its colonies to Palestine,

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but also how climate both as an abstract concept and a concrete condition shaped Jewish, national, racial, cultural and spatial identity in Palestine.

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Thank you very much. Thank you so much.