World Jewish Youth

Here a prominent tower rises above the walled and domed Jerusalem, echoing a typical minaret. It probably represents the Tower of David, an Ottoman minaret appropriated by Zionism as a symbol of Jerusalem. The style evokes a torn-paper collage, and abstraction is again used for the erasure of religious details such as the crescent. The tower is represented alongside recognizable, newly-built Jewish religious edifices: the Hechal Shlomo and Hebrew University synagogues. The Tower of David, a Muslim minaret, demonstrates the ambiguity of using architecture to represent minorities: while it forms part of the city’s iconic architecture, when coupled with Jewish edifices and the Menorah it promotes the Israeli-Jewish image of Jerusalem, which was appropriate for a WZO poster dedicated to convening Jewish youth from twenty countries. Thus, Jerusalem’s architecture unifies international Jewry, and local ethnic diversity remains obscure.

Source:

Visualizing Democracy, Difference, and Judaism in Israeli Posters, 1948–1978

By: Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler (2003)