About Etmol

Etmol

Etmol, also written Et-Mol and meaning "Yesterday" in Hebrew, is a Hebrew popular-history journal published in Jerusalem by Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, the Ben-Zvi Institute. Its full title is "Et-Mol: A Newspaper for the History of the Land of Israel and the People of Israel," and it is devoted to the history of the Jewish people and of the Land of Israel for a general Hebrew-reading audience. Founded in 1975 as a cooperation between Tel Aviv University and the Ministry of Education, it passed in 1999 to Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, which has published it since in a renewed, illustrated format. It appears every two months, carries the ISSN 0334-2085, and is, with its sister journal Cathedra, one of the institute's two journals dedicated to the study of the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.

Founding in 1975

Et-Mol began to appear in 1975 as a joint project of the Institute for the Study of the Diaspora at Tel Aviv University and the Ministry of Education. Its first editor was the writer and researcher of the Land of Israel Shlomo Shaba, who founded the journal and edited it from 1975 to 1999. Alongside him worked an academic editorial committee whose members included prominent scholars of the Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University, among them Professor Shlomo Simonsohn, one of the journal's initiators. The National Library of Israel's catalogue records the journal from its first issue in 1975, published in Tel Aviv by Tel Aviv University's publishing house, under the auspices of the university and the Ministry of Education and Culture, appearing every two months in Hebrew.

The early format and subjects

In its first period Et-Mol appeared in a simple format with little colour. The articles published in its early years treated varied Jewish subjects in Israel and abroad, among them the blood libels, the famous Birds' Head Haggadah, and Napoleon's failed battles to conquer the Land of Israel. The choice of subjects announced the journal's method from the start: episodes and artefacts through which a wide public could enter the history of the Jewish people, treated with scholarly care but written to be read outside the university.

Transfer to Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi in 1999

From issue 144, in the Hebrew month of Iyar 1999, the journal passed to Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and began to appear in a handsome, colourful format on glossy paper. The first article in the renewed version was devoted, as in the very first issue, to unfamiliar aspects of Napoleon's campaign to conquer the Land of Israel, a deliberate continuity between the journal's two incarnations. The transfer happened because Tel Aviv University could no longer continue financing the journal's publication; the director-general of Yad Ben-Zvi, Dr Zvi Tsameret, took on the decision to bring Et-Mol into the institute, and from the start of its appearance under the institute until his retirement Tsameret was an active member of the editorial work, his contribution to the journal's design and content extending from issue 183 to issue 209, a tradition continued by the director who succeeded him, Yaakov Yaniv.

The publisher: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi

Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi is the Jerusalem institute named for Izhak Ben-Zvi, the second President of Israel, whose scholarly interests included the history of the Land of Israel and of Jewish communities in the East. The institute's own description of its structure explains Et-Mol's place within it: the Institute for the Study of the Land of Israel and its Settlement, the academic body of Yad Ben-Zvi in that field, aims to enhance the public's knowledge of the continuity of Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, to encourage the study of the history of Jewish settlement in the land and to promote the study of Jerusalem, and it publishes research on the history of the Land of Israel in the form of books and journals, Cathedra and Et-Mol, dedicated to the study of the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. The institute as a whole also publishes the journals Pe'amim and Sefunot on the communities of the East, holds conferences and runs courses, lectures and tours for the general public.

Editorial succession

Five editors have shaped Et-Mol. Shlomo Shaba, its founder, edited it from 1975 to 1999, across both its Tel Aviv University period and into its transfer. Hana Amit edited it from 1999 to 2005; the journal's historian Zeev Gries credits her with forty issues, from issue 143 to issue 182, emphasising, as he does for all its editors, the insistence that the attractive story stand at the centre of every issue. Reuven Gafni edited the journal from 2005 to 2013, editing some forty issues in his turn, the last of them together with his deputy Nir Ortal. Ortal succeeded him and edited from 2013 to 2017. Since 2017 the editor has been Marva Baluka. The journal's editorial office is at 14 Even Gvirol Street in the Rehavia neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

Content and regular features

Et-Mol treats historical and geographical episodes mostly through a new and unfamiliar angle on the great well-known events, presenting figures, stories, places and traditions known only to a few and exposing them to the wider public. Its articles are fairly short and are accompanied by illustrations, historical pictures, maps and photographs. Over the years it has carried many regular corners and sections: a section on interesting events in the history of the land written by Dudu Dayan; a column on ancient coins by Yaakov Meshorer; a quiz on relevant subjects composed by Dan Hamitzer; a column on the headlines of the Hebrew press written by Tamar Hirdani; map stories from different periods; a section on names and families in Israel edited by Hanan Rapaport; and, today, a section by researchers of the National Library presenting special collections and documents, and a touring section by Yoav Avneyon. In recent years the journal has also changed further in design and content: each year three issues are devoted to chosen themes, presenting unfamiliar and surprising angles around a leading subject, such as diseases and epidemics in history, social protest, Herzl's Altneuland then and now, and Gaza and its surroundings, with some issues produced in cooperation with other bodies, among them the Central Zionist Archives, the Jewish National Fund and academic colleges.

Audience and purpose

The National Library's description of the journal stresses the breadth of its intended audience: high-school students, academics, lovers of knowledge of the Land of Israel and others. Zeev Gries, in his history of the journal, "Once Upon a Time and Still: The History of the Journal Et-Mol," describes its mission as the popularisation of knowledge of the Land of Israel, the great story of the history of the Jewish people and its culture. That mission distinguishes Et-Mol within its own publishing house: Cathedra serves the scholarly community of Land of Israel studies, while Et-Mol carries the same fields to the general reader, and the institute lists it among its journals for a general Hebrew-reading audience.

The Et-Mol Prize

Between the Hebrew years 5772 and 5782, roughly 2012 to 2022, Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi awarded the Et-Mol Prize, an institutional recognition attached to the journal's name and field. The prize belongs to the journal's later history under the institute, the period in which Et-Mol, renewed in format since 1999, also became a platform from which its publisher honoured work in the popular and scholarly study of the Land of Israel and Jewish history.

Fifty years of publication

Et-Mol has appeared since 1975, with its refounding under Yad Ben-Zvi in 1999 counting, in its reference entry, as a second beginning within a continuous life of some fifty years. Issue 193 appeared in Iyar 2007, and the journal continues under its fifth editor. A bimonthly Hebrew journal of popular history that has survived a change of publisher, a complete redesign, and the general crisis of print, by holding to a formula set in 1975, short, illustrated articles that find the unfamiliar angle on the familiar past, occupies a singular place in Israeli publishing: the popular face, for half a century, of the scholarly study of the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.