This is a photograph of girls dancing in a circle during a Shavuot bikkurim celebration in a British detention camp in Cyprus in the 1940s. The girls are dressed in white with floral wreaths on their heads, and there are decorated baskets on the ground. In the centre of the circle is an arch made of palms, with a sign hanging above it with part of the blessing from the book of Deuteronomy (28:12)
“The LORD will open for you His bounteous store, the heavens, to provide rain for your land in season and to bless all your undertakings. You will be creditor to many nations, but debtor to none.”
This type of bikkurim ceremony was a common way of celebrating Shavuot on kibbutzim from the second decade of the twentieth century. These celebrations commemorated the ceremony of the first fruits that took place in the Temple in biblical times.
In the background of the photograph are hundreds of camp inmates watching the ceremony. Behind them the barbed wire fences surrounding the camp can be seen. This detention camp was one of the twelve prison camps run by the British government from 1946 to 1949 holding Jews who had attempted to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine in violation of British policy. The conditions in the camps were harsh, but the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Jewish Agency (Sochnut) provided for many of the detainees’ needs. This celebration was probably organized by volunteers from the JDC and the Jewish Agency in an attempt to teach the young Jewish detainees about Israeli culture.
Would You Like to Know More?
Shavuot - Shavuot, also known as the Festival of Weeks – is celebrated on the sixth of Sivan. Shavuot, one of the three biblical pilgrim festivals, commemorates many different things: it marks the day that the Israelites received the Torah on Mount Sinai; it celebrates the wheat harvest in Israel; and it signifies the end of the Counting of the Omer. It is celebrated with many colourful and festive traditions such as holding bikkurim ceremonies, eating dairy food, decorating the synagogue with flowers and greenery, reading the Book of Ruth, and studying the Torah all through the night (Tikkun Leil Shavuot). In modern Israel, kibbutzim celebrate Shavuot and the bikkurim with processions displaying their produce of the previous year, including fruit and vegetables, farm animals, and even the new babies!
Cyprus Detention Camps – Between 1946 and 1949, about 52,000 people, most of whom were Holocaust survivors from Poland and Romania and a few from the rest of Europe and North Africa, were interned in detention camps in Cyprus. These Holocaust survivors were caught by the British authorities when trying to enter pre-State Palestine and create a new home for themselves in Israel. This was a time when immigration was severely limited by the British and Jewish immigration to Israel was considered illegal and organised through the Aliyah Bet movement. The inmates in the detention camps lived in tents and huts and suffered from water shortages, sanitation problems, and poor nutrition. The Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) was the only Jewish institution that the British permitted in the camps, and under its protection many volunteers from the Jewish Agency and kibbutzim in Israel came to offer their assistance. This included providing material aid, such as extra food rations and welfare and medical aid, and organising educational and cultural activities, especially among the many children and youth among the detainees. After the creation of the State of Israel, the Cyprus detention camps were closed and the inmates were brought to Israel. The last detention camp closed in February 1949.
Bikkurim Celebrations in Modern Israel - The early settlements in modern Israel transformed the traditional Bikkurim ceremony into a secular agricultural celebration – first fruit ceremonies to rejoice the end of the harvest festival (another term for Shavuot). The first fruits in the kibbutzim, in contrast to the time of the Temple, are not only the seven species but all kinds of fruits, vegetables, livestock, and even the babies born in the past year. The ceremonies feature colourful performances of songs and dances and processions of decorated agricultural tools and machinery, farm produce, and young children.
The Illegal Immigration – The Illegal immigration, also known as the Aliya Bet or the Ha’apala, was the immigration attempt by Jews looking to escape Nazi-occupied Europe and, later, by Holocaust survivors. During the years of the British Mandate, the authorities only allowed a small number of Jewish immigrants so as not to harm, they claimed, the delicate coexistence between the Jews and Arabs in the country. The urgency to find a safe haven for the European Jews drove immigration beyond the British quotas. The Ha’apala often started off in the DP (displaced persons) camps and brought the refugees secretly by truck, train, or even on foot to ports on the Mediterranean Sea. Ships, very often old and barely seaworthy, waited in the ports for the refugees. The voyages were difficult, since the old ships usually carried many more people than they could contain. Their goal was to arrive in Israel without being detected by t British patrols. A few ships managed to arrive to the Israeli shore, where the refugees disembarked secretly in the middle of the night and volunteers took them to nearby Jewish villages. Over 100,000 people attempted to enter Israel illegally in this way. There were 142 voyages on 120 ships, the most famous being the Exodus, the Patria, and the Struma. Over half of these were stopped by the British and sent to detention camps in Atlit in Israel and later in Cyprus.
