| Summary/Abstract |
Relying on historic and ethnographic fieldwork, this article traces the development of the Israeli folk dance movement in Israel and the United States over the last century. Israeli folk dances are consumed worldwide and especially by American Jewry precisely because they are perceived as an authentic expression of national Israeli culture, even as their authenticity is continuously contested and re-evaluated in different historical and cultural contexts and by various actors who engage in their preservation and re-creation. The result is an intricate articulation of an ideological and rhetorical debate on authenticity, which reveals its relativistic character and sheds light on the cultural negotiation of identity between Israeli and American Jewry.
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