© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 IMAGES Also available online—brill.com/ima DOI:10.1163/18718000-12340112 DAVID GUEDJ DOUBLE TENDANCE: THE PHOTOGRAPHIC MESSAGE IN THE EGYPTIAN JEWISH YOUTH MAGAZINE L’ILLUSTRATION JUIVE, 1929–1931 is evident in the prominent presence of photographs, paintings, and sculpture reproductions in each of its issues, all of which came complete with short cap- tions. Scholarship has yet to engage with this unique quarterly, with the exception of a few bibliographical references and a handful of studies.1 I would therefore like to dedicate this article to introducing this quarterly to a wider scholarly audience and to providing this audience with some historical information regard- ing its establishment. I would also like to explore the journal’s visual messages as shaped by the artists and photographers, as edited by the publication’s editorial board, and as viewed, in turn, by its young readership.2 The present analysis sets out to uncover the ideologies and worldviews of the publication’s editorial board along with the conscious or unconscious messages that the quarterly strove to communicate to its readers. I will argue that L’Illustration Juive’s visual messages functioned to convince its Jewish Egyptian readers that modern Jewish nationalism and Jewish religion were inextricably linked and that their fusion was vital to Jewish identity and to the future of the Jewish people as a whole. Little attention has been paid to the visual imagery that shaped and propagated the Zion- ist project—and this is especially true with regard to the photographic imagery. This examination of visual messages emphasizes the role played by the visual elements of the Jewish press in forging Jewish identity and an imagined national Jewish community, which is Abstract The present article investigates the visual elements of the illustrated youth quarterly L’Illustration Juive, which was published in Alexandria between 1929 and 1931 in French and Hebrew. The analysis sets out to expose the ideologies and worldviews informing the publication’s editorial board, as well as the conscious or unconscious message that the quarterly tried to communicate to its young readership. The article explores more than 300 photographs and reproductions that featured in twelve issues published over the journal’s three years of existence. Analysis of the visual elements in this article shows that the quarterly featured many photographs of holy sites in the Land of Israel, as well as reproductions of artworks that reflected the religious Jewish way of life in the diaspora and Israel, including the Jewish calendar and Jewish life cycle. These works hold the Old Testament as a key book for Judaism, as well as for Jewish nationalism. Clearly evident in the visual elements, as in the overall visual messages of the quarterly, is the harmony struck between Jewish nationality, Zionism, and a religious Jewish cultural—or diasporic—world. It was this harmonious view that editor Rabbi David Prato sought to con- vey, upholding as he did a religious nationalist Jewish future, which he defined in the newspaper as a double tendance. The following article explores the visual elements of the illustrated youth quarterly L’Illustration Juive, which was published in Alexandria, Egypt, between 1929 and 1931 in French and Hebrew. The quarterly is unique in Egypt and around the Muslim world due to the importance it invested in the visual message, which 1 Generally speaking, illustrated journals were few and far between in the Muslim world. According to Robert Attal, two illustrated newspapers ran in Tunisia: Revue Israélite de Tunisie and Ha-Chofar. See Robert Attal, The Periodical Jewish Press of North Africa, ed. Mordechay Naor (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1996), 123, 141 (Hebrew). The newspaper L’Avenir Illustré ran in Morocco between 1926 and 1940. See David Guedj, “Portraits, Land of Israel, and the Moroccan Jewish Communities: The Photographic Message in the Moroccan Jewish Newspaper L’Avenir Illustré,” Pe’amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry 150–152 (2018): 22–51 (Hebrew). 2 To date, no study has analyzed illustrations or photographs that ran in the Jewish illustrated press. Even studies of such press in Europe and the Land of Israel failed to engage with the visual images, while scholarship, for the most part, has provided only review-like writing or engagement with the texts. For studies into illustrated press in Poland, see, for example, Lucjan Dobroszycki and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Image Before My Eyes: A Pho- tographic History of Jewish Life in Poland 1864–1939 (New York: Schocken Books, 1977), 20–27. For studies into illustrated press in the Land of Israel, see, for example, Tirza Shafir Binyamini, “‘Kolno’a’, The First Illustrated Newspaper in Eretz Israel, 1931–35,” Qesher 7 (1990): 66–70 (Hebrew). For studies that have their focus on visual images in the press, see, for example, Max Quanchi, “The Power of Pictures: Learning by Looking at Papua in Illustrated Newspapers and Magazines,” Australian Historical Studies 35, no. 123 (2004): 37–53; Thierry Gervais, “Witness to War: The Uses of Photography in the Illustrated Press, 1855–1904,” Journal of Visual Culture 9, no. 3 (2010): 370–384; and Guedj, “Portraits, Land of Israel.”