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Israel's traditional costumes display diversity

From the many Jewish costumes that arrived to Israel, the ones still worn most are those of wedding ceremonies.

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Israeli traditional costumes often display modesty, as an 2017 exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem demonstrates. — Israeli Museum

Israel is often referred to as the melting pot of the Jewish people, and this nation of immigrants — where Jewish daily life is infused with the ancestral memories of Russia, Poland, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, Iraq, Syria, Libya, France and dozens of other countries — is as diverse in dress codes as it is in food, customs and language.

Most Israelis wear Western clothing on a daily basis, but when it comes to life’s most special moments, ritual dress reigns. The most prominent example of this is Israeli weddings, No’am Bar’am-Ben Yossef, senior curator of ethnography at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, told Al-Monitor.

In 2007, Bar’am-Ben Yossef sought to show the scope and diversity of Jewish ritual dress, both in terms of history as well as which garments retain modern usage in Israel today, in a major exhibition at the Israel Museum together with curator Efrat Assaf-Shapira

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