Beit Ha’am (Community House)

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The location of the Beit Ha’am was chosen according to the plans of the architect, Kauffmann, who planned the moshav. According to the principle taken from the garden-city idea, the most important public building in the town should be located at the highest point, at the end of the boulevard. Therefore, the Beit Ha’am was built at the southern end of the boulevard.  The building itself was planned by architect Gideon Kaminka, in honor of the ten-year anniversary of Kfar Yehoshua, but it was only built ten years after that date, in 1948.

Zevik Givoli, a second-generation member of Kfar Yehoshua, relates:

“A group of people came together in Kfar Yehoshua who were exceptionally enthusiastic about culture, Judaism, and a community of mutually supportive members. Now, they decided to build a Beit Ha’am, because it was impossible for this type of community not to have a place like this to gather. They built this. Notice that it was all built by hand. They didn’t have ready-made concrete back then, it was all done by hand.”

The Beit Ha’am was meant to be the center of public life in the moshav, and was used for all of their gatherings: meetings, holidays, weddings, as well as for mourning and memorial events. In addition, theater plays, cultural shows, and films were hosted at the center. In Kfar Yehoshua, significant emphasis was placed on culture, and the financial investment in it was disproportionate to the size of the moshav. One example was a loan that the moshav gave to the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv, in exchange for putting on plays in the moshav.

Habima Theatre also appeared at the Beit Ha’am quite often, and due to the difficult travel conditions at that time, the actors would stay in the homes of the residents. Each family had “their own actor.” Pinchas Bar Shira, a second-generation member of Kfar Yehoshua, relates:

“The famous actors stayed with us. Why? It was the only house that had its own bathroom. Yehoshua Bertonov, if you remember his name, stayed with us. Arik Einstein’s father stayed with us.”

In terms of its external appearance, the Beit Ha’am was influenced by the European international style of the early twentieth century, which was characterized by simple geometric shapes. A symmetrical colonnade leads to the entrance of the building on either side of the front, with a rectangular garden at the center. This plan was meant to lead the audience into the hall via two footpaths, and to give every event and gathering an honorable, festive air. This type of entrance is very rare, and resembles the elliptical columned entrance designed by Bernini for Saint Peter’s Church at the Vatican. 

At the facade, above the front door, we can see wall art that was added to the building in 1964 by an artist who was a member of the moshav, Siyeva Malkevich. The wall art was made using an antique technique called Sgraffito. (The literal meaning of the term in Italian is - “to scratch deeply.”) The artist applied three layers of plaster to the wall: black, red, and white, and etched the imagery onto the plaster while it was still moist. The painting portrays moshav life with modernist lines, as a utopian combination of physical labor and culture.

As of the eighties, the building stood empty, and today, it is used as a school of circus arts.