Leah Bergstein

Bergstein created the Harvest Festival at the beginning of the 1940s to celebrate Sukkot. The festival opened with the song "Pit’hu She’arim" (Open the Gates) and a dance to the song "Rov Berakhot." The songs and dances in this festival expressed the joy of the harvest and Simchat Beit HaShoeivah. Bergstein's choreography included a dance with pitchers, and rousing wine-dance, and the heroic debka to Shelem's song "Livshu-na Oz" (Put On Strength). The text and blessings used for the Harvest Festival were written by the kindergarten teachers of the kibbutz. In later years, the festival was renamed the Water Festival and celebrated around the swimming pool at Ramat Yohanan.

In the 1940s, Bergstein and Shelem created a ceremony to celebrate Shavuot. The festival began with Bergstein's dance "Kumu v’Na’ale" (Let Us Arise and Ascend), which depicted the pilgrimage of the Jews who brought the Bikkurim to the steps of the Temple.

At the end of the 1940s and throughout the 1950s, Bergstein taught at the Folk Dance Department of the Histadrut, directed by Tirza Hodes. Working in Tel Aviv, however, solidified her belief in imbuing her work with a holiness of place, rather than creating for the stage.

Bergstein's first husband was a kibbutz member. Her second partner was a veterinarian for the Jezreel Valley, whose wife refused to divorce him. She became pregnant with her daughter, Rahel, with her third partner, but she broke off her relationship with him while pregnant. Rahel was born in 1940, and Bergstein remained a single mother.

In 1933, the kibbutz pediatrician sent Bergstein to Vienna to study early childhood care through gymnastics. During her trip, she was reunited with Gertrud Kraus and joined Kraus's dance company for performances in Vienna, including "The Town is Waiting". Bergstein accompanied Kraus when the dancer emigrated to Palestine in 1936, staying with her to help her open a dance studio in Tel Aviv. In the 1940s, Bergstein returned to Kibbutz Beit Alfa. After a split within the kibbutz, she and a group of friends, including Shelem, moved to Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan.

In 1929, the kibbutz shepherds requested that Bergstein create a festive event to celebrate the end of sheep shearing. Bergstein planned the festive event to accompany the shearing process, including songs and stories composed by the shepherds and performed for the kibbutz audience. The festival initiated Bergstein's collaboration with Polish-born poet-composer Mattityahu Shelem and marked the first nature celebration of the labor settlement movement containing a choreographic element. This celebration served as a landmark in the development of the kibbutz festival and Israeli folk-cultural life.

Inspired by Bedouin traditions, Bergstein created a festival to accompany the end of sheep shearing. Bergstein choreographed to songs composed by Shelem, including "Se ugedi" (A Lamb and a Kid), "Sisu ve simchu na" (Be Joyful and Celebrate), "Ro’e ve ro’a" (A Shepherd and a Shepherdess),. Bergstein's choreography to Shelem's song "Sheep and Goat, Goat and Sheep Went Out Together to the Field" served as the basis for the shearing festival. Bergstein and Shelem aimed to recreate the holidays as described in the Torah, the first such revival since Biblical times. Bergstein created dances for the multigenerational community at Beit Alfa. She aimed for the celebration to be "like a prayer for the whole nation that everyone could dance." These dances were performed alongside the sheep pen. Beginning in 1929, the shearing festivity was only held for two consecutive years, but it is nonetheless seen as a turning point for creating kibbutz festivities.

Bergstein arrived in Mandatory Palestine in 1925 and joined Kibbutz Beit Alfa in the Jezreel Valley. In the gendered hierarchy of the kibbutz, she started working in the laundry, which posed difficulties for Bergstein as a dancer and a woman. Dancing was perceived as a secondary task to the "real" work: farming and construction for men, cooking and cleaning for women. Bergstein initially tried to rehearse after working hours but soon found that she did not have sufficient time to choreograph or rehearse. Despite the demanding and constricting responsibilities for their gender, women dance leaders' artistic contributions, including those of Bergstein, were seen as secondary in the Zionist movement.

At the start of World War I in 1914, the Bergstein family fled to Vienna, Austria. Bergstein's parents emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1938.

Leah Bergstein (October 23, 1902 - 1989; Hebrew: לאה ברגשטיין) of Galician Jews origin was among the first choreographers in Mandatory Palestine who created festival dances at kibbutzim. Bergstein is considered one of the "mothers" of early Israeli folk dance, inventing a new style of movement and laying the foundation of folk dance emerging as an Israeli cultural tradition. She was the only professional dancer to work in the original folk dance movement at the time.