Abstract
Sentimentality – the tendency to be motivated by emotions – was largely discredited in Western culture as an emotional style by the early twentieth century and was mostly associated with women, children, colonized people and the mentally ill. Child psychology also emerged in Europe at the turn of the century, as a scientific discipline dedicated to the rational research, cultivation and treatment of human emotions. Under the influence of psychoanalysis, it established children's tendency to be motivated by emotions as natural and legitimate. With the rise in the importance of scientifically trained professionals within industrializing states and imperial bureaucracies, psychology became crucial for national and colonial attempts to turn sentimental children into rational, socially functional adults. Focusing on the ways early Zionist psychologists and educators envisioned the emotional style of the ‘new’ Jewish child and his (and her) caregivers in mandatory Palestine, the article asks how these professionals constructed the distinctions between the sentimental child and the rational caregiver to promote an emotional style that would fit the needs of this national settlement project. Following scholars like Peter and Carol Stearns, William Reddy, and Benno Gammerl, it seeks to contribute to understanding how emotional styles emerge and what is the human agency in such processes.
In 1935, Israel Rivka’i (n. Rubin, 1890–1954), a prominent educator and psychologist within the Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv), established in Tel Aviv ‘The Pedologic Institute for Parents’. In an article announcing the establishment of the institution (published in The Mother and the Child, a widely circulated annual volume he edited with the prominent physician Yosef Mei’r (1890–1953)), he emphasized the urgency of the Institute's mission to educate parents, characterizing the current era as a ‘fateful time’ marked by ‘transition and decisive changes’. Rivka’i underscored the necessity for new approaches for the education of ‘the child’ and ‘new ways to address him’. The Institute was the culmination of over a decade of Rivka’i's efforts as a therapist, administrator, instructor, and prolific writer in both Yiddish and Hebrew. Since graduating in Psychology from the University of Jena in 1921, until his death in Tel Aviv in 1954, he diligently studied the psychology of young Jews, devising, adopting, and implementing methods to treat and educate them in accordance with innovations in child psychology, such as developmental psychology and psychoanalysis. 1
Influential Zionist educators and mental health activists in Palestine, such as Rivka’i, perceived a fundamental contradiction between the ‘traditional’ Jewish culture and social structure in Central and Eastern Europe and the demands of a new era. Like most Zionists, they believed this contradiction stemmed from the oppressed position of the Jews in Europe; dispersed and subordinated to other nations, they became weak and flawed. The ingathering of the Jewish ‘Exile’, or diaspora, in Palestine, and the contrasting of a self-sustaining Jewish society there with the aid of European-colonial power, could then be the remedy to these failures. 2 Unlike main Zionist leaders, such as Ahad Ha’am, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, or A. D. Gordon, though, the experts considered here were trained in some of the leading academic institutions of the time – mostly in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, but one went as far as the University of Chicago – and their perceptions were rooted in a universal-individual scientific and professional ethos. 3
This ethos emanated from the European Enlightenment. Alongside its rational trajectory, the eighteenth century in Europe was also the heyday of sentimentality – the cultural tendency to express emotions strongly and be driven by them. Contemporaries viewed emotions as expressing true human nature and providing a key to deciphering the world. The economist Adam Smith, for instance, argued in his 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments that emotion was a vital guide for appropriate action. 4 From England to Russia, sentimental literature and art were widely popular among the literate classes. 5
Historians such as William Reddy have shown that this sentimental style spread in France as a counter to the restrictive emotional management of the ancien régime and most strikingly came to define the radical wings of the French Revolution. During the nineteenth century, however, its standing diminished as it became synonymous with revolutionary excess. 6 The expansion of the Empire also played a major role in this decline, particularly in Britain, where sentimentality grew negatively associated with women, children, colonial subjects, and the mentally ill. These groups were contrasted with the ‘rational’, ‘practical’, and emotionally restrained male heads of the family and empire. 7
The concept of sentimentality entered the Hebrew vocabulary at the turn of the twentieth century, following the process discussed briefly above. The Zionist educators and mental health activists who settled in Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s regarded sentimentality as one of the major flaws of the diasporic Jewish culture. The article discusses the way these professionals saw themselves bound to rid ‘the child’, who they considered to be naturally and legitimately motivated by emotions, of this sentimentality when approaching adulthood. Writing to caregivers, they argued that adhering to their rational protocol would provide the means to produce content and ambitious adults. Following the example of the main psychological circles at the time, such as the British, the German, or the French, the Zionist one did not consider the individualistic ethos of their discipline to contradict their national-collective credence. 8
As I show, using their cutting-edge scientific understanding of child psychology, they aimed to help ‘the child’ – the masculine was seen as containing the feminine as well, and girls were never considered in distinction from boys – acquire the ability to control his (and her) emotions, comply with social necessities and adjust his aspirations to the needs of the nation. This was done through two major institutions, the nuclear family and the kindergarten, which became, by the late 1920s, among the main social bases of the new Jewish community in Palestine. 9
During the mandate years, the amorphous group of Zionist psychologists and educators discussed in this article produced a vast body of literature, established and led various institutions, and conducted numerous lectures and clinical sessions. Their extensive endeavour aimed to communicate the latest psychological insights concerning children's emotional character and ways to mould it through their upbringing, notably from developmental psychology and psychoanalysis, to the Hebrew-speaking public. At the same time, they were highly concerned with applying these insights in children's education, whether at home or in kindergarten and school settings. Based on the numerous original books and articles aimed at caregivers – parents and teachers alike – they published in Hebrew in the mandate period, the article explores how these early Zionist psychologists and educators envisioned the desirable emotional style of the ‘new’ Jewish child and his caregivers – the way children, parents and educators should experience and express their emotions. I point to the significant role these professionals gave to sentimentality in their rational pursuit of knowledge and ask how the distinctions between the sentimental child and the rational caregiver were constructed to promote an emotional style that would fit the needs of this national settlement project.
By ‘emotional style’ I refer to the ways people experience and express emotions in certain times and places. My reading of the term aligns closely with Benno Gammerl's conceptualization, which views it as similar to ‘habitus’, albeit more fluid and malleable, less dependent on the body and unconscious than Bourdieu's term implies. 10 According to Peter Stearns, in his classic depiction of the history of the emotional style that emerged in the United States in the twentieth century, the rise of the ‘new experts’, particularly ‘social workers, doctors, [and] psychologists’, was instrumental in bringing about this new style. These, he explains, emerged as an alternative source of authority regarding emotional experience and expression, replacing earlier Victorian moralism, and had a substantial impact on a variety of social changes occurring since the late nineteenth century. 11
The historiography of psychology in Palestine – particularly in the Jewish community – has advanced significantly in recent decades, with numerous studies dedicated to the early phases of the mental health establishment since the 1920s. 12 Additionally, guidance literature for parents, caregivers and educators has been studied from various perspectives. 13 While many of these studies recognize the importance and prevalence of references to the mental qualities of caregivers and children, none have directly addressed experts’ attempts to instill new emotional styles. This is also noticeable in the growing literature on childhood in Palestine since the late Ottoman period. 14 Recent studies have pointed to the entry of militaristic discourse and information about the Holocaust into the mainstream of children's culture in the Yishuv in the 1930s and 1940s. 15 As I argue below, even this trend could be accommodated within a discourse valorizing child sentimentality but approaching it in a rational, scientific way for the good of Palestine's Jewish community.
This scholarship is part of an extensive body of research concerning the historical development of the figure of the ‘new Jew’ in pre-state Palestine. 16 In characterizing the various types or models of this figure, however, studies have often overlooked emotions. A notable exception within this historiography is Boaz Neumann's book, Land and Desire in Early Zionism. 17 In order to provide an innovative explanation for the Zionists’ attachment to the ‘Land of Israel’, Neumann focused on the highly expressive ways the early Zionist ‘halutzim’ (pioneers) in Palestine articulated their feelings about it. In doing so, he underscored emotions as a crucial means of defining and expressing a new form of Zionist subjectivity. 18 Over the past decade, several other historians have explicitly embraced the growing field of the history of emotions in their studies of various topics within the history of Zionism and the state of Israel. 19 For example, Derek Penslar has examined the different ways Zionist thinkers and activists utilized emotions such as love, solidarity, and honour to articulate their political project before 1948. 20 These studies suggest a substantial and sometimes conscious effort to create new emotional styles for the Jewish immigrants to Palestine as part of the national-settlement project.
Nevertheless, most examinations of emotional experience and expression in the Yishuv to date depict a culture marked by emotional repression, silence, or even an anti-emotional ethos. Anita Shapira, the eminent historian of the Yishuv, summarized its ethos in matters related to the display of emotion as one of ‘self-restraint, of biting one's lip, and stubborn adherence to the national purpose’. 21 While I have argued elsewhere that this culture was not all-encompassing or self-evident, and in itself was considerably more complicated than previously recognized, I acknowledge its significant influence and dominance. 22 In light of recent developments in the history of emotions, it is imperative to seriously consider how this emotional style came into being. Analysing the role of mental health and education professionals in this regard is a step in this direction.
The practical discourse analysed here was particularly concerned with bringing about a radical change to what was regarded as a ‘traditional’ and ‘exilic’ sentimental Jewish approach to emotions. Rivka’i’ and the other professional mental health activists who generated this approach regarded children as inherently sentimental, but they saw it as their task to rid adult caregivers – particularly kindergarten teachers and mothers, but fathers as well – from their sentimental tendencies. Their main goal was to facilitate a proper, rational upbringing capable of turning its objects into restrained, emotionally stable ‘new Jews’, primed to take part in the Zionist project.
The changes in the status of sentimentality moved in parallel with widespread developments in the concept of childhood, reflected in Rivka’i's central premise, presented in the opening quotation, advocating for new approaches to care for and educate children. 23 Since the eighteenth century, the European and North American middle classes led a conceptual distinction between adults and children, the latter growingly seen as sentimental beings, naturally distinct from the rational and mechanical pursuits of adults. Although sentimentality was gradually discredited as a practical approach to life during the nineteenth century, a general need remained, particularly within bourgeois circles, to protect and separate children from the increasingly industrial and consumerist world. 24 Children were hence expected to retain their natural sentimentality, even as it lost its broader appeal. 25
At the same time, national elites began to recognize the importance of raising healthy and socially adaptable children as a political and social priority. As part of this understanding, statal and imperial apparatuses increasingly enlisted the medical disciplines to aid in this task.
26
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, researchers mostly understood children's growth through the lens of evolutionary theories in early anthropology and developmental psychology, dating back to Darwin's studies on his own children from the mid-nineteenth century. Early studies considered the child's development, from helpless infancy to playful childhood and naïve youth, to recapitulate human evolution – similarly to their view of the ways of life of native peoples as encapsulating earlier, more primitive stages in human development – and its study was perceived as a key to understanding human nature. As James Sully wrote of ‘the modern psychologist’ in his 1881 article ‘Babies and science’: he carries his eye far afield to the phenomena of savage life, with its simple ideas, crude sentiments and naive habits. Again he devotes special attention to the mental life of lower animals, seeking in its phenomena the dim foreshadowing of our own perceptions, emotions, etc. Finally, he directs his attention to the mental life of infancy, as fitted to throw most light on the later developments of the human mind.
27
In the second decade of the twentieth century, modern psychology came to distinguish itself from medicine as a discipline centred on understanding and promoting human mental capacities. The concept of ‘mental hygiene’ embodied the transformation from earlier preoccupation with hereditary inclinations to a behaviourist approach that stressed environmental factors in children's development. 29 Overcoming racial presuppositions, new psychological methods played a significant role in attempts to improve the rule over imperial subjects and modernize systems of control. 30 From the 1930s onwards, under the influence of psychoanalysis and related disciplines (such as Adler's ‘Individual Psychology’), children's psyches and their relationships with caregivers, particularly mothers, became central in efforts to understand and manage the normal development of the future adult citizen. This approach, heavily influenced by Kleins’ ‘play technique’ and other prominent figures, such as Anna Freud, Donald Winnicott, and John Boelby, emphasized the importance of play and of emotional needs, alongside the physical and cognitive ones. 31
As literacy rates among the lower classes rose in Europe and around the world, advice literature for parents and caregivers became a primary tool for disseminating the ideas and programs of experts, addressing both material and mental needs. 32 ‘The child’ as depicted in these texts was generally of preschool age, but infants were also often included, as were older children. For the most part, girls were not considered in distinction from boys. 33 Even though children were generally understood to be sentimental beings driven by emotional impulses, these emotions were to be mediated, regulated, and shaped by caregivers using ‘rational’, scientific methods. Consequently, experts expected caregivers – especially mothers – to adopt a rational approach rather than indulge in sentimental treatment. 34 The turbulent 1930s and 1940s brought even middle-class children into the adult sphere through economic devastation, mass politics, and total war, but the ideal of a sheltered, sentimental childhood persisted and regained strength after the war. 35
The endeavour to shape a ‘new Jewish man’ in Palestine was the other side of the Zionist notion of the ‘negation of exile’, the premise that the Jewish diasporic cultural and material conditions, which resulted from the fact that they did not live in a land of their own, was the main reason for their political woes. This effort resonated with a broader modernist discourse concerning the creation of a ‘new man’ that would better suit the modern age. Various national, intellectual, and political movements across Europe and beyond gave their own meaning to this vague concept at the turn of the twentieth century, including nationally oriented Arab Palestinian educators during the Mandate. Advocates of different versions of this concept shared the perception of the evolving political, intellectual, and social landscapes as catalysts for the emergence of novel subjectivities, whether arising spontaneously or through deliberate efforts by various actors. These subjectivities were characterized by both physical and mental attributes, including the expression and experience of emotions. The Empire and the colonial world, in particular, opened up new possibilities for such projects. 36
Within this discourse, Zionist educators and psychologists of various inclinations articulated their visions for a new emotional style in universal terms. They devoted considerable attention to understanding ‘the child’ – his emotional and physical challenges, developmental stages, and interactions with caregivers. As Zionists, these professionals embodied ‘a subaltern nationalism and anticolonial liberation movement and at the same time an element of European bourgeois and colonialist cultures’. 37 This dual position explains, at least in part, their relative ease in adopting universalist psychological and psychoanalytic thought for their nationalist settlement project. This ease set them apart from native Muslim and Arab thinkers, who had to expend greater intellectual effort to reconcile European psychology with their worldviews. 38 Furthermore, this position may account for their general disregard of internal divisions within the Jewish community in Palestine; they drew little distinction between poor and wealthy, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, or even male and female children.
The professional and intellectual trajectory of Mordechai Brachyahu (n. Borochov, 1882–1959), who was among the central figures in the field of child development throughout the Mandate period, demonstrates the professional transition from the early emphasis on medical, physical treatment of children, to developmental-behaviourist approaches that came to prominence after the First World War, and the entrance of insights from psychoanalysis in the 1930s and 1940s. Trained as a medical doctor in Switzerland and Germany, Brachyahu began practicing in Palestine in 1912. In 1919, after the end of the war and the British takeover of Palestine, he established the Department of School Hygiene within the Hadassah Medical Organization, a key institution addressing the health needs of the Jewish populace around Palestine. In his numerous publications in the Mandate period, he delved into various aspects of child health, development and parental guidance. 39 While his expertise lay primarily in physical health, his writings frequently referenced the notion of being ‘healthy in body and spirit’. However, it was only in 1940 that he first published a booklet dedicated to mental health. 40
Another figure, that of Moshe Wulff (1878–1971), signifies the growing influence of psychoanalysis since the 1930s. Wulff was among the early psychoanalysts, having studied and practiced child psychology in Berlin, Vienna, Odesa, and Moscow since 1905. He immigrated to Palestine in the early 1930s and became an influential figure in circles of progressive educators and welfare professionals, including the early founders of the unique education system of the most radical of the kibbutz movements, Hakibbutz Ha’artzi – Hashomer Hatza’ir (The Young Guard). Among his other activities, Wulff translated many of Freud's texts into Hebrew and headed the Palestine Psychoanalytic Society for many years. 41 In his writings, Wulff emphasized the need to express love and understanding in approaching the child. He wrote against the prominent behaviourist approach of the time, denouncing the use of fear and strict authority as educational tools in early childhood for their negative effects on children, such as kindling resentment, hatred, and rage. On the other hand, he warned against exaggerated care and caregivers’ ‘enslavement’ to the child's wishes, which he argued would impair deliberate and rational educational work. 42
Despite their differences, Brachyahu and Wulff represent a similar approach to the desired emotional style in adulthood, which revolved around maintaining harmony within the home and workplace, refraining from conflicts with spouses, and avoiding mistreatment of children. Brachyahu's 1940 booklet, in contrast to his earlier works, is replete with psychoanalytical notions, such as ‘the unconscious’ and ‘repression’, and considers showing the child love and appreciation as a crucial part of the caregiver's tasks. Similar to Wulff, Brachyahu's text stressed avoiding physical punishment or instilling fear as educational methods. However, his writings continued to demonstrate a more behavioural tendency than Wulff's, placing much more emphasis on warning against spoiling the child and on training and conditioning him to face the hardships of life as part of building a resilient and capable character. Both Brachyahu and Wulff approached the mental aspects of child development in universal terms. Despite being written in Hebrew, their work envisioned a healthy child adaptable to any complex, industrial society, devoid of specific temporal or geographical context.
Everything in the work of these men, though, unmistakably signifies an attempt to position themselves as contributors to the success of the Zionist enterprise by leveraging contemporary psychological and moral insights to enhance the understanding of children and their successful upbringing. This perspective is evident throughout their works. The preface to Brachyahu's 1942 book, The School and the Kindergarten: Physical and Mental Health Practices, illustrates this point nicely. It was written by Eliezer Riger (1896–1954), a notable figure in the Yishuv's education system and by then a professor of education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Riger began by relating the growth of the Hebrew school system in Palestine since the First World War to the point of catering to tens of thousands of children. He claimed that the educators of these children were responsible for watching out for ‘candidates for all the deficiencies of body and spirit of the next generation’. 43 He continued by crediting Brachyahu's work at Hadassah's Department of School Hygiene for significant advancements in ‘both physical and spiritual hygiene within schools’ over the interwar period. As a result, contagious diseases were eradicated and ‘the height and weight of our children grew in comparison to Jewish children in Poland or Russia’. Riger concluded his enthusiastic endorsement of the writer's achievements by stating that ‘the work of hygiene on behalf of “Hadassah” has done and is doing a service for the Hebrew community in the country, the entirety of whose economic and social consequences for safeguarding our human and national energy is hard to measure’. 44 Like the book it was endorsing, however, mental development – healthy or otherwise – was prominently mentioned but only briefly discussed in this preface.
Rivka’i was the most explicit in articulating the connection between the latest psychological and pedagogical advancements and the requisites of the Zionist project. In his article from 1935, with which I opened the article, where he advertised his ‘Pedologic Institute for Parents’, Rivka’i underscored the unique circumstances within the Jewish community in Palestine: In Laboring Palestine (ארץ-ישראל העובדת) the question of broad pedagogic preparation for the masses of parents and adults is even more timely than in other places. There is none like Laboring Palestine in bringing about fundamental changes to form and substance in life and in endeavoring to create a whole new reality … The question of an institution for the pedagogical training of the masses of adults and parents in Laboring Palestine is an urgent and important matter, considerably more so than in any other place. [emphases in the original]
45
Some texts directly addressed the emotional ramifications of the unique conditions in Palestine. For instance, the disconnection of young parents from their own parents and wider community – one of the characteristics of the early Jewish immigration to Palestine – was often cited as a cause for various issues, particularly flawed mothering. One writer highlighted what he termed ‘the fear of motherhood’, noting, ‘for the vast majority of working women in the country, as young women, their motherhood began without prior self-experience. Furthermore, they lack the familial environment and guidance from older women to alleviate any unnecessary fear’. 49 Despite the unique aspects of the Yishuv, this description could apply to many urbanized communities going through processes of modernization in industrializing cities and towns. 50 The tendency to overlook specific conditions, such as the plight of European Jewish communities since the late nineteenth century or the immigration and settlement experiences in Palestine, and to discuss children's and caregivers’ emotional behaviour as a universal phenomenon can be attributed to the scientific nature of this discourse and the desire to place the new Jewish child on par with children in societies where such knowledge originated. 51
Love, especially in the case of mothers, has been regarded as the paramount emotion one should feel and demonstrate towards children since the late eighteenth century. However, during the nineteenth century, as emotions gradually lost their standing as a primary guide to healthy and moral human life, a need arose for other sources of authority to guide caregivers in their daily interactions with children. With the strengthening of state structures and growing political interest in producing useful populations in the late nineteenth century, the way this love should be experienced and expressed became the focus of scientific analysis in psychological and pedagogical circles. Within this discourse, particular attention was given to the need to direct caregivers away from sentimental practices and toward a scientifically prescribed, allegedly rational expression of love to their children. Parents, and particularly mothers, were considered prone to sentimentality and therefore prime targets for scientific education.
52
Susan Isaacs (1885–1948), a British psychologist and influential popularizer of Melanie Klein, wrote in 1929: [M]others and nurses have begun to turn away from mere custom and blind tradition to science … In the care of the child's mind also, this is beginning to be true; but it is not yet by any means as true as it might be. We still tend largely to take it as a matter of course that we know by nature, or by the experience of our training in childhood, what is best for our children's mental health; and whenever the child behaves in a way that does not please us, we are ready to act. We do so, out of our own good or bad humour at the moment, out of a habit of acting so, out of our ‘principles’; but rarely out of a full knowledge of what in the child's mind has led him to do the thing we don’t like. Yet without that knowledge, we cannot be sure that we are dealing with him in the way most likely to help him. Without it, we move in the dark, and may do much harm, with the best intentions in the world.
53
Such crucial means could not be left unattended. Mothers played a notably pivotal role within the Zionist discourse, especially concerning the responsibility for the creation and upbringing of future generations. 56 But parents were also viewed as inherently biased towards their children and as experiencing ‘mental stress’ due to the demands of modern parenthood, rendering them incapable of adequately educating their children or objectively diagnosing their needs. Mothers, being the primary caregivers and perceived as more prone to sentimentality, were the main focus of this discourse, but this irrational stance was sometimes attributed to fathers as well. 57 Consequently, concerns about the tendency to spoil children were predominantly directed at mothers. 58 According to Wulff, such indulgence ultimately led to the child's inability to cope with the realities and limitations of life, resulting in significant pain, potential anger, and oppositional behaviour. If left unchecked and untreated, this pattern could escalate and become pathological. 59
Spoiling was often associated with other negative habits attributed to mothers, including anxious behaviour and compulsive, excessive care. This was particularly evident in the common criticism of mothers’ approaches to their children's eating habits. 60 Addressing this issue specifically, Wulff cautioned against the prevailing belief that a child must receive a fixed daily quota of food (calories), regardless of how or in what manner it is provided. He asserted that such a notion was scientifically unsound and detrimental to both the child's mental and physical health. 61 The tendency toward anxiety and excessive care among mothers was frequently linked to the decrease in family size, especially the prevalence of families with only one child. 62 While this phenomenon was widespread in Europe and North America at the time, it elicited particular concerns in the demographically-focused Yishuv. 63 Many of the numerous articles devoted to mothers’ anxieties about their children's eating habits connected this problem directly to low birth rates. One 1935 article on ‘The Inappetent Baby’ opened with the following diagnosis: ‘The lack of appetite in babies that pediatricians are so busy with is the result of social conditions, especially the fact that the number of children in families is decreasing. The only child's environment is rife with anxiety, concern, and spoiling’. 64
On the other hand, mothers were often accused of neglect, due to various factors such as strained family relationships, including discord between parents, the use of corporal punishment within the home, poverty, or a combination thereof. 65 Another significant concern was the impact of maternal employment, whereby working mothers lacked the time and energy to adequately attend to their children's needs and education. This phenomenon, prevalent globally at the time, held particular significance in the context of the Yishuv, given its emphasis on Jewish productive labour. Experts maintained that children of such mothers were prone to developing feelings of envy toward peers who received their mothers’ undivided attention, often resulting in anxiety, dependency, and increased demands. 66
A positive example given in Brachyahu's book from 1940, What Shell We Do to Our Sons to Make Them Healthy in Spirit?, illustrates the ideal of the loving yet non-sentimental mother. A child is playing in the yard, building a tower of blocks while his mother sits nearby, reading. She comments on his game, saying that the base of the tower is not wide enough, but the child ignores her. Suddenly, the tower collapses, and one of the blocks falls on the child's toes. Infuriated, the child throws the block and approaches his mother, complaining and asking for her consolation. The mother does not raise her head from the book. The child starts shouting and crying loudly, but the mother continues to ignore him. Eventually, he goes back to his blocks, this time making sure to build the tower on a wider base. In his interpretation of this scene, Brachyahu commends the mother and explains that had she consoled the child, she would have spoiled his sense of reality. The child would have learned that if something bad happens, grown-ups would love and soothe him, instead of leaving him to overcome his difficulties on his own. The way the mother acted in this example, then, helped to develop her child's sense of independence and avoid characteristics such as timidity and lack of self-esteem. 67
Wulff, whose worldview was shaped from the outset by psychoanalysis, was less influenced by developmental psychology and its behaviourist outlook than Brachyahu. As such, he articulated the tendency to see the expression of affection, attention, and tenderness toward the child as essential to his self-esteem. Nevertheless, he too constantly warned mothers against excessively accommodating the child's demands. For example, when discussing the mental convolution that arises as a result of the Oedipus complex around the age of three, he denounced the common use of intimidation and physical violence, which could worsen the tendency, prevalent at this age, toward phobias and fears. On the other hand, in the same discussion, he wrote against hugging the child and allowing him to sleep in the mother's bed at night. This practice, according to Wulff, would only encourage the child's fears and his wish to cry or shriek in order to be admitted to his mother's lap, potentially sustaining those fears and nightmares and even making them permanent. 68 Here too, the rational mother had to stand against her sentimental tendencies and listen to the popularizer of state-of-the-art psychological knowledge.
Most texts attributed primary responsibility for a child's emotional health to the mother, either pragmatically due to her role as the primary caregiver or as part of a broader recognition of her essential role in early education. However, there were exceptions where fathers were placed at the centre of attention. One such text was Brachyahu's 1940 book on children's mental health issues. Addressed to fathers, the book primarily discussed examples of paternal behaviour. Brachyahu delineated four types of fathers that have negative effects on a child's mental health. He explicitly noted that mothers could also exhibit these roles, but the characters were distinctly masculine.
The first is the ‘despot’ father, characterized by a violent demeanour that imposes his will on the child, leading the child to grow into either a violent or submissive adult. The second is the ‘miserable’ father, who, considering himself a failure, pushes his child to overachieve but never acknowledges their accomplishments, resulting in a reluctance to excel and, hence, underachievement. The third is the ‘miserable husband’: disillusioned with his spouse, this man seeks solace in his child, leading to a reversal of parent–child dynamics and the child assuming a domineering role. The fourth is the ‘vile’ father, who neglects his children and resorts to violence, thereby causing the children to develop depression and pathological anxiety. 69
The sentimental, misguided parental love – attributed mostly to mothers, but, as we just saw, also to fathers – was expressed in either anxious, excessive care or in neglectful, threatening, or even violent approaches that could lead children to experience sadness, anxiety, or resentment. These children might disrupt the peace at home and in educational settings like kindergarten and school. They may exhibit traits of excessive dependency or stubbornness, and as adults, they may struggle to harmonize with their surroundings and meet their parents’ expectations. While mothers were often seen as having a particular responsibility to prevent such outcomes, fathers were sometimes deemed in need of correction through the scientifically based knowledge of the rational expert. Rational care that would take into account the child's inherent sentimentality was meant to lead the child out of his childish adherence to emotions and into rational, non-sentimental adulthood. These issues were understood to be rooted at the individual or family level, but at the same time, they also extended beyond them. We will now turn to explore what was considered to be the broader implications of the parental approach to childcare on the success or failure of the national collective.
The advice of the experts drew upon research-based understandings of children's needs. This intellectual basis lent authority to the claim that by putting aside their sentimental impulses and successfully applying the experts’ instructions, parents and other caregivers could nurture happier and more successful adults. The caregiver's responsibility to adhere to professional advice in order to guide the child from sentimental childhood to rational maturity was regarded as part of their commitment to the national collective.
One area where this commitment was most pronounced was the acquisition of the Hebrew language, one of the most pressing concerns of Zionist pedagogy since its earliest beginnings. 70 ‘Reviving’ the spoken use of Hebrew as a mother tongue was considered an essential task of Jewish caregivers in Palestine, and the professionals under consideration here contributed their knowledge to this effort. One prominent example is Rivka’i's 1938 book, On the Language of Our Children in the Land. 71 The book was dedicated to the analysis of common, often amusing mistakes made by Hebrew-speaking children in Palestine and to explaining their causes, meanings, and significance. In a long introductory essay, Rivka’i warned caregivers against mocking or ridiculing the child's verbal difficulties, since such reactions could cause inferiority complexes and impede the child's linguistic development. 72 He further elaborated on the current scientific understanding of the processes of language acquisition and focused on the specific obstacles that ‘our children in the land’ face due to the fact that their parents’ mother tongue is not Hebrew. His main intention in publishing the book, he wrote, was to ‘point the attention of caregivers (and parents in particular) to the need to handle’ the child's speech from as early an age as possible, in order to ‘open for us locked gates in the child's psyche’. 73 This, he insisted, had everything to do with the success of the Zionist project, since ‘the linguistic development of our children in the land is not a mere theoretical matter, but also and mainly a topical question from a practical standpoint’. 74 In order to deeply understand their children, parents and educators had to pay close, meticulous attention to their children's speech and linguistic mistakes, basing their observations on state-of-the-art scientific theory and methods. This, according to Rivka’i, necessitated a serious consideration of the specific circumstances of their children's process of language acquisition – particularly the fact that most caregivers were not native speakers themselves – and could also contribute to the crucial process of making modern Hebrew into a native spoken language.
Another area of children's mental development where the national commitment was prominent was in coping with the fears caused by war, especially since the mid-1930s. 75 At least since the outbreak of the Palestinian Arab Revolt in 1936, the Yishuv existed in a state of escalating hostilities. Children were exposed to violence and threat both directly and through the charged atmosphere at home, in school, and on the street. A text from 1941, first published in the daily Ha’aretz and then reprinted in a journal for kindergarten teachers, describes its impact on emotional behaviour and atmosphere in Tel Aviv kindergartens in the early phases of the Second World War. The writer, columnist Pinḥas Lander (Elad) (1905–37, going here by one of his pseudonyms, P. Azai), stressed the need to shelter children from the frightening impact of the war as much as possible while also practicing their capability to cooperate with the collective civil-defence efforts. The children, he wrote, were exposed to reports of the war at home and on the streets, and even witnessed its woes directly through the Italian air raid on Tel Aviv in September 1940. As a result, they tended to play war games and discuss good and evil in terms of the belligerent parties, repeatedly naming Hitler as the ultimate villain. The role of the kindergarten, then, was to absorb this change in behaviour and mitigate the fear in order to continue with class routines as much as possible. Reducing the stress of the parents was seen as part of this effort: ‘the parents seemed more anxious than the children. I explained to them: you are giving the children to me; here they will be calm. And you beware not to bring the anxiety into the classroom’. The kindergarten teacher stood against the parents’ tendency to transfer their fears and anxieties to their children, and the matter-of-fact atmosphere in the kindergarten allowed the children to cope better with the demands of public security at home as well: ‘the parents say that in cases where the alarm is sounded at night, the children behave with utmost calmness as they are taken from bed to the bomb shelter. And the kindergarten teacher's motto is: “Kids, at home you should behave as you do in the kindergarten.”’ 76
While analysts in Britain at the time were mainly concerned with safeguarding children's mental health during the Blitz and the evacuation process and reducing their attraction to the violence of war, as well as reducing anxiety and preventing panic among adults, 77 it seems that in Palestine, the paradigm of sheltered, sentimental childhood was enlisted for the needs of the increasingly militaristic nation. 78 The general tone of the text conveys an effort to maintain business as usual until peace returns, but it already bears the signs of what is considered the ‘militaristic narrative for children’ in the Yishuv and later the state of Israel. 79 These stances were not in conflict. ‘Restraint’ was the official policy the Yishuv leadership adopted in response to the Revolt and, from 1939 onward, to the resulting British restrictions on immigration and settlement. It called for forgoing military retaliation, leaving them to official, British responsibility, in order to focus all energy on enhancing immigration and expanding settlement. Maintaining a semblance of normalcy was, in fact, central to this policy. In the context of the time, this discipline served to rally the Jewish population – including children – around common national goals. 80
The institution of the kindergarten was tied from its inception in the early nineteenth century to liberal, progressive politics, and it remained contested even in the decades that followed the First World War.
81
In the Yishuv, texts that promoted it often framed children's essential sentimentality as an important tool in preschool public education's efforts to instill specific national values. The innocent kindergarten setting was heralded not only for its role in imparting Hebrew language skills or facilitating the transition from home to school but also as a crucial means for national education in its own right: ‘The man of labor’ – this is, after all, the summit of ideals: the creation of a working people that lives of its own labor and stands in solidarity with its brethren – this ideal must find its expression here in the child's first work in his tender age, in his imagination games that imitate the new way of life, its customs and principles. With plays and primitive independent-labor, the child's body finds a source for health and development and his mind finds a fountain of imagination and original creativity.
82
In discussions about instilling a working-class identity in children, for instance, writers emphasized that ‘children's perceptions rely on concrete experiences and are emotionally acquired’.
85
Therefore, to instill a sense of social awareness in a child, it was essential for him to be exposed to and absorb social injustice emotionally, through his senses and feelings.
86
The emphasis on social feelings extended to promoting empathy and the sense of sharing among children. As in other cases, here too experts advocated mobilizing the sentimental, emotional phase of childhood and directing children toward developing genuine relationships and connections with others and the wider world. The focus was on creating authentic experiences as early as possible to foster a deep-rooted capacity for understanding and cooperation with other people. The attainment of this goal was crucial, and failure could have dire consequences: Generally speaking, the social types are the builders of society, builders of life, the ones on whom society rests and with whose power it marches on. While those who did not forge – or broke – their bonds with society, the lonely types, the restless, those who don’t find their place in society, who don’t accept its rules, who don’t derive satisfaction from social life, they don’t appreciate their own deeds, nor do they share their actions with others. From those will come the criminals and the sinners, the backwards and neglected types, those who are miserable on their own and who cause misery to others.
87
In the construction of a new society, these experts considered it imperative to cultivate socially adept individuals who were capable of bearing the collective burden and propelling its progress. Concurrently, efforts were made to minimize the development of traits such as solitariness, restlessness, unruliness, and a reluctance to share one's life with others. Emotions played a pivotal role as the bridge between the individual, whether content or discontent, and the social collective. In the former scenario, the collective would benefit from the individual's contributions, while in the latter, it would suffer.
Similarly to raising children from a family or individual perspective, educators and child psychologists considered emotions to play a major role in prominent national and collective priorities, such as the acquisition of modern Hebrew as a native spoken language, coping with security threats, and developing political consciousness. Here too, they instructed caregivers to acknowledge the child's tendency to be motivated by emotions as an inherent part of healthy development. As they assured parents and teachers alike, understanding these qualities and overall adherence to the ‘rational’ approaches promoted by the experts would allow caregivers to facilitate the child's transformation into a healthy, rational adulthood on the collective, national plane. In this way, scientific knowledge was supposed to help bring about an emotional style that would not only benefit the individual and his family but also serve the goals of the Zionist project.
Despite the aspirations of many in Europe and elsewhere since the late nineteenth century, the accumulation of social norms invariably hinders the creation of a wholly new society. Even in settler communities like the Jewish population in Mandatory Palestine, which aspired to be a tabula rasa where previous social ties and structures had largely dissolved, enduring cultural concepts and mentalities persisted. Among these enduring elements were modes of experiencing and expressing emotions. Overcoming this phenomenon posed one of the most pressing yet difficult tasks for Zionism. Hence, the psychological and pedagogical project discussed here had a specific aim: to align the emotional development of Jewish children growing up in Palestine with the needs and aspirations of the ‘new’ Jewish family in Palestine and with the Zionist national-settlement project, of which it was considered an integral part. 88
This scientifically oriented discourse was part of global trends within which ‘the child’ emerged as a significant construct. Nineteenth century child psychology saw the child, especially in preschool age, as mostly a biological creature, but since the second decade of the twentieth century, developmental psychology began to put more stress on the child's mental capacities. With the growing influence of psychoanalysis, children's psyches and their relationships with caregivers – particularly mothers – came to be seen as central to the normal development of future adults. In the 1930s, this approach drove a greater emphasis on children's emotional needs.
These developments coincided with changes in the status of sentimentality, or the tendency to be motivated by emotions. Long past its heyday in the eighteenth century, by the late nineteenth century, it was generally relegated – as a negative trait – to women, colonized people, and the mentally ill (and in the Zionist case, to the despised Jewish ‘Exile’). In children, on the other hand, it retained a positive tone as part of a broader attempt in bourgeois culture to shield them from the harsh realities of adult life. Thus, in the interwar period, as child psychology became increasingly oriented towards understanding and sanctioning children's emotional life, a central mission of scientifically oriented pedagogy was to instruct caregivers on how to accept this characteristic in children while also guiding them out of it and into ‘rational’ adulthood.
This, at any rate, was the case in the Zionist psychological and pedagogical discourse, which was oriented toward the political project of annihilating the cultural traits associated with the Jewish diaspora. As we have seen, according to the Jewish experts in Palestine, the child was considered a sentimental being, legitimately and understandably driven by emotions. However, his care and education were to be conducted rationally and methodically. Caregivers were instructed not to indulge in sentimental approaches but instead to adopt rationality and purposefulness.
On the one hand, caregivers were required to resist the urge to disregard the child's emotional impulses and to engage positively with them, thus avoiding neglect or abuse. On the other hand, they were to act rationally and avoid fully entertaining these inclinations. This approach was promoted as the surest way to create a new and emotionally balanced generation. If accepted by caregivers, these experts argued, their ‘rational’ methods could produce confident and ambitious offspring capable of resilience and perseverance, poised to lead the family toward a new, modern, and happier future. At the collective level, the aim was to mould compliant, composed, and adaptable subjects primed to contribute to a successful social and political enterprise.
The extent to which these efforts succeeded, as well as the influence of other forces in shaping Jewish-Israeli emotional styles, necessitates further analysis. Such an analysis would provide a more nuanced assessment of these experts’ attempts to effect change. Additionally, it could illuminate the broader question of how self-conscious projects of this kind influence the transformation of emotion across time and space.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The research presented in this article is part of the Horizon Europe TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship project, grant agreement no. 101110151 – ColEMP. I am deeply grateful to Prof. Hizky Shoham and Prof. Derek Penslar for their invaluable support and guidance. I also wish to thank the participants of the Israel/Palestine Research Forum at Harvard University, as well as the Israel Scholars Forum, where earlier versions of this article were presented, for their insightful comments and suggestions.
Data Availability Statement
All data presented in the article were obtained from public libraries and archives and are cited accordingly.
