Although the Jewish community of Palestine was an extremely family-oriented society and the institute of the family played a major role in the establishment of the new Zionist nationhood, the historiography has henceforth paid little attention to its role, images, and functions. This article will examine the diverse and often contradictory perceptions and influences that have shaped the Zionist discourse regarding the family in the Jewish settlement of Palestine during the British mandate period. Traditional Jewish perceptions intertwined with modern, bourgeois, and revolutionary notions of the family, whether national or socialist. These contradictory perceptions were manifested in the contested professional and public discourse regarding the many dysfunctional urban families in Tel Aviv, who were treated by welfare authorities and mental health specialists during the 1930s and 1940s.
The meaning of the Hebrew word yishuv is ‘‘settlement,’’ both as noun and as gerund.
2.
Report on ‘‘Delinquent Children,’’ by B. Wollman, the social welfare department of the national committee, 1944, Central Zionist Archive (CZA), 12897/1J.
3.
The term ‘‘new Jewish settlement’’ refers to the settlement established in Palestine with the commencement of the Zionist immigration in the 1880s and until the end of the British Mandate in 1948.
4.
See Deborah S. Bernstein, ‘‘Daughters of the Nation. Between the Public and the Private Spheres in Pre-State Israel,’’ in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin (Detroit: Wayne State University , 1998), 287-311; Roberto Baki, Immigration, the Settlement and the Natural Movement of the Population in the Land of Israel ( Jerusalem, 1945).
5.
See Gur Alroey, ‘‘‘And I Remained Alone in a Vast Land’: Women in the Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe,’’Jewish Social Studies12, no. 3 (2006): 39-72.
6.
See, for example, Leah Shamgar-Hendelman and Rivka Bar-Yosef, eds., Families in Israel (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1991).
7.
See, for example, Tammy Razi, Forsaken Children: the Backyard of Mandate Tel-Aviv (Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Am-Oved Publishing House, 2009).
8.
In his comprehensive historical study of the kibbutz movement, Henry Near relates to the family, mainly in the context of the status of women in the kibbutz society and communal arrangements of eating and sleeping; yet, the family in itself is not present as a central subject of research, see: Henry Near, The Kibbutz Movement: A History, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
9.
For a discussion of the historical and sociological study of the Yishuv and Zionism, see, for example, Deborah S. Bernstein, ‘‘What is Seen from Here is not Seen from There: Aspects of Israeli Historiography,’’Israeli Sociology (Hebrew)2, no. 1 (1999): 23-50; Hanna Herzog, ‘‘Redefining Political Spaces: A Gender Perspective on the Yishuv Historiography,’’Journal of Israeli History21, no. 1 (2002): 1-25.
10.
Regarding the family as a passive unit responding to social and historical changes does not characterize only the historiography of Zionism and the Yishuv. According to Tamara Hareven, this perception was a dominant feature of the general study of the history of the family until the late twentieth century. Thus, she claims, new studies examine how the family affected historical processes, and asks, for example, not how the Industrial Revolution affected the family, but how the family, as an economic unit, affected the development of the Industrial Revolution. See Tamara K. Hareven, ‘‘Recent Research on the History of the Family,’’ in Time, Family and Community: Perspectives on Family and Community History, ed. Michael Drake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 13-43.
11.
See Rachel Elboim-Dror, ‘‘Gender in Utopianism: the Zionist Case,’’History Workshop Journal37, no. 1 (1994): 99-116.
12.
See Sylvie Fogiel-Bijaoui , Women in the Kibbutz-Members or Mothers? The Kibbutz Society: Continuity and Change, unit 7 (Hebrew) ( Tel-Aviv: Open University, 1992).
13.
Included in the category of the status of the individual are claims related to the following matters: marriage, divorce, alimony, and economics; guardianship; genealogy of minors (children born out of wedlock), adoption of children; and managing the assets of missing people.
14.
See Sara Azariahu, The Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights in Eretz Israel (Hebrew) (Haifa, 1977); Frances Raday, ‘‘The Concept of Gender Equality in a Jewish State,’’ in Women in Law, ed. Shimon Shetreet (Cambridge MA: Kluwer Law International, 1998), 47-60.
15.
See in the last section of the article.
16.
Sara Azariahu, ibid.
17.
See for comparison, the British government’s policy regarding the legal struggle to raise the age of marriage in Palestine: Assaf Likhovsky, Law and Identity in Mandatory Palestine (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 93-97.
18.
The historiographical bias discussed above also affected the limited discussion of the place religion played in the life of the Yishuv. Even when discussing the urban sectors of the Jewish population in Palestine, the tendency was to focus on the Central European secular bourgeoisie and not on the majority of the city residents, who were Eastern European in origin, and many of whom were traditional and even religious. See, for example, Amir Ben-Porat, Where are Those Bourgeois? The History of the Israeli Bourgeoisie (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes Publishing House, 1999).
19.
See, for example, Paula E. Hyman, ‘‘The Modern Jewish Family: Image and Reality, in The Jewish Family. Metaphor and Memory, ed. David Kraemer (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 179-93.
20.
In Judaism, it was traditionally forbidden for one of the parties in a couple to refuse to conduct sexual relations, and if one of them did, they were defined as a rebel. See, for example, Avraham Grossman, ‘‘Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe,’’ Speculum 81, no. 3 (2008): 856-57. However, as Elisheva Baumgarten points out, despite the ideal of celibacy in Christianity, it is important to remember that the majority of Christians lived in family setups and similar to the Jews, they aspired to raise families and have children. In addition, there were factions in Judaism that believed in the ideals of asceticism, including abstaining from sex, such as the Hassidism movement. See: Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children. Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
21.
See: Michael Kaufman, Love, Marriage and Family in Jewish Law and Tradition (Northvale: Aronson Publishers, 1992).
22.
Paula E. Hyman, ‘‘The Dynamics of Social History,’’ Reshaping the Past: Jewish History and the Historians, ed. Jonathan Frankel, Studies in Contemporary Jewry10 (1994): 104-5.
23.
These studies relate mainly to the mass immigration from Eastern Europe to America in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. See, for example, Sydney S. Weinberg, The World of our Mothers: The Lives of Jewish Immigrant Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).
24.
Neomi Shiloach , Vanishing Center: Citizen’s Interests Groups in Eretz Israel during the 1930s (Hebrew) (Jerusalem : Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2003).
25.
See, for example, Hanna Herzog, ‘‘Redefining Political Spaces: A Gender Perspective on the Yishuv Historiography,’’ ibid.
26.
On the processes of consolidation of this ideology and on its aspects of gender, see, for example, Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class (London: Hutchinson, 1987).
27.
Book of Psalms, 45, 24. On different aspects of the patriarchal structure of traditional Jewish society and religion, see, for example, Miriam Peskowitz and Laura Levitt, eds., Judaism since Gender (New York and London, 1997). Daniel Boyarin describes the dual oppression of the Jewish world and bourgeois values, from which Bertha Pappenheim, also known as ‘‘Anna O’’ suffered. According to Boyarin, this double oppression played a central part in the development of her hysteria. See: Daniel Boyarin, ‘‘Retelling the Story of Anna O.,’’ in Unheroic Conduct. The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkley: University of California Press, 1997), 313-59.
28.
For a survey of these studies, see: Paula E. Hyman, ‘‘The Dynamics of Social History,’’ ibid, 100-2.
29.
See, for example, Marion Kaplan’s study on the involvement of Jewish women in general bourgeois philanthropic institutions in imperial Germany. See, Marion Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle-Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
30.
French law, legislated in 1889, the same year the law was passed in England, stated that parents would lose their guardianship over the children when ‘‘Fathers and mothers [...] through their habitual drunkenness, their notorious and scandalous behavior, or through ill treatment, compromise the safety, health or morality of their children’’ (p. 151) in Hugh Cunningham, Saving the Children. Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500 (London and New York: Longman), 134-62; Thomas P. Mason., Jr., ‘‘Child Abuse and Neglect,’’ in Law, Society and Domestic Relations: Major Historical Interpretations, ed. Kermit L. Hall (New York: Garland Publishers), 293-349.
31.
The Berlin Soziale Frauenschule was founded in 1908 by the Jewish social workers Alice Salomon and Sidy Veronsky. Veronsky immigrated to Palestine in the early 1930s and helped found the school for social work in Jerusalem. On the school and its impact on the Yishuv see, for example, Yoav Gelber, New Home. The Immigration and Absorption of Central European Jews, 1933-1940 (Hebrew) ( Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and Leo Beck Institute , 1990), 449-52.
32.
See for example, the perception of the family as an institution that endangers the utopian endeavor, which appears both in the national and socialist utopias of the nineteenth century. See, for example, Rachel Elboim-Dror, ‘‘Gender in Utopianism: the Zionist Case,’’ ibid.
33.
Studies on nationalism and gender deal with a wide range of topics, such as the contribution of women to national struggles; the construction of a nation and national identity in gendered terms; the construction of masculinity and sexuality in the national context; the extremely broad use of gender images and symbols in the national discourse through the family, marriage, and the concept of self-sacrifice; they also deal with the use of the woman’s body, dress codes, and sexual behavior as symbolic sites of national traditions. See, for example, Anne McClintock, ‘‘Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family,’’ Feminist Review 44 (1993): 61-80; Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Macmillan, 1997). Perhaps, the most extreme example of nationalization of motherhood and the family is that of Nazi Germany. See, for example, Michelle Mouton, From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
34.
Mrinalini Sinha , ‘‘Gender and Nation,’’ in The Feminist History Reader, ed. Sue Morgan (London and New York : Routledge, 2006), 323-39.
35.
Yaakov Oved, Two Hundred Years of American Communes (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers), 411-26; David Lane, Politics and Society in the USSR (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 342-81.
36.
Wendy Z. Goldman, Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). See also, Rina Peled, ‘‘The New Man’’ of the Zionist Revolution (Hebrew) ( Tel-Aviv: Am-Oved), 200-7.
37.
See Sylvie Fogiel-Bijaoui , ‘‘From Revolution to Motherhood: the Case of Women in the Kibbutz, 1910-1948,’’ in Pioneers and Homemakers. Jewish Women in Pre-state Israel, ed. Deborah S. Bernstein (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 211-34; Henry Near, Kibbutz Movement: A History, ibid.
38.
The aspiration to minimize the functions of the family was also the outcome of Freudian influences on the Kibbutz movement and especially on Hashomer Hatzair members. See, for example, Emanuel Berman, ‘‘Communal Upbringing in the Kibbutz-The Allure and Risks of Psychoanalytic Utopianism,’’Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 43 (1988): 319-35.
39.
Deborah S. Bernstein , ‘‘Human Being or Housewife: The Status of Women in the Jewish Working class Families of Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s,’’ in Pioneers and Homemakers. Jewish Women in Pre-state Israel, ed. Deborah S. Bernstein (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 235-60.
40.
Sylvie Fogiel-Bijaoui , ‘‘From Revolution to Motherhood: The Case of Women in the Kibbutz, 1910-1948,’’ ibid.
41.
See Ruth Kark, Margalit Shilo, and Galit Hasan-Rokem, eds., Jewish Women in Pre-state Israel. Life, History, Politics and Culture (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2008).
42.
See, for example, Yoav Gelber , ‘‘The Shaping of the ‘New Jew’ in Eretz Israel,’’ in Major Changes within the Jewish People in the Wake of the Holocaust. Proceedings of the Ninth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, eds. Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), 443-61; Zili Dolev-Gandelman, ‘‘The Symbolic Inscription of Zionist Ideology in the Space of Eretz Israel: Why the Native Israeli is Called Tsabar,’’ in Judaism Viewed from Within and from Without, ed. Harvey E. Goldberg (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 257-84.
43.
Zeev Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel, trans. David Maisel (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1998 ).
44.
The field of ‘‘heil pedagogy’’ (medical pedagogy) was particularly developed in those years in central Europe and in the Yishuv alike. According to this method, school teachers and head-principles were trained in the fields of mental health to assist and treat pupils who had first been diagnosed by a physician or psychiatrist. This method was widely practiced in the Yishuv in caring for neglected children in the counseling clinics and the various institutions, as well as for juvenile delinquents. See, for example, Tammy Razi, ‘‘Between Pedagogic Retardation and Neurosis: Ethnic and Pathologic Making of Poor Children in Mandate Tel Aviv’’ in An Anthology on Therapy and Inequality, ed. Nissim Mizrahi (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, forthcoming).
45.
On the immigration of Jewish professionals in the fields of mental health, see, Doron Niederland, ‘‘The Emigration of Jewish Academics and Professionals from Germany in the First Years of Nazi Rule,’’ The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 33, no. 1 (1988): 285-300; Rakefet Zalashik, ‘‘Psychiatry, ethnicity and migration: the case of Palestine, 1920-1948,’’ DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus 25 (2005): 403-22. On other aspects mentioned see further on in the article.
46.
Ilan S. Troen, Imagining Zion (Yale University Press, 2003), 92-5; Yaakov Shavit and Gidon Biger, The History of Tel Aviv vol. 1 (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ramot, Tel Aviv University, 2001), 90-151.
47.
Haim Fireberg , ‘‘Tel Aviv: Change, Continuity and the Many Faces of Urban Culture and Society during War, 1936-1948,’’ (PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 2003 ), 167-217.
48.
‘‘Welfare Aid. The Department for child-care,’’Bulletin of the Tel Aviv Municipality for the years 1937-1938 .
49.
‘‘Report on treatment of new immigrants,’’ the child-care department of the Tel Aviv municipality, TAMA 3.1.35, 1770B-4; Yoav Gelber, New Home. The Immigration and Absorption of Central European Jews, 1933-1940, ibid, 277-82.
50.
See, for example, ‘‘Memorandum on the condition of the immigrants in Tel Aviv-Jaffa,’’ February 1936, TAMA 1423-4; Fireberg, ‘‘Tel Aviv: Change, Continuity and the Many Faces of Urban Culture and Society during War, 1936-1948,’’ ibid, 171-76.
51.
On the origins of ethnic inequality and the inferior economic, social and political status of oriental Jews in the Yishuv society see, for example, Yehouda A. Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).
52.
Fireberg, ‘‘Tel Aviv: Change, Continuity and the Many Faces of Urban Culture and Society during War, 1936-1948,’’ibid, 170-81.
53.
‘‘Report on 10 years of social work in Tel Aviv,’’ by Hedwig Gelner, 12.9.43, TAMA 1427-4; ‘‘Welfare institutions in Tel Aviv,’’ February 1941, TAMA 1427-4.
54.
These findings contradict some of the studies on Jewish immigration to the United Sates from the second half of the nineteenth century. These studies show that the Jewish family relatively preserved its stability and cohesion in view of the hardships of immigration. See, for example, Paula E. Hyman, ‘‘The Dynamics of Social History,’’ ibid. However, other studies among the immigrant Jewish community in America show a similar phenomenon of broken families when husbands often deserted their wives. See, Reena Sigman Friedman, ‘‘Send my Husband who is in New York City: Husband Desertion in the American Immigrant Community,’’ Jewish Social Studies 44 (1982): 1-17.
55.
See, for example, ‘‘treatment of welfare issues, municipal report for the years 1938-1939,’’ Bulletin of the Tel Aviv Municipality, 7-9, April-June 1940.
56.
‘‘List of Children sent to villages through the child-care department,’’ by David Reifen, November 1936, TAMA 1770C-4; ‘‘Plan for arranging children in institutions and foster families,’’ 10.4.34, central Zionist archive (CZA), J1/6844.
57.
See, for example, letter from Hedwig Gelner, the child-care department, to Israel Rokah, city mayor of Tel Aviv, 5.8.38, TAMA, 1771C-4; letter and report from Prof. Shneorson, head inspector of special education in Tel Aviv, to the education department, 27.9.43. On the special role of the public nurses in ‘‘modernizing’’ the families they were treating, see, Dafna Hirsch, ‘‘‘Interpreters of Occident to the Awakening Orient:’ The Jewish Public Health Nurse in Mandate Palestine,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 1 (2008): 227-55.
58.
See, for example, letter regarding licenses for invalids and widows for operation of kiosks and for peddling,’’ sent from the child-care department to the mayor of Tel Aviv, 19.1.36, TAMA, 1770C-4; ‘‘Report on the condition of the welfare institutes in Tel Aviv,’’ sent by the Tel Aviv municipality to Mr. Chinn, chief inspector of the British Mandate government, 15.12.42, TAMA, 1427-4.
59.
‘‘Report on 10 years of social work in Tel Aviv,’’ by Hedwig Gelner, 12.9.43, TAMA 1427-4, 62.
60.
‘‘Plan for treatment of neglected children by the national committee,’’ 11.3.35, TAMA, 1423-4.
61.
On the Zionist perception of the central role of youth in the building of the nation, see, for example, Oz Almog, The Sabra. The Creation of the New Jew, trans. Haim Watzman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
62.
Protocol of the national conference of social workers, the welfare department of the national committee, 1.1.34, TAMA, 1422-4, p. 5. On children born out of wedlock, see, for example, ‘‘report on treatment of broken families,’’ the child-care department, 1938, TAMA, 1772D-4.
63.
Avraham Fierst , The Yishuv Towards absorption of New Immigrants (Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1945).
64.
‘‘Report on Conjugal Affairs,’’ Rivka Aharonson, the child-care department, 23.5.39, TAMA, 1772B-4.
65.
An internal memorandum of the child-care department, 15.1.36, TAMA, 1770C-4.
66.
See, for example, ‘‘Report on Conjugal Affairs,’’ ibid.
67.
On the living conditions of the poor in Tel Aviv, see, for example, Deborah Bernstein, Women on the Margins. Gender and Nationalism in Mandate Tel Aviv (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2008), 97-128.
68.
Letter from the child-care department to the welfare committee of the community, Tel Aviv, 4.4.37, TAMA, 1770D-4.
69.
Letter from Hedwig Gelner, the child-care department to Israel Rokah, vice-mayor of the Tel Aviv municipality, 25.6.35, TAMA 1423-4.
70.
See Tova Golan , ‘‘Social Work in the Yishuv (1931-1936): From Voluntarism to Professionalism and from Support System to ‘Nation Building’’’ (Hebrew) (M.A. Thesis, Bar Ilan University2002).
71.
‘‘The center for placement of children,’’ the welfare department of the national committee, 4.10.36, TAMA, 1423-4.
72.
‘‘Report on 10 years of social work in Tel Aviv,’’ ibid, 17.
73.
Anita Weiner, Out of the Family. Placement of Children in the Land of Israel during the Mandate (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuhad, 1984), 75-88. Weiner claims that even today the social policy during the Mandate affects the tendency in Israel to remove children from their homes. At least until the 1980s, the percentage of children in Israel who live in institutions outside their homes was ten times higher than in other countries in the Western world at the time. See: pp. 12-13.
74.
See, for example, ‘‘Social Treatment and Social Welfare,’’ Bulletin of the Tel Aviv Municipality, 7-9, April-June 1941; ‘‘requests for placement of children by public health nurses and social workers,’’ TAMA, 1769-4.
75.
See, for example, Bulletin of social work 16, the welfare department of the national committee (1939).
76.
See, for example, ‘‘Plan for treatment of neglected children,’’ the welfare department of the national committee, 11/3/35, TAMA, 1423-4.
77.
Letter from Hedweig Gelner, the child-care department, to Israel Rokah, city mayor of Tel Aviv, 22.7.35, TAMA, 1770B-4.
78.
‘‘Report on the treatment of youth by the welfare department of the national committee,’’ Mordechai Brachyahu, head of the Hygiene department of schools, Hadassah, 9.12.35, CZA, J1/3228.
79.
‘‘Conjugal matters,’’ Bulletin of the Tel Aviv Municipality, 5-6, December-January 1939-1940.
80.
Letter from Dr. Mordechai Weisel, legal advisor of the Tel Aviv municipality, to Shoshanna Persitz, head of the education department, 6.11.34, TAMA, 2116C-4.
81.
Report of the municipal home for delinquent boys, for the months October-December 1934, January 1935, TAMA, 2116C-4.
82.
‘‘Report on 10 years of social work in Tel Aviv,’’ ibid, p. 41.
83.
Letter from Shoshanna Persitz, head of the education and culture department of the Tel Aviv municipality, to the welfare department of the community of Jaffa, 4.1.35, TAMA, 1770B-4.
84.
‘‘The special education in Tel Aviv,’’ by Prof. Shneorson, Bulletin of the Tel Aviv Municipality , 9, 1937-1938.
85.
See, for example, Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families ( London: Hutchinson and Co., 1979 ), 48-95.
86.
Thus, in the youth villages such as Ben-Shemen, Shfeya and Gvat, to where many neglected children were sent in the 1930s and 1940s, the importance of the communal life and institutions was especially emphasized. See, for example, ‘‘A general notice regarding the camp for social workers near Shfeya,’’ sent by the welfare department of the national committee, 14.9.41, TAMA, 1427-4. See also Anita Weiner, Out of the Family. Placement of Children in the Land of Israel during the Mandate, ibid, 66-9.
87.
Rachel Elboim-Dror, ‘‘Gender in Utopianism: The Zionist Case,’’ ibid.
88.
Shmuel Almog, Judah Reinharz, and Anita Shapira, eds., Zionism and Religion (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1998)
For a comprehensive discussion of the discrepancies between the socialist perception of the family and the reality women’s lives in urban families, see Deborah S. Bernstein , ‘‘Human Being or Housewife’: The Status of Women in the Jewish Working class Families of Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s,’’ ibid.
