The moral behaviour of single young women immigrants to Mandatory Palestine: Between nationalism,gender,and professionalism in social work

Abstract

Summary

Migration has always constituted a meeting point of opportunity, risk, and vulnerability. Concerns surrounding the sex trafficking of women have caused moral panic since the mid-1800s and led to social workers’ preventive initiatives and interventions in Europe and the United States. This article explores a historical moment in which Henrietta Szold, who headed the Social Welfare Department in Mandatory Palestine in 1934, decided to send social workers to the Jaffa and Haifa ports to welcome young, single immigrant women from Germany in the light of rumours of the moral dangers they faced upon entering the country. This feminist historical study of social work employed qualitative analysis of archival texts to investigate the professional decision-making processes involved in sending a social worker to the Jaffa port and the results of the decisions that were made.

Findings

The findings trace the course of events that took place in 1934 using three categories: the rumours, their investigation, and the results and implications of the investigations. The findings point to intersections of nationalism, gender, and professionalism in social work.

Applications

This article contributes to the evolving knowledge on moral panic in social work and reveals the historical practice used in social work policy and interventions in facing moral panic regarding young women immigrants.

Introduction

In this article, I focus on the historic moment in 1934 when Henrietta Szold decided to send social workers to the Jaffa and Haifa ports to welcome young, single immigrant women from Germany. Through a feminist historical analysis of the events that led to this decision and the events that followed, this article contributes to the history of social work policy regarding young women in Israel. It offers additional knowledge about the immigration of German Jews, particularly young women, to Mandatory Palestine. This examination of social work history with girls and young women reveals a ground-breaking moment in which social work policy was required to address young women's needs. As a Mizrahi Jewish woman, social worker, and researcher of girls and young women, I found the examination of this moment essential in shedding light on women's immigration to Mandatory Palestine and the responses of the social work profession to women's immigration.

Historical context

Mandatory Palestine refers to the British administration of Palestine (1918–1948) assigned by the League of Nations after the Ottoman Empire conceded the territories of Palestine and Transjordan following the end of World War One. Under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, Jews and Arabs lived together in Palestine. However, following clashes between Jews and Arabs during the First Aliya (wave of immigration) (1882–1903), mainly of Jews from Yemen and Eastern Europe, and the 1921 attack on Jewish settlers by Arabs, Jews came to view Arabs as dangerous enemies who were foreign and different from them (Almog & Watzman, 2000).

In 1933, the Nazis’ rise to power led to substantial Jewish emigration from Germany to various countries in the shadow of the Jews’ loss of equal civil rights, their unwillingness to live under totalitarian rule, racist legislation in Germany, and political and physical persecution (Niederland, 1988). From 1933 to 1936, more than 130,000 Jews arrived in Mandatory Palestine, and 12,871 Jews emigrated from Germany to Palestine between 1933 and 1935 (Wischnitzer, 1940). Two groups of immigrants, single individuals in their twenties and parents up to age 45 with young children (Davidi, 2020), comprised the German-Jewish immigration to Palestine in the 1930s (1933–1939). Young people were the main human resource that enabled the Zionist project to thrive at the time (Stern, 2006). This article addresses perceptions of young, single Jewish women who immigrated alone to Mandatory Palestine.

The immigration of European women, especially young women who immigrated alone to other countries in the early twentieth century, aroused concern in women's activist organisations, leading to a campaign against white slavery (the procurement by force, deceit, or drugs, of white women or girls for prostitution) and the establishment of the anti-trafficking movement (Attwood, 2015; Doezema, 1999). Scholars have argued that the fear of white slavery was based on a small number of documented cases and fuelled by worries of cultural contamination (due to immigration), moral pollution, and social anxieties about changing gender roles and sex, class, and race relations at the turn of the century (Doezema, 1999; Wahab, 2002). This phenomenon was an example of moral panic, the widespread fear that a person or group poses a threat to societal values and interests (Cohen, 2011; Cree et al., 2016).

Women were part of every wave of immigration to Palestine in the pre-state period from 1880 to 1948. Attitudes towards their role in immigration are dichotomous; they have either been ignored or admired and mythologised as pioneers who worked and struggled alongside their male comrades (Bernstein, 2012b; Shilo, 1998). Zionist leaders envisioned women as central to ensuring families’ financial well-being and creating a healthy moral foundation for all their members. Their duty as caregivers and mothers was portrayed as a critical element of the establishment of the Jewish state (Ajzenstadt, 2010). Moreover, in the ethos of the ideal Zionist hero (a soldier fighting against those attempting to undermine the establishment of the new state), mothers were defined as the producers of the new, brave, healthy Jew. The figure of the new Jew was male, autonomous, rational, and of Ashkenazi (European) origin. Characterised by the negation of Diaspora identity, free of the inhibitions and superstitions of the past, the new Jew was the reverse image of the Arab man, perceived as technologically and economically undeveloped and unhealthy due to consanguineous marriages, poor hygiene, and inadequate sanitation, with a moral code that hinged on vengeance and honour (Almog & Watzman, 2000). Women's role as the biological producers of the nation was established as an inclusive mechanism in the emerging society (Ajzenstadt, 2010).

The care of single women in the cities, particularly single immigrants who had left their families behind, was addressed by women's organisations in Germany, Britain, and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These organisations initiated and built women's housing and cooperatives for single women (Davidi, 2019). During the 1930s, single women immigrants faced difficulties finding appropriate housing in the cities. The chronic shortage of suitable, affordable residences for single urban women spurred Zionist and non-institutional women's organisations to construct the Pioneer Women's Houses (Batei Hachalutzot) in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Netanya, inspired by women's organisations abroad (Davidi, 2019). Some scholars argue that the real reason for building housing for single women was concern regarding their morals. In particular, ‘rumours questioned the chastity of Jewish women who dwelt in Arab houses in the mixed cities because those apartments were inexpensive’ (Davidi, 2019). This article explores the rumours regarding young, single Jewish women who immigrated alone to Mandatory Palestine and how they drove social work policy and practice.

The Jewish National Council (JNC) in Mandatory Palestine was an executive organisation that dealt with public matters such as welfare, health, defence, education, and religious issues in the Yishuv. Henrietta Szold (1860–1945), the most influential Jewish American woman of her era and founder of the women's Zionist organization Hadassah (Hacohen, 2021), joined the JNC executive and headed the Social Service Department, which she established in 1931 (Loewenberg, 1991). Szold believed that ‘the old Lady Bountiful system, based on hysteria and not justice [for] the unfortunate’, must be replaced (Hacohen, 2021, p. 254). She was aware of the difficulties involved: a lack of funds and the need to change the prevailing view that charity should be a spontaneous act. At the time, few in the Yishuv recognised the need for professional social services (Hacohen, 2021). In the department's early days, its functions were unspecified, perhaps because the JNC leaders accepted what Szold and her associates did as long as they did not demand too much money (Loewenberg, 1991, p. 422). Szold integrated into her work many of the innovative ideas then prevalent in American society, e.g., progressivism (the use of science to improve society) and Taylorism (the principles and practice of scientific management) (Shilo, 2019). In contrast to those who saw social services as ‘unproductive’ or ‘philanthropic’, Szold strove to position them as relevant and meaningful (Levensohn, 1945). Indeed, Haifa, the first city to respond to Szold's call and establish a local social services office, had not planned to employ a professional social worker, claiming that ‘anyone with a kindly heart could do the job’ (Loewenberg, 1991). She threatened to withhold JNC funds from Haifa unless a professionally trained social worker was employed, and the local officials agreed to this condition (Loewenberg, 1991).

Methods

The present study is a work of feminist historical social work research. In recent decades, there have been two significant changes regarding archival research in general (Cifor & Wood, 2017; Stoler, 2002): (1) The archive itself has become a research site, theoretical concept, and object of inquiry, and (2) This ‘archival turn’ focuses on the construction of power within and around the archive. Thus, the archive is perceived as a discursive system in which history is seen as narrative and history-writing as a charged political act, and archives themselves become objects worthy of scrutiny and theorisation (Stoler, 2002). The archive is perceived as a critical tool. Thus, archival research has the potential to work towards dismantling the heteronormative, capitalist, racist patriarchy on many fronts and through many avenues by exposing blind spots within the archival literature and providing us with theoretical tools with which to critically examine what we take for granted (Cifor & Wood, 2017). The connection between the archive and structural power, which is central in both feminist historiography research and archival research (Cifor & Wood, 2017), is reflected in Foucault's idea that ‘the archive is the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events’ (Foucault, 1972, p.132). Historiographical research in social work aims to reveal where social work practices have undergone reversals under certain socio-political conditions (Skehill, 2007). A ‘history of the present’ approach encourages researchers to ‘dig deep’ to uncover the complex range of influences that affect the nature and form of a strategy such as social work within a particular temporal and spatial context (Skehill, 2007).

Feminist historiography plays a key role in illuminating the past and present through narrative (Cifor & Wood, 2017). It aims to contest dominant histories that ignore women as social actors and show how ideas and practices concerning gender, sexuality, and other social identities are central to historical changes and continuities (Rotramel, 2020), i.e., to critically consider gender in relation to race, class, nation, sexuality, and other social categories. Feminist historiography also aims to develop research practices that challenge hegemonic histories, from collection and preservation to analysis (Rotramel, 2020). Feminist historical storytelling analyses ‘evidence, power, and politics’ (Cifor & Wood, 2017; Glenn, 2000), at the nexus of which are questions regarding historical evidence (Glenn, 2000): What counts? What is available? Who provided and preserved it and why? How and to what end has it been used, and by whom? There are questions about knowledge (In what context is it produced and normalised? Whom does it benefit?), ethics (To whom or what are these practices accountable? What/whom do they privilege?), and power (What practices may produce historical memories? What are the effects of such representation?). Thus, history is not frozen, and it is not merely the past. These questions provide approachable ground for engaging with and transforming traditional memory or practice in the interests of both the present and the future (Glenn, 2000).

Following other scholars’ (Halpern, 2019; Razi, 2009) brief mentions of the events examined here, I located the archive file titled The Investigation of the Moral Depravity of Single Young Women Immigrants to Mandatory Palestine at the Central Zionist Archives (CZA) in Jerusalem. The file contained various types of documents, including letters, memoranda, and reports. When my initial examination revealed that Haifa was a significant location in the story, I approached the Haifa City Archive to attempt to locate documentation of the events that took place in the city. No such documentation existed in the file (author, personal communication, December 2, 2019). All documents were in Hebrew except for one report in German that was translated into Hebrew by a professional translator.

The analysis took place in two stages. First, the documents were arranged chronologically and categorised (using Excel) as follows: archive file number, date, document type (letter/memorandum/report), writer and addressee, content, key figures and organisations, and thoughts regarding the research question. Coding the documents into a historical sequence created a timeline for the story. In the second stage, the documents were reread chronologically and the story was identified. The following questions helped to reveal the story: What is the plot? Who are the participants? Where does the story begin and end?

Results

The story before us describes the historical moment in 1934 in which Szold decided to send social workers to the Jaffa and Haifa ports to welcome young, single immigrant women from Germany following rumours of the moral dangers they faced upon entering Palestine. Between February and June 1934, Frida Weinreich, a social worker (Halpern, 2019), visited 24 ships at the Jaffa port. Her reports reveal that social work assistance was essential for immigrants who came to Mandatory Palestine in general on board their ships and on shore upon arrival. Despite this fact, due to budget limitations and the failure to receive permits for social workers to work on the ships (in the Jaffa and Haifa ports), the social worker's work was stopped by Szold after several months. The findings are divided into three categories: the rumours, the investigation of the rumours, and the investigations’ results and implications.

On February 2, 1934, ¹ Szold and Siddy Wronsky, a leading social worker in the German welfare system and Palestine (Halpern, 2018), met with B. Yaffa from the Immigration Bureau of the Immigration and Labor Department of the Jewish Agency for Mandatory Palestine in Tel Aviv. They agreed that Weinrich, an immigrant from Germany, would board the ships arriving at Jaffa Port for a month to determine if such a service was needed to ‘protect single young women arriving in Mandatory Palestine’. ² They asked Weinreich to report on her experience so they could decide whether to continue the service.

The decision to provide social work services to these women in this context is unique for several reasons. First, while outreach practice was common in Europe and the US, there is no historical evidence of it in the Middle East. The social worker's work on the ships shows that social work professionals used outreach practice in Mandatory Palestine. Today, outreach or street work refers to activities that take place outside the office in various locations where social workers can perform proactive social work that aims to target hard-to-reach populations in their environments and diminish social barriers (Grymonprez et al., 2017; Szeintuch, 2015). First formalised in the US in the late nineteenth century, where it focused on immigrants and people living in poverty, it eventually spread to Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. While outreach has contributed significantly to people in the margins, it ‘may be perceived and (ab)used as a policing tool against a socially constructed Other’ (Szeintuch, 2015, p. 1929).

It should be noted that the initial encounter of immigrants who arrived in the country was only with officials from the Immigration Department, ³ and ships and the port were mainly male spaces. Symbolically and practically, this social work practice successfully crossed both the political boundary between the professional responsibility of the Immigration Department and the Social Work Department and the gender boundary through which women professionals were allowed to enter male arenas. Thus, the rumours that led to the crossing of these boundaries pointed to the existence of a critically important social site that required examination.

The rumours

Rumours of the moral dangers young women faced upon entering Palestine were mentioned in all the letters in the archive documents. Most circulated in Haifa among leaders and the general public and in government circles, as Szold noted:

About six months ago, Mr. Dostrovsky from the Haifa Immigration Office … informed me of the unpleasant situation on the shore every time a ship arrives … He feared that there was a representative of Arab hotels in the city attempting to influence single young women to stay with them. Of course, the results cannot be very good. I must also add that unhappy rumours are circulating in Haifa about the poor moral condition among some well-known young women, most of them immigrants. ⁴

In addition, it seems that the German Immigrants’ Association raised the issue and involved the Social Work Department (Golan, 2002). The rumours increased awareness of both public and private issues among young single women immigrants from Germany. The public issues were the ‘unpleasant situation on the shore’ and the fear that young women would stay at Arab-owned hotels. In contrast, the personal problem was the young immigrant women's poor moral condition. In both cases, the young women were perceived as weak, passive, subject to nefarious influences, and possibly involved in ‘problematic relationships’ with Arab men, creating a social problem. In one letter, Szold emphasises only the personal problem: ‘The suffering of the women immigrants, especially the single ones, stems from the fact that they do not receive the appropriate advice and guidance when they come to Mandatory Palestine’. ⁵ In contrast, in another letter, Szold emphasises only the social problem:

In connection with the rumours regarding the dangers that await single immigrant women from Germany, I asked our social worker … to visit ships and support young women, especially in the first hours after their arrival to Palestine, so they do not fall into other hands. ⁶

The emphasis here is on the social and public problems; there are dangers facing young women in the public sphere. In yet another letter, she presents the problem as a combination of social and personal aspects:

Due to the common rumours [circulating] in public and government circles that young new immigrant women are in moral danger and that many young Jewish women tend to visit the cafés in Haifa, we conducted a thorough investigation into the matter. ⁷

Szold's attitude to this issue shows that the problem involved young women immigrants who lacked the knowledge they needed in the new country. This situation created dangers and posed a moral threat to them. There was a possibility that they would fall into the hands of Arab men. In the early years of the civil government, prostitution was perceived as immoral and contributing to the trafficking of women (Bernstein et al., 2017). Moreover, the concept of a prostitute, a woman who sold sex for money, was absorbed into a broader perception of the ‘promiscuous’ woman (Bernstein et al., 2017). Thus, women's ‘boundary-crossing’ behaviours were associated with prostitution whether or not commercial sex was involved. The moral threat concerned ‘boundary-crossing’ regarding young women's sexuality in two ways: first, the danger of their fraternising with Arab men in cafés in Haifa or Jaffa, and second, the possibility that they would be lured into prostitution by Arab men who would offer them financial support in exchange for sex work.

Stéphanie Wahab (2002) explores the social responses to prostitution from the mid-1800s and describes how social workers’ responses have been shaped by shifting social contexts. She identifies three interconnected social constructions that have influenced social work responses to sex work: (1) the notion that women needed to be protected for their own good, (2) social control and competing class values, and (3) the fear of female sexuality (2002). The idea that women need to be protected for their own good is grounded in a sexist view of women as less capable than men. According to Wahab, ‘the more a woman deviated from what was considered acceptable female conduct, the more she was seen as lacking in moral character and the weaker she was perceived to be’ (Wahab, 2002, p. 40).

Deborah Bernstein (2012a) claims that Jewish prostitution appears to have resulted mainly from the large-scale Jewish migration during British rule due to the economic and social hardships single women faced and the demand for commercial sex among local Jewish and Arab men and soldiers posted in Palestine. The Jewish community was concerned mainly with the evolving national project. Prostitution was seen as a ‘mixing ground’ of Jewish women and British and Arab men, and thus as threatening the boundaries of the national collective (Bernstein, 2012a). Two significant points regarding the rumours about young women were their positioning of single women as the symbolic mothers of the nation and their marking of the boundaries of women's involvement in negative gendered phenomena such as prostitution.

When Szold heard of the dangers, she acted comprehensively, earnestly, and professionally at several levels. ⁸ As she explained, ‘I offered to conduct a thorough investigation into the situation since I did not want to base the working method on rumours’. ⁹ First, she consulted with Dostrovsky and women in Haifa who were interested in joining the social work activity. They decided to hire a particular social worker who would ‘visit the port and supervise the single young women’. ¹⁰ Second, she set up a special small committee of representatives of the Immigration Department and the Social Work Department in Haifa. Third, she procured funding from the Immigration Department and the United Committee for the Settlement of German Jews in Mandatory Palestine to open a thorough external investigation of the issue in Haifa. Acting professionally, she actively gathered information and made decisions based on data from the field. To implement these actions, she required a budget, approval of the action, and appropriate professionals.

Szold's actions were in line with Jane Addams's ideas regarding ‘scientific research in social work practice’ (Franklin, 1986). Addams's utilisation of Dewey's rational inquiry and experimentation techniques introduced the concept of research and accountability into social work practice. Such an approach depends on defining a problem by moving from hypothesis through experiment and confirmation to a further hypothesis, a process that is critically important to practitioners and safeguards against them making reductionistic and premature classifications of the client's behaviour and thereby exponentially increasing the possibilities for intervention in the various systems that affect the client's social functioning (Franklin, 1986, p. 520).

Investigation of the rumours

The investigation took place from February to June 1934. Three key actions stood out in Szold's inquiry: an attempt to gather information from various organisations in the community, outreach on the ships in the Jaffa and Haifa ports, and systematic research on the subject in Haifa.

The attempt to gather additional information

As noted, Haifa's Jewish Community Board was a critical factor in initiating the investigation and drawing attention to rumours regarding young immigrant women. Despite the decisions on the course of action to be taken with Szold, the Haifa Social Work Committee acted independently and conducted its own investigation, which included visiting the immigrants’ centre and speaking with immigrant women. ¹¹ A letter ¹² from Haifa's Jewish Community Board to Szold suggested acting outside the borders of Palestine and sending printed information for young women immigrants even before their arrival through relevant agencies (ships, trains, and travel companies). The letter's purpose was to clarify who was responsible for this work at the local and national levels. Did they have the freedom to send printed material directly, or should such action be taken by the Social Work Department at the national level? The Haifa Community Board attempted to encourage Szold to act quickly.

Szold supported the idea of providing information and guidance to single immigrant women in their countries of origin. She updated the Haifa Community Board that the Immigration Department was responsible for doing this and informed them that she planned to submit a proposal in this regard. ¹³ Additionally, she wrote ¹⁴ to the Tel Aviv community's Bureau of Social Assistance, the United Social Committee for German Immigrants in Tel Aviv, and the committee of the Women's Zionist Organizations’ Tel Aviv branch informing them of the ongoing investigation and Haifa's proposal to send printed material to relevant agencies and noting her support of these actions. She requested detailed updates regarding any occurrences related to this issue in Tel Aviv and Jaffa and attempted to gather information from various sources. She conditioned the referral to the Immigration Department upon the receipt of additional information from the other organisations. Yet no documentation found in the archive file indicated Szold received such information from Haifa or the organisations in Tel Aviv. Moreover, no letter was found addressed to the Immigration Department requesting to send printed material to the various organisations overseas.

Outreach on the ships

In Szold's letter ¹⁵ to the Jewish Agency's Immigration Department, she requested funding for the investigation to be completed in Haifa and entry permits to Haifa's port so the social worker could board the ships and meet the young women. After repeated requests, Szold received the funding, but not Haifa ¹⁶ port entry permits. ¹⁷ Although most of the rumours came from the Jewish community in Haifa, only at Jaffa Port was Weinreich allowed to board ships and meet immigrants.

At the Jaffa port, Weinreich had a dual role—assisting young immigrant women and gathering information about their situation and absorption. Weinreich reported^18,19,20 to Szold that between February 25 and June 1, 1934, she visited 24 ships in Jaffa. These reports ²¹ demonstrate Weinreich's central role on the ships and on shore in assisting all immigrants in coping with their many needs, as this excerpt demonstrates:

When I arrived [on the ship], and with the strap on my arm, the immigrants asked many questions. First and foremost, how to get by cheaply and find a job. They asked about travel connections to different places and more. Not only women but also men asked for my advice. In general, I had the impression that if most people were destitute, they still constituted human material that received good training for life in the country.

Weinreich's report of her first encounter with the immigrants on the ship contradicted her previous assumptions. Both men and women needed assistance. She found out that even people without means had the necessary skills to live in the country, contradicting common beliefs regarding their lack of knowledge of life there. She described the meeting with the young women on the ships:

I often boarded the ship with the police officers and the [Jewish] Agency, sometimes after them. I immediately came to the passengers and talked with the women who seemed to be travelling alone. I asked them if anyone was waiting for them on the shore, if they knew where they would live, and if they needed any advice. The results were that many women were travelling alone but were going to the Immigrants’ House or relatives and friends were waiting for them. Nevertheless, they asked me for advice and were very happy to have a woman who was willing to help them with … difficulties … In particular, women … travelling with their children thanked me. ²²

Weinreich located the women who appeared to have immigrated to Palestine alone, addressed them directly, and offered help. This is an accurate description of outreach practice. Weinreich describes ²³ advising women on travelling and releasing items from customs, helping them find relatives waiting on the shore, assisting them in finding housing, and occupying children while their parents addressed customs issues. The help she provided on the ship and on shore was not limited to young women but offered to anyone who requested it. During a visit to one of the ships, Weinreich assisted a woman who had just given birth, supported her, advised her husband, and spoke with the ship's doctor. Moreover, since the descent to the beach in Jaffa was difficult for a woman who had just given birth, she ensured they would continue with the ship to Haifa. ²⁴

In the summary of the first report, Weinreich reflected on the purpose of her work at the port and Szold's request: ‘to pay special attention to those women … who were in danger—in a moral sense—when they entered the country’. Weinreich challenged the assumptions presented to her before she began her work. As she put it, ‘It turned out that this kind of woman is either not found at all or … is not possible to recognise … at the first moment of arrival’. ²⁵ She challenged the basis of the rumours and offered an additional definition of the issue of ‘women who come to the country without pioneering training … they have little patience and tend to deviate from the path to living a comfortable and easy life’. Her experience at the port led Weinreich to understand that the problem of the young women who came to Mandatory Palestine was not their lack of knowledge about life in the country but their lack of pioneering training. They were interested in living a comfortable life without much effort. This perception still attaches blame to the young women themselves and focuses on their deficiencies. The moral problem of sexuality seems to be ignored here in favour of the issue of nation-building.

Weinreich made important recommendations in two main arenas: on ships and in the community. ²⁶ First, the care for immigrants, regardless of their nationality (especially women and families with children), on ships and on land, should remain in place as a permanent service provided by women who should maintain strong ties with the other relevant agencies and organisations. Regarding community, she recommended that organisations pay special attention to young women and take an interest in arranging housing and employment for them. All families with children should be allowed to live in the immigrants’ houses, and the Immigrants’ House in Tel Aviv should be reorganised to meet their needs. Her recommendations focused primarily on families and women with children and less on young women immigrants.

Research in Haifa

Haifa's Jewish Community Board recruited Dr. Ernst Alexander-Katz to investigate ‘the moral situation in Haifa’. ²⁷ His investigation lasted some 10 weeks and involved questioning physicians, officials, and longtime Haifa residents, Jews and non-Jews, and observing street life and behaviour in public places. In his report, he defined the population at the heart of the investigation as follows:

[P]rostitutes are … women who earn their livelihoods in whole or in part by having sexual relations with random visitors for money. Hostesses are … women … employed for a fixed fee or a commission calculated as a percentage of the sales in public places of entertainment to persuade guests to consume liquor. … Kept women or mistresses … [are] those who have loose or regular contact with … men in exchange for having their expenses covered. Relationships not primarily based on money are not the subject of this review. First and foremost, I focused on the details of Jewish women … immigrants from European countries, while for other women, namely Sephardic and Arab Jewish women, I was satisfied with only a general review. ²⁸

These definitions demonstrate that the investigation of the moral condition of young European Jewish immigrant women was an investigation into the phenomenon of prostitution and the involvement of young immigrant women in the exchange of sex for money, assistance, and financial support. Alexander-Katz's categories indicate that attention was not focused on sex trafficking or coercion issues but rather on young women's use of their sexuality.

The report's findings pointed to prostitution in all categories and the involvement of Jewish women. However, the investigation revealed almost no involvement of Jewish women who had immigrated from Europe, especially not from Germany. ²⁹ Nevertheless, few Jewish women of European descent were supported, mainly by the English, and they were older and had been in such relationships even before they arrived in Mandatory Palestine. Alexander-Katz believed that change could only occur in a completely different category from the one to which the report referred: ‘many girls … not experienced in the particular conditions prevailing in the country, [came] to cafés to dance [and] date men, without being aware at first that these men were Arabs or … that such relationships could severely jeopardise their status in Jewish society’. ³⁰

He concluded the report by stating: ‘In general, I can note the moral condition of the Jews in Haifa in the context of sex life, compared to large and medium-sized cities in Europe, especially port cities, as positive and benign’. Alexander-Katz, like Weinreich, did not reinforce the rumours or describe the involvement of young Jewish women immigrants from Germany or the dangers awaiting them in Mandatory Palestine. Szold passed the report from the Social Assistance Bureau of the Haifa Jewish Community Board on to the relevant government agencies, stating explicitly that it was confidential. There is no explanation for this confidentiality, but it may be assumed that Szold or the representatives of the various departments were reluctant to publicise the detailed documentation of the phenomenon of prostitution in Haifa and the involvement of Jewish women.

The results of the investigation and implications for practice

The results of the Haifa investigation and the social worker's visits to the port as well as the lack of further information on the subject led Szold to conclude that no moral danger awaited young women immigrants from Germany. The visits to the port showed that there was no need to protect the young immigrant women but a great need to assist women immigrants with children. Szold was supportive of Weinreich's recommendations. In her letter ³¹ to the government agencies at the national level, she emphasised two key recommendations. The first of these was that a woman board all ships, not to protect the young women but rather to offer advice and guidance to women of all ages and children. The second was, in the light of the danger to young women supposedly beginning only shortly after their arrival to Palestine, that community social and educational organisations pay attention to them, create relevant institutions for their benefit, and take care of them in all possible ways. However, the Zionist leadership refused to allocate funding for this purpose. It is important to note that the Immigration Department supported Szold's recommendations but had no budget to allocate. Due to budgetary difficulties, Szold stopped Weinreich's work at the port on June 1, 1934.

In July, the German Immigrants’ Association ³² agreed to participate in financing the expenses involved in the work at the port. This agreement may have led Szold, in August 1934, to contact the Immigration Department again, resume the activities of the social worker at the port, and request ³³ a permit for her to board the ship. However, the Immigration Department refused ³⁴ to grant such a permit, claiming that only immigration officials received approval to board ships. Promising to assist to the extent possible, they noted, ‘We believe that the social worker should concentrate her work mainly on the shore and not on the ship’. Once there was no moral danger to young women immigrants, assisting immigrant families with children was not reason enough to cross boundaries.

Discussion

This article explores the professional decision-making regarding the assignment of a social worker to Jaffa Port and the developments that followed. The findings reveal that Szold's thorough investigation revealed no evidence to support rumours of moral dangers posed by Arab men to young single women immigrants from Germany, indicating that the story is one of moral panic (Cohen, 2011; Cree et al., 2016). Supporting this notion, Golan (2002) notes that the issue of young single women who immigrated to Palestine from Germany was also discussed at a gathering of social workers in Palestine in the context of the war on prostitution (p. 115). As a result of moral panic, coping methods evolve, in this case, for example, the investigation of the rumours and the outreach on the ships. The supposed threat then either disappears and is forgotten, becomes more visible, or has long-lasting repercussions. When the investigation showed the rumours were baseless, engagement with the issue ceased, and the emphasis shifted to mothers with children and their absorption challenges. These findings are in line with what scholars (Doezema, 1999; Wahab, 2002) have argued regarding the campaign and actions against white slavery, saving young European women who immigrated alone to other countries in the early twentieth century, also based on moral panic.

The investigation of the rumours revealed that families with children who immigrated to Palestine had many needs immediately upon arrival, so a woman social worker who met them on the ship could provide them with much-needed assistance. Despite the significance of this need and the identification of immigrants’ other critical needs, social workers were not allowed to implement this practice. Regarding the needs of young women who immigrated to Palestine, the professional assumption was that there might be a danger only after arriving in Palestine and that community organisations should therefore take care of their needs. The findings point to three ways in which gender, nationalism, and professionalism intersected in social work.

First, regarding gender, young women's sexuality was expressed in marital status and ethnicity, i.e., in rumours about a particular group of young, single Ashkenazi women from Germany. Once the ethos of the ideal Zionist hero defined women and mothers as the producers of the new brave and healthy Jew, great emphasis was placed on families with children and women with children in particular (Ajzenstadt, 2010). Here, the idea that single women embodied the symbolic power of mothers of the nation and thus required protection was prominent. Szold gave little attention to young women in her recommendations, and the responsibility for them was passed to community organisations. An additional important gender aspect is the marking of boundaries regarding the involvement of young women from Germany in negative gendered phenomena such as prostitution. It should be noted that the sense of threat or risk is a matter not of social hygiene, a prominent concern at the time in terms of prostitution, but rather of these young women's moral deterioration. Focusing on young women from Germany also reveals a hierarchy between Jewish women who immigrated from Germany, with significant concern for them, and those who came from other areas, such as eastern Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa, about whom no worries were expressed.

Second, in terms of nationalism, women were part of the national project, and it was feared that Jewish women from Germany would have (romantic or sexual) relationships with Arab men and be corrupted and led into prostitution. In Jewish tradition, women are considered the embodiment of personal and social purity. They are the guardians of the family, the basic building block of society, and by extension, at least metaphorically, the guardians of the larger collective (Bernstein et al., 2017, p. 338). This view was incorporated into the national ideology. The ideal Zionist woman was seen in the role of mother, and motherhood was a central element of the nation-building process (Ajzenstadt, 2010). Before 1948, under the British Mandate, most of the population consisted of Arabs. British colonial rule and the clash between Jews and Arabs in Palestine created recurrent unrest and violent confrontation. Moreover, as members of a religious minority, Jews were concerned about assimilation. The rumours served as an agent of social control that drew the boundaries of what constituted acceptable relationships for young Jewish women immigrants from Germany. Interestingly, in what seems like a repetition of history, in 1969, the Unit for Girls in Distress was established by the Israeli Ministry of Welfare due to the work of early Israeli feminists that called for special attention to girls’ needs, but also due to the moral panic about Jewish girls ‘selling their bodies’ to Arab men (Krumer-Nevo et al., 2015).

Last, in terms of professionalism, professional social work action was based on research and experience in the field and not on moral panic. As Szold noted: ‘I offered to conduct a thorough investigation into the situation since I did not want to base the working method on rumours’. ³⁵ Through Szold's comprehensive investigation, which included an attempt to gather additional information, fieldwork on ships, and an inquiry in Haifa, she revealed what was actually happening and addressed the moral panic with professional actions taken by social workers, not volunteers. Assigning a social worker to welcome young immigrant women from Germany was the first state-organized action in the Yishuv carried out constructively to prevent the development of negative social phenomena (Golan, 2002). At the same time, the social worker's intervention could be seen as positioning her as an agent of social and moral control (Golan, 2002). Nonetheless, Szold's investigation reveals a more complex understanding in which the social worker's role is not to serve as an agent of social control but rather to assist those in need.

Limitations of the study

This study had some limitations. The documents examined primarily reflect the perspectives of Henrietta Szold and the JNC Social Welfare Department. Thus, they lack the perspective of the various organisations involved in the historical story, such as the Immigration Office or Haifa's Jewish Community Board. Moreover, most of the rumours circulated in Haifa, but I did not locate any file in the Haifa Archive on the topic. Now that the historical story is coming to light in this article, a new search in the archives of the various organisations involved could spawn further research on the subject.

To conclude, this historical moment can serve as a source of knowledge and inspiration for social work policy and practice in responding to moral panics. Although the social work profession supported moral panic regarding the young women in question, it also acted professionally to investigate the rumours. Almost a century has passed since the events described here took place. Yet this article is relevant to the present as we witness political events in Europe with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is anxiety for Ukrainian refugees, especially women who may be exploited. The media presents Ukrainian women and girls as being in danger of sex trafficking as they cross borders into neighbouring countries (Orecchio-Egresitz, 2022) or reach more distant locations. Stories that relate to these issues gain resonance in the media and have sparked initiatives worldwide to prevent sex trafficking.