Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel: Life History, Politics, and Culture

Women’s Aliyah: Migration Patterns of North African Jewish Women to Eretz Israel in the Nineteenth Century

J Michal Ben Ya’akov Women’s Aliyah Migration Patterns of North African Jewish Women to Eretz Israel in the Nineteenth Century T he pioneering women of Palestine, those Jewish women who joined the Zionist aliyot (migration; literally, “ascent”), have been the focus of much current research on gender and Jewish settlement in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Eretz Israel.1 However, these pioneers represented only a small proportion of all Jewish women in the country at the time.2 Moreover, the exclusion of the traditional women from the historiography of the Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel in the nineteenth century is particularly glaring, considering the demographic imbalance in the population: nearly two-thirds of all adult Jews were women. The Problem of Sources Few written sources have been uncovered relating to women in the traditional societies of nineteenth-century Eretz Israel, and those we have are limited in scope. Immigrants from North Africa, both men and women, left almost no written records that shed light on the topic under discussion: there are no known diaries, few personal letters have survived, and communal records relate only indirectly to the process of migration itself.3 In fact, it is questionable whether those existing documents shed light on the realities of the times, as internal communal “censorship” was strict, lest the Holy Land I thank the Lafer Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for a research grant in 1997–1998 in support of much of the initial research for this article. be defamed.4 In addition, most existing documentation was written by men, and from their perspective. Although few written descriptions remain to shed light on the migrations of North African women, a wealth of demographic information can be culled from contemporary censuses carried out in Jewish communities of nineteenth-century Eretz Israel. At the initiative of Sir Moses Montefiore, a Jewish philanthropist and public figure in nineteenth-century England, a modern census was carried out five times among the Jews of the Holy Land, in 1839, 1849, 1855, 1866, and 1875.5 In most instances, the Jewish population was enumerated by household, with detailed information relating only to the male head of the household: his place of birth, age, year of arrival in the country, profession, and members of his household. Only the existence of married women is noted, and usually (but not always), their names. However, separate lists were prepared of the numerous widows in each of the communities, with columns for information as noted for the male heads of households (see figure 1). Although we cannot rely on an analysis of the demographic information for women listed as widows at the time of the census to reconstruct a comprehensive picture relating to all women, it does provide a relatively reliable picture, as many of these women immigrated as young girls or married women. More importantly, such an analysis opens new directions for research, reveals areas of Jewish life yet unexplored, and raises pertinent questions regarding traditional Jewish communities. Together with gender theories culled from a variety of disciplines such as demography, economics, geography, sociology and history, the analysis of the censuses has created the framework from which additional documentation has been examined. A gendered reading of scattered evidence on North African aliyah to Eretz Israel found in travelers’ journals and diplomatic papers presents numerous examples and graphic descriptions. Oral documentation collected from the descendents of those women immigrants to Eretz Israel (olot) has also been integrated into the research. The elderly female informants in particular opened a window into the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. They added “flesh and blood” to the skeletal existence recreated by the statistical analysis. These combined resources have permitted a serious examination of the demographic characteristics of olot, their motivations in migrating, and the effects of their aliyah on the communities of their destination. This article will limit the discussion to aspects of the migration itself; its implications for Jewish life in Palestine will be dealt with separately. 52 Women and Immigration Fig. 1. A page from the 1855 Jerusalem census of Maghrebi widows (details are in Hebrew; titles are bilingual English and Hebrew ), London School of Jewish Studies Library, Montefiore ms 531 (Institute of Microfilmed Jewish Manuscripts, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, reel 6153). Reproduced with the kind permission of the Montefiore Endowment Committee and Mr. Ezra...