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

Ethnic and Gender Identity of Iraqi Women Immigrants in the Kibbutz in the 1940s

J Esther Meir-Glitzenstein Ethnic and Gender Identity of Iraqi Women Immigrants in the Kibbutz in the 1940s I n the 1940s, a few thousand Iraqi immigrants took their first steps in Eretz Israel among the settlements of Ha-Kibbutz ha-Me’uhad (United Kibbutz movement). For a large part of these olim, the kibbutz was only a way station before they moved on to the city; but there were others among them, mostly individuals who had been members of the Hehalutz Zionist movement in Iraq, who wanted to make their home in the kibbutz and even hoped to see large-scale immigration absorbed into it. These olim joined the kibbutz within the framework of some twenty settlement training groups (gar’inei hakhsharot) and a number of youth communities (educational units of Youth Aliyah) from Iraq. Each training group had between twenty and forty members, one-quarter to one-third of whom were young women.1 The haksharot of Iraqi immigrants, similar to those of other immigrants, were part of an extensive system for training youth in a kibbutz toward the goal of establishing new settlements and reinforcing existing ones. The haksharah members lived on the kibbutz itself, in cabins or tents set aside for them, and they worked together with the kibbutz members in the various branches of the kibbutz. The kibbutz appointed madrikhim (counselors ) for them who helped with the ideological and social unification of the hakhsharah members. In addition, they were eligible to study one day a week or a number of hours each day. Each haksharah maintained a separate group framework and managed its own independent social life. Ultimately, the attempt at “Bavli settlement” (these immigrants were called “Bavli” [i.e., Babylonian] to differentiate them from Kurdish Iraqi immigrants ) in kibbutzim failed, and by the mid-1950s only a minimal number of these immigrants remained in them. Also, from among the hundreds of young people who came to the kibbutz as part of Youth Aliyah, during the period of mass immigration (1949–1951), few stayed on.2 For the olim themselves , their sojourn in the kibbutz was a formative experience that fashioned their identity as Israelis. The heroines of this article are the young Zionist women who immigrated from Iraq in the 1940s and who followed the same path to Zionist realization as their male colleagues. In this paper, the process of settlement in the kibbutz will be viewed from the standpoint of these women, while keeping in mind the world of values and culture from which they came as well as the changes in their behavior and identity that resulted from joining the kibbutz. The focus here is on three sets of change: • The shift from ideological concepts to actual realization: In Iraq the members of the Hehalutz movement had been inculcated in the national and social values of socialist Zionism. But mundane reality in the kibbutz was far less heroic than it had appeared in Iraq. This article will examine the influence of the gap between the ideology and the ways it was implemented in the hakhsharah groups. • The intercultural shift: The ethnic and cultural component in the world of the Iraqi olot will be reviewed while examining the shift from the values of a patriarchal, conservative, Eastern society to a society that espoused a utopian, egalitarian, Western ideology. • The modification in their status as women: In this context, the influence of the change on the immigrants’ gender identification will be examined. To clarify these issues, we will draw a social portrait of the hakhsharah members , while focusing on the status of the young women and the factors that enabled their immigration to Eretz Israel and their joining the kibbutz. A Social Portrait of the Women Immigrants (Olot) The great majority of the hakhsharah members belonged to the Hehalutz movement that operated in Iraq from 1942 on. They came from the lowerand middle-middle class, and were sons and daughters of petty merchants, craftsmen, and office workers in civil service or private companies. They were urbanites from Baghdad, Basra, and other cities, and most of them had secondary school education.3 These young people joined the Zionist movement in search of an existential solution during a period of national identity crisis and economic and so84 Women and Immigration cial distress. In the 1940s, the Iraqi Jews’ feeling of security had been shaken. The pogrom against the...