The Complex Identity of Religious-Zionist Women in Pre-State Israel, 1921-1948

The article focuses on the identity of the new religious-Zionist woman who emerged during the years of the British Mandate during a short-lived "window of opportunity" that admitted new perceptions of femininity and the establishment of new gender relations. Religious women, like other women in the Yishuv, sought a part in the national endeavor, but their entry into the male arena placed women, in particular, and religious-Zionist society, in general, at an inherently problematic juncture between tradition and change. Religious Zionism sought to preserve tradition, and grappled with the problem of giving women a part in the national enterprise while at the same time retaining their traditional function. The question of gender was thus a challenge to religious society. Their contribution to the Zionist revolution, so they believed, was to do their duty whether that meant maintaining their traditional function or, on the contrary, challenging traditional patterns.