Introduction: Mothers and Icons

INTRODUCTION: MOTHERSANDICONS Susan Sered In his 1951 presentation of Israel's Equal Rights Law, Dov Yosef, the Minister of Justice, entered into the Knesset record a tenaciously iconic understanding of women's role, rights, privileges, status and duties. Explaining why an equal rights law is a good and appropriate measure, Yosef declared: Above all, in fulfilling her duty and privilege as a Hebrew mother cherishing the young generation and educating them ... in all that, the Hebrew woman and mother continues the great tradition of the Israeli heroine.1 In the same Knesset discussion, Israel's first Prime Minister, David BenGurion , chose too to speak about iconic mothers and Jewish heroines rather than about women's rights: I will talk about my mother, but refer to all mothers. Mother is the most precious person to everyone ... my mother died when I was ten ... but still I know that she was the symbol of purity, love, devotion, and nobility.2 Ben-Gurion's maternal imagery is deeply embedded in traditional Jewish conceptualizations. His idealized, noble mother was, in fact, a dead mother - harking back to the only biblical woman who has become the focus of a popular cult in contemporary Israel, Rachel Imeinu - Our Mother Rachel.3 Rachel, who died in childbirth on the road from Jerusalem to Hebron, is depicted in Jewish tradition as endlessly crying over and Nashim:A Journal ofJewish Women'sStudies and GenderIssues, no. 3. © 20005 Susan Sered interceding on behalf of her children in their Exile. Ben-Gurion's language is mythic - his mother is not an agent but a symbol. And the symbolic load she carries (and passes on to all Jewish women) is heavy indeed: eternal purity, devotion, love and nobility. In one way or another, the papers that comprise this special section on motherhood lead the reader to ponder the dialectical relationship between actual, particular, mortal mothers and the iconic "maternal" which is, voluntarily and involuntarily, part of the cultural clothing worn by every Jewish woman. Maternal icons, these papers suggest, retain particularly strong mythic holds, both because our relationships with our own mothers are rooted so deeply in our psychic and corporeal trajectories, and because the seeming connection of motherhood to biology makes it "seem" like a natural role, even if, as we well know, adoption, IVF and a range of other cultural practices challenge essentialist biological understandings of motherhood. So what is the problem with the iconization of motherhood? What is wrong with Ben-Gurion's lovely maternal eulogy (in addition to the fact that it came in place of a clear plan for the implementation of the Equal Rights Law)? The papers in this volume illustrate a variety of ways in which the iconization of motherhood is detrimental to the real women who live their lives within the all-embracing arms of the maternal icon. Maternal icons are dangerous to women who internalize them and thus cut themselves off from other, competing ways of living and relating to the world. Maternal icons reduce the complexities of women's souls, perceptions, thoughts and actions to one static, mythic image. Maternal icons hide real women from the view of others, as well as from authentic contemplation of the Self. Maternal icons are inhospitable and even dangerous to women (most women!) whose lives don't quite turn out to fit the mythic mold. Infertility (by choice or not), miscarriage, impatience with a young child or a rebellious teenager - all these are among the many ways in which women "fail" at living up to the maternal icon. And above all, maternal icons do not talk back to those who construct and propagate them. Perhaps not surprisingly, motherhood repeatedly turns out to be the sticky breaking point for egalitarian strivings, the issue that separates vague beliefs in the "equality of man" from clear feminist commitment. Feminist anthropologists have argued convincingly that the whole patriarchal house of cards rests on the psychic and social implications of Introduction: Mothers and Icons perceived "natural" associations between women and the intimacy of the daily work of child care.4 The most fully iconic presentation of "mother" in this volume is described by Einat Ramon in her analysis of the work...