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10 Human Being or Housewife: The Status of Women in the Jewish Working Class Family in Palestine of the 1920s and 1930s ---Deborah S. Bernstein--Introduction Critique of the traditional Jewish society as it existed in Eastern Europe at the turn of the century was an essential component of Socialist Zionism. To what extent was this critique aimed at traditional patriarchal values? Did alternatives proposed by Socialist Zionism offer a change in family structure and in women's status? What type of family was developed in Jewish Palestine? As the social structure of the Yishuv evolved, how did the family organization change? What impact did social, political and economic processes within the Yishuv have on the formation of the "private" sphere of family structure and its significance for women? Answers to these questions are the focus of this study of the organization and values of the urban, working-class Jewish family in the 1920s and 1930s. The Family-in Search of an Alternative The family was the cornerstone of traditional Jewish community , a patriarchal society in which power and prestige were vested in men. Religious studies, the highest source of value in this community , were intended for men only. The many religious functionaries were men. Men also held the wealth, the second source of respect and standing in the community. People lived their entire lives within the family context, passing with no interval from the family of origin to married status, and few indeed existed as individuals without any family frame235 236 Deborah S. Bernstein work. The family gave a person social standing and determined one's chances for a secure economic position and for education. In the patriarchal family, the father's authority was recognized and respected. The mother's role was to bear the yoke of the family's existence: to bring many children into the world, to see to their education, to take care of the family's daily needs, and frequently, to work to contribute to the family's sustenance. At times, when men were absent for long periods of time, mothers functioned in effect as a single parent. In spite of these encompassing responsibilities the status of the women in this society was secondary. Although many women did win esteem, there were many who suffered neglect and oppression both in their families and within the community. The pain, humiliation and suffering of the woman whose husband had tired of her, of the childless woman, and of the poor, unfortunate widow are well documented in works of literature (for striking examples in literature, see the stories of Deborah Baron, 1973; and of I. L. Peretz, as discussed by Adler, 1980). Jewish families were units of both production and consumption . The minor trade and the small workshops, which were the ''basic industries" of the Jewish shtetl economy were in most cases family businesses. Married women played a role in this economic activity, at times as sole breadwinners, the helpmates of husbands, who spent their days in religious studies or on the road; at other times working alongside their husbands in the workshop, bakery, or stall on market day. Generally a woman's economic activity granted her neither authority nor prestige, nor did it change the basic ideal norm that a Jewish woman's honor was to be expressed within the confines of her home. Socialist Zionists rejected many of the qualities embodied by the Jewish family as it existed at the turn of the century. In particular Socialist Zionism reacted against inequality, against the precarious J ewish economy and against class exploitation. Inequality was manifested in the dependence of the wives on husbands, the unstable economy was based on small, shaky family businesses which could barely maintain the impoverished Jewish petite-bourgeoisie ; class exploitation was rife in family workshops which employed hired help. Despite this rejection, the family was almost never mentioned in Socialist Zionist publications on social criticism, or in the social alternatives explicitly spelled out by the movement. Nevertheless, papers and notes left by the pioneering immigrants provide evidence of their attitude to the family, their experiences and their Human Being or Housewife 237 aspirations for the future. There were those who saw in the family a threat to the new collective, egalitarian "Workers' Society" which they hoped to establish. They viewed the family as a competing structure which reflected the foundations ofbourgeois-capitalist society : private enterprise, private ownership, and the values of competition and individualism. Their solution was to restrict the family domain, to...

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