Who's the Fairest of Them All? Women, Womanhood, and Ethnicity in Zionist Eretz Israel

This article examines the ways Zionist aspirations towards women, womanhood, and ethnicity materialized in the pre-state era, focusing on the Queen Esther contest as an example. I maintain that selecting Yemenite women as "queens" enhanced the Zionist agenda and promoted its ideals while at the same time instilling and preserving the Yemenite ethnic identity. Furthermore, granting Yemenite women this symbolic pedestal—on which they were enshrined as biblical beauties—inspired the women, wittingly or unwittingly, to collaborate with the Zionist movement.