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“Interpreters of Occident to the Awakening Orient”: The Jewish Public Health Nurse in Mandate Palestine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2008

Dafna Hirsch
Dafna Hirsch
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
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Extract

Recent scholarship on Zionism has shown Orientalism to be a pregnant concept through which to study the formation of Jewish society and culture in Palestine and later Israel. As this body of scholarship suggests, Zionist self-perception as an outpost of Western civilization in the Orient has played a fundamental role in shaping both Zionism's relations to the Palestinians and to its “internal Others”—mizrahi, literally, Oriental Jews. Indeed, it was Zioinist Orientalism which created the mizrahi category in the first place, turning heterogeneous Asian, North African, and Palestine's Sephardic Jewish communities into a single, supposedly coherent group in need of modernization and civilization, against which the ‘westernness’ of European ashkenazi Jews was repeatedly asserted. What these studies often overlook is that the Zionist ‘civilizing mission’ was initially directed at (east) European Jews. Thus, for many of the “culture builders” who during the mandate years operated in the yishuv—the Jewish community of Palestine—Jewish westernness was deemed a project, something yet to be achieved.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 227 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History 2008

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References

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26 See also Marks, Divided Sisterhood, 208.

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37 Shehory-Rubin, Zipora and Shvarts, Shifra, “Hadassah” livri'ut ha'am (“Hadassah” for the Health of the People) (Jerusalem, 2003), 12 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

38 Kutscher, “The Early Years of Hadassah,” 132. The guidelines for the nurses' activities were those of the state of New York; see Brown, “Henrietta Szold's Progressive American Vision,” 76.

39 A short untitled biography of Bertha Landsman, Hadassah Archives, New York, RG2/B99/F4.

40 Holden, “Colonial Sisters,” 73; Birkett, “The ‘White Woman's Burden’”; Nestel, “(Ad)ministering Angels,” 262–63. Nathan Strauss thought Landsman was the second most important woman working in Palestine after Szold. See: Landsman to her family, 1 Mar. 1927, Hadassah Archives, New York, RG2/B132/F1.

41 Holden, “Colonial Sisters,” 68–71.

42 Ibid., 69, 71; Marks, Divided Sisterhood, 78–112.

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45 In 1930, for example, the expenses of the GDH amounted to 108,5551 LP (Palestine pounds, then equal to the British pound), compared to 109,660 LP spent in the same year by the Hadassah Medical Organization alone, while Jews constituted only 15–20 percent of the general population. Naturally, this gap was manifested in the ratio of services per population, as well as in their quality. For example, according to the Annual Report of the GDH, in 1945 there were sixty-one Infant Welfare Centers operating within the Jewish sector compared to forty-seven within the Arab one, while Jews constituted approximately 33 percent of the population. See “Be'olamenu” [In our world], Sha'arei bri'ut [Health gates] 2 (1932): 21; Government of Palestine, Department of Health Annual Report for the Year 1945, 12.

46 The Workers' Sick Fund and the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO) operated Infant Welfare Centers also, but not as many as Hadassah.

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58 Bertha Landsman to Carla Epstein, 18 Jan. 1933, CZA J113/177; Dr. Yassky to Dr. Yoffe, 26 Feb. 1933, CZA J113/177.

59 Bartal, Chemla veyeda, 123–26.

60 “Takanot Beit Hasefer La'achayot shel Hadassah” [Ordinances of the Hadassah School of Nursing], 1925, CZA J117/355. Especially under Kaplan, punishments for inappropriate behavior were more severe than those for professional mistakes such as giving the wrong medication, even when the nurses failed to report them. Bartal, Chemla veyeda, 129.

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65 Quoted in Bartal, “Hahachshara hateoretit vehama'asit,” 327.

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69 Szold, “Speech at the First Nurses' Graduation, 1921”: xii.

70 Ibid.: xiii.

71 Ibid.

72 Feinberg, Achayot mesaprot, 13.

73 On the status of the nurses in the 1920s, see Bartal, Chemla veyeda, 41. For a comparison of salaries of the nurses and those of women in other professions, see Bernstein, Deborah, Isha beEretz Israel: Hashe'ifa leshivion bitkufat hayishuv (The Struggle for Equality: Women Workers in the Palestine ‘Yishuv’) (Tel Aviv, 1987), 118–19 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

74 Rebecca Adams Stockler, “Development of Public Health Nursing Practice as Related to the Health Needs of the Jewish Population in Palestine, 1913–1948” (Tel Aviv, 1977), 136.

75 Bartal, Chemla veyeda, 52.

76 See, for example, Ch. Elkayam, “Michtav chozer” [Returning letter], Feb. 1925, CZA J113/1424; “Pratei kol shel yeshivat hava'ada lemeditzina vehigiena tziburit” [Protocol of the meeting of the committee for medicine and public hygiene], n.d., CZA J117/194; “The Physicians Organization and the Infant Welfare Center” [n.p. and n.d.], CZA J113/1404.

77 Landsman to Yassky, “Proposals for Reorganization of School Hygiene Nursing,” 10 Apr. 1932, CZA J113/346. The services the department granted to those schools which did not receive a public health nurse were periodic examinations of the children by a physician, and visits by “practical nurses,” that cured trachoma and skin diseases, and did not engage in teaching hygiene.

78 Brachyahu, Avodat hahigiena, 29.

79 Landsman to Yassky, 10 Apr. 1932, CZA J113/346 [Hebrew].

80 Shehory-Rubin and Shvarts, “Hadassah” livri'ut ha'am, 157–60.

81 For a detailed discussion of the work of the nurses, particularly their home visits, see Adams Stockler, “Development of Public Health Nursing Practice.”

82 Adams Stockler writes that the nurse who was able to maintain relations of closeness and understanding with the family was considered an important person, such as the “wise women” or the mother-in-law (ibid., 139).

83 “Ha'achot veha'avoda hatziburit vehahevdel beina uvein achot beveit hacholim” [The nurse and the public health work and the difference between her and the hospital nurse], adapted by Rachel Pesach, n.d. (ca. mid-1930s), CZA J1/1855.

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91 Haim Yassky, “Tizkoret ‘al habikur beCheifa bayamim 11–12.6.34” [Memorandum on the visit in Haifa on 11–12 June 1934], CZA J113/1403.

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