Separate spheres, intertwined spheres: Home, work, and family among Jewish women business owners in the Yishuv

Abstract

Home and family life are a salient characteristic of the private sphere among the middle class, in which cultural models and behavioral dispositions are reproduced. In the Yishuv urban community, a substantial number of women established economic enterprises in their homes, blurring the distinction between public and private. The article examines the effects of these women's economic activity on daily life within home and family. It reveals how new social repertoires that were formed in these homes intertwined home, family, community, and nationality while at the same time preserving gender role allocation. Furthermore, the article attests to the heterogeneity of the urban society of the Yishuv, thus offering directions to further research on the formation of the middle class in Israeli society.

Keywords:

• gender
• business owner
• class
• family
• Yishuv
• home
• immigration

Notes

 1 Bourdieu, Distinction.

 2 Kocka, Industrial Culture and Bourgeois Society, 234; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes; for the Jewish middle class see Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class, 10–26.

 3 Bourdieu, Distinction; Elias, The Civilizing Process.

 4 Tene, “Ha-batim ha-levanim yimalu,” 5–6.

 5 Ahl, “The Construction of the Female Entrepreneur”; Walsh, “Gendered Endeavours.”

 6 Von Hameln, Zikhronot; Grossman, Hasidot ve-mordot, 188–95,198–206; Shilo, Nesikhah o shnuyah?138–49.

 7 Parush, Reading Jewish Women.

 8 This was not a consistent pattern in all immigration destinations. According to Hyman, “Me'ever la-yam,” middle-class Jewish women who worked in their country of origin tended to quit work upon immigrating to the USA and go into philanthropy.

 9 Tene, “Ha-batim ha-levanim yimalu,” 7–8, 11–12.

10 Razi, “Re'uyah ha-mishpahah,” 22.

11 Razi, “Re'uyah ha-mishpahah,” 22

12 Bernstein, “Bein ha-ishah ha-adam,” 99.

13 Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class.

14 Alroey, Imigrantim, 124.

15 Gilady, Ha-yishuv ha-yehudi, 44.

16 Tene, “Ha-batim ha-levanim yimalu,” 7.

17 Stoler Liss and Shvartz, “Muted Voices.”

18 Margalit Stern, “Imahot ba-hazit”; Rozin, The Rise of the Individual, 3–38.

19 Baruch, Yeled az, 48–49, 58.

20 For an exception, see Tene, “Ha-batim ha-levanim yimalu.”

21 Ben Porat, Heikhan hem ha-burganim, 95.

22 Bernstein, “Bein ha-ishah ha-adam.”

23 Rozin, The Rise of the Individual, 23–25.

24 Razi, “Re'uyah ha-mishpahah.”

25 Bar-Yishay, Female Labor Force Participation, 128–31.

26 Bar-Yishay, Female Labor Force Participation, 128–31; Bernstein, “The Plough Woman”; Feit, “Bein pakid le-pekidah”; Margalit Stern, “La-malkah ein bayit.”

27 On working women, gender, and the labor market in Mandate Palestine see, for example, Bernstein, “On Rhetoric and Commitment”; Margalit Stern, “La-malkah ein bayit”; idem, “Rebels of Unimportance.”

28 Bernstein, “Bein ha-ishah ha-adam,” 89; Shapira, Ha-halikhah al kav ha-ofek, 361.

29 Pfefferman, “Yazamut ne'elamah.”

30 Biger, “Hitparsut ha-melakhah veha-ta'asiyah.”

31 Halevi and Klinov-Malul, Ha-hitpathut ha-kalkalit shel Yisrael, 20.

32 Biger, “Al tokhnitah ha-kalkalit shel memshelet ha-mandat”; Gross, “Ha-mediniyut ha-kalkalit.”

33 See Aharoni, Ha-kalkalah ha-politit, 51–54; Gross, “Ha-mediniyut ha-kalkalit”; Metzer and Kaplan, Meshek yehudi, 161; Amit, Ha-hidah me'ahorei ha-broshim.

34 Beilin, Ha-ta'asiyah ha-ivrit, 38.

35 Hyman, Gender and Assimilation, 66–69, 110–13; Pfefferman, “Yazamut ne'elamah,” 46–48.

36 Margalit Stern, “La-malkah ein bayit,” 131, according to the Histadrut statistics.

37 Bar Yishay, “Female Labor Force Participation,” 128.

38 Bernstein, “The Plough Woman”; Feit, “Bein pakid le-pekidah”; Margalit Stern, “La-malkah ein bayit.”

39 Bernstein, “The Plough Woman,” 51; Maimon, Hamishim shnot, 66.

40 Glenn, Daughters of the Shtetl, 68–71; Hyman, Gender and Assimilation, 110.

41 Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class, 25–36.

42 Pfefferman, “Yazamut ne'elamah,” 51.

43 Margalit Stern, Ge'ulah bi-kvalim, 354–57.

44 Margalit Stern, “La-malkah ein bayit,” 133.

45 Teveth, Yomanim me-etmol, 17.

46 Britshney-Schimmer, “Ha-halukah ha-miktzo'it,” 346.

47 Letters concerning the loan to Asherman, 1937–1938, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA), S7/804.

48 “Sivloteha shel mishpahah me-olei Germaniyah” (The troubles of a German immigrant family), Iton Meyuhad, 10th of Kislev [ = November 27], 1928.

49 Loans list in Haifa, 7 February, 1940, CZA S18/50.

50 Turnowsky-Pinner, Jewish Women of Palestine.

51 Loans for urgent cases in Jerusalem, September 1940, CZA, S18/34.

52 Loans and credit of petty traders and handicrafts, September 22, 1940, CZA, S18/105.

53 Jewish industry census of food and textile economic branches, 1933, CZA, S8/2604.

54 Interview w42.

55 Interview w19.

56 Interview m13.

57 Interview m6.

58 Interview w13.

59 Interview w13

60 Interview w13

61 Interview m7.

62 Interview m7

63 Kaplan, Ishah im matzlemah.

64 For the important contribution of men and women photographers to the construction of national identity formation, see Raz, Tzalamei ha-aretz; Sela, “Be-ikvot tzalamot alumot.”

65 Interview w31.

66 Interview w31

67 “Ikhsun tayarim” (Hosting tourists). Ha-Boker, April 4, 1949; “30,000 tayarim be-1949” (30,000 tourists in 1949), Ha'aretz, March 28, 1949.

68 Ha-Boker, April 4, 1949.

69 Interview w30.

70 Meir, Hayai, 75. This was common practice until the middle of the 1950s.

71 Form no. 266, CZA, S8/2598.

72 Petty loans of the “Ha-Oleh” fund, August 3, 1950, form 497, CZA, S21/339.

73 Petty loans of the “Ha-Oleh” fund, August 3, 1950, form 497, CZA, S21/339

74 Interview w2.

75 Interview w2

76 Interview w44.

77 Benson, The Penny Capitalists. Benson relates to working-class people but his description fits also small businesswomen who affiliated themselves with the lower middle class.

78 Shapira, Ha-demokratiyah be-Yisrael, 155. For a similar view see also Tene, “Ha-batim ha-levanim yimalu,” 7. For the inconsistency between class and political affiliation, see Horowitz and Lissak, Metzukot be-utopiyah, 126–27.

79 Interview w13.

80 Interview w30.

81 Interview m7.

82 Ben Porat, Heikhan hem ha-burganim ha-hem, 103; Tene, “Ha-batim ha-levanim yimalu,” 245.

83 Liselotte was one of the founders of the professional union of photographers in Palestine. In 2008 the Israel Museum hosted an exhibition of her life work.

84 Robert, Herrlichist's in Tel Aviv, 83, 122

85 Interview w62.

86 Interview w62

87 Interview w52.

88 The normative character of such behavior is demonstrated in the memoirs of several women. See Isenberg, Dapim mi-hayai, 6; Vollenberg, Al ha-mirpeset, 15.

89 Interview m9.

90 Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World, 73.