Playgrounds and Penny Lunches in Palestine: American Social Welfare in the Yishuv

Women's voluntary organizations and activists opened settlement houses and hospitals, sent public health nurses into the community, educated immigrants, helped young women in trouble, and organized school lunch programs and children's playgrounds.3 Over the years, Hadassah exported this ro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American Jewish history 2004-09, Vol.92 (3), p.263-297
Main Author: SIMMONS, ERICA
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Child welfare
Children
Children & youth
Essays
Immigrants
Infants
Jewish history
Medical personnel
Mothers
Nurses
Playgrounds
Rhetoric
Social welfare
Szold, Henrietta
Women
Womens health
Zionism
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Summary:Women's voluntary organizations and activists opened settlement houses and hospitals, sent public health nurses into the community, educated immigrants, helped young women in trouble, and organized school lunch programs and children's playgrounds.3 Over the years, Hadassah exported this roster of American field-tested Progressive-style social programs to Palestine. Like other Progressive-era female reformers, Hadassah leaders justified their involvement in public-policy formation and administration with what historians characterize as "maternalistic" rhetoric.4 Drawing on earlier ideas of separate spheres for men and women, twentieth-century activists asserted that the maternal, domestic role of women gave them both a particular reserve of expertise and a specific realm of social responsibility; that is, women were best able (and most obligated) to look after the needs of other women and children.
ISSN:0164-0178
1086-3141
1086-3141
DOI:10.1353/ajh.2006.0037