Hadassah
American Women Zionists and the Rebirth of Israel
Translated by Tamar Berkowitz
Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, is the largest Jewish women’s organization in the world and the largest women’s organization in the United States. A pillar of the American Zionist movement, it has always surpassed all other Zionist organizations in the size of its membership and in the diversity and scope of its activity. The book considers all aspects of Hadassah’s activities and image in its early years. It discusses Hadassah’s ideals and traces their Jewish, American, and feminist origins; describes and analyses its activities in the US and Palestine (and subsequently in Israel); and illustrates its significance in the contexts of American Jewry, American Zionism, the World Zionist Movement, and Israel.
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Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, is the largest Jewish women’s organization in the Diaspora and the largest women’s organization in the United States, surpassing all other Zionist organizations in the diversity and scope of its activity.
The book probes the nature of Hadassah by analyzing its ideas and tracing their Jewish, American, and feminine origins; describing its activities in the US and Palestine, and illustrating its significance in the contexts of American Jewry, American Zionism, the World Zionist movement and Israel. An extensive historical introduction describes Hadassah’s history from its inception until 1948—its establishment and institutionalization, its early Zionist ideas, its medical and social activity in Palestine, and its role in Jewish society there. The introduction also discusses Hadassah’s entry into political activity and, in tandem with other American Zionist organizations, its struggle for the establishment of Israel.
Thus, as it analyzes the Hadassah ethos, its educational activity among American Jewry, the ideological disputes between Rose Halperin and David Ben-Gurion, and between Halperin and the Israeli deputies to the World Zionist Organization, the book explains the factors that enabled Hadassah to maintain its continuity for so many years, despite changing times and circumstances.
The last chapters of the book compare Hadassah with other Zionist women’s organizations and discuss Hadassah as a women’s organization, and the importance of its Eretz Yisraeli ‘partners’ who themselves functioned as pillars of the organization in the US. Finally, the conclusion presents factors that made Hadassah unique, facilitated its historical continuity and enabled it to cross social, ideational, and political borders, and to appeal to a very large population of women, transcending that of other Jewish women's organizations in the US
About the author
Dr Mira Katzburg-Yungman is an Israeli who received her education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of various articles on American and English Zionism, and the co-editor of American Jewry, an annotated source book on the German and East-European emigration, translated into Hebrew. She is also the editor of a forthcoming annotated bilingual source book entitled American Jewry 1920-1950 which deals with various issues related to American Jewry. Mira Katzburg-Yungman heads the development and teaching of academic, distance education courses in the fields of history and sociology of American Jewry at the Open University of Israel.
Contents
Introduction
Part I 'Nothing New Under the Sun': Traditional Responses to the Holocaust
1 The Holocaust and Halakhah
2 Traditional Religious Responses to the Holocaust
3 Kiddush Hashem
4 Liturgical Remembrance of the Holocaust
Part II 'For Thy Breach is Great Like the Sea, Who Can Heal Thee?' Holocaust
Theology
5 The Holocaust as Rupture
6 Living in the Age of the Death of God: Richard L. Rubenstein
7 Auschwitz as Revelation? Emil L. Fackenheim
8 Contending with God: Elie Wiesel
Part III Post-Holocaust Theologies and Counting the Cost
9 Beyond Survival and Mythologization
10 Ending Auschwitz?
11 The Return of the Repressed and Working Through
Bibliography
Index
Reviews
FROM REVIEWS OF THE HEBREW EDITION
'Katzburg-Yungman brings an innovative element into the analysis and integration of scholarly material, placing . . . Hadassah against the backdrop of the establishment of the State of Israel, not only as a Zionist organization but also as a women’s organization. She presents its unique contribution as a result of its dual identity: a combination of nationalism and gender . . . The three main parts of the book are brought together to present the history of Hadassah from its beginnings in a comprehensive and inclusive manner. This comprehensive and inclusive perspective is based on numerous primary sources that could also be relied on as points of support in other research . . . The book is the result of comprehensive, broad and extensive research on the history of Hadassah . . . This book will constitute the basis for all further research on the history of Zionism in the past hundred years.'
Shifrah Schwartz, Harefuah
Rinah Ne’eman, Sotsiologiyah yisra’elit