¹ Massad, Joseph, “Zionism's Internal Others: Israel and the Oriental Jews,” Journal of Palestine Studies 25, 4 (1996): 53–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ella Shohat was the first to apply Edward Said's concept of Orientalism to the study of ethnic relations within Israeli society. See her “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims,” Social Text 7, 1–2 (1988): 1–36; and “The Invention of the Mizrahim,” Journal of Palestine Studies 29, 1 (1999): 5–20. See also: Khazzoom, Aziza, “The Great Chain of Orientalism: Jewish Identity, Stigma Management and Ethnic Exclusion in Israel,” American Sociological Review 68 (2003): 481–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raz-Karkotzkin, Amnon, “The Zionist Return to the West and the Mizrahi Jewish Perspective,” in, Kalmar, Ivan Davidson and Penslar, Derek J., eds., Orientalism and the Jews (Waltham, 2005), 162–81Google Scholar.

² See Frykman, Jonas and Löfgren, Orvar, Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle Class Life, Crozier, Alan, trans. (New Brunswick, 1987)Google Scholar.

³ The meaning of the Hebrew word yishuv is “settlement,” both as noun and as gerund.

⁴ Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process, Jephcott, Edmund, trans. (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar.

⁵ Goldstein, Asher, “Af al pi chen” [Nevertheless], Ha'aretz, 13, 9 (1935): 2 [my emphasis]Google Scholar.

⁶ See, for example: Hunt, Nancy Rose, A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization and Mobility in the Congo (Durham, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific, Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly, eds. (Cambridge, 1998); Burke, Timothy, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham, 1996)Google Scholar; Comaroff, John and Comaroff, Jean, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Boulder, 1992)Google Scholar.

⁷ “Ve'idat rof'im” [Physicians convention], Ha'aretz, 26, 11 (1919): 3 [author's name missing].

⁸ Brachyahu, Mordechai, Avodat hahigiena bevatei hasefer [Hygiene work in schools] (Jerusalem, 1929), 11Google Scholar.

⁹ My use of the term mizrahi here is anachronistic. Today this term is used to signify ‘mizrahi pride.’ Contemporary designations varied. Most frequent was “bney ha'edot hamizrahiot,” literally ‘of the Oriental communities,’ which today carries derogatory connotations.

¹⁰ Esrim shnot sherut refu'i beEretz Israel, 1918–1938 [Twenty years of medical service in Palestine, 1918–1938]. Published by Hadassah; no author. (Jerusalem, 1939), 24.

¹¹ Landsman to Dr. Golov, 26 July 1934, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem (CZA) J113/1427; Rachel Pesach, “Mahut harefu'a hatziburit” [The essence of public medicine], 1938, CZA J117/312; “25 Machzorim—409 bogrot siymu et chok limudeihen beveit hasefer la'achayot shel Hadassah beYerushalaim” [25 classes—409 graduates accomplished their course of study in the Hadassah school of nursing in Jerusalem], Ha'achot [The nurse] 5 (1945): 41 [no author]; Merrill, Jacqueline et al. , “A History of Public Health Workforce Enumeration,” Journal of Public Health Management and Practice 9 (2003): 462–64CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

¹² Kandiyoti, Deniz, “Contemporary Feminist Scholarship and Middle East Studies,” in Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives (London, 1996), 6Google Scholar.

¹³ See, for example: Boyarin, Daniel, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of The Jewish Man (San Francisco, 1997)Google Scholar; Gluzman, Michael, “Hakmiha lehetrosexu'aliyut: Tzionut veminiyut beAltneuland (Longing for Heterosexuality: Zionism and Sexuality in Herzl's Altneuland),” Te'oria uvikoret (Theory and Criticism) 11 (1997): 145–62Google Scholar [Hebrew]; Yosef, Raz, Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema (New Brunswick, 2004)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See also: Kandiyoti, “Contemporary Feminist Scholarship,” 9; Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance, N. Chaudhuri and M. Strobel, eds. (Bloomington, Ind., 1992).

¹⁵ For a list of the Hadassah Health Welfare Centers in Palestine in 1947, see Grünfelder, Benno, More derech letipul betinokot [Guide for the care of babies] (Jerusalem, 1947)Google Scholar. In 1938, 61.7 percent of the pregnant women and 53.8 percent of the babies registered in the Hadassah centers were mizrahi, while within the Jewish society of Palestine they amounted to only 33.3 percent. Since available data distinguishes only between mizrahi and ashkanezi Jews, the percent of the ashkenazi visitors who were orthodox is unknown. Esrim shnot sherut, 104.

¹⁶ At the beginning of British mandatory rule, 41 percent of the entire Jewish population of 55,000 were mizrahi Jews; in 1936 they were 23 percent of 404,000. This trend changed only after the state of Israel was founded. See: Polak, Abraham, Hayishuv ha'ivri bemotza'ei hamilchama [The Jewish settlement after the war] (Merhavia, 1945), 19ff.Google Scholar; Gelber, Yoav, “Hitgabshut hayishuv hayehudi beEretz Israel, 1936–1947 (The Consolidation of the Jewish Society in Eretz Israel, 1936–1947),” in, Lissak, Moshe, Shapira, Anita, and Cohen, Gavriel, eds., Toldot hayishuv hayehudi beEretz Israel me'az ha'aliya harishona: Tkufat hamandat haBriti (The History of the Jewish Community in Eretz-Israel Since 1882. Part Two: The Period of the British Mandate) (Jerusalem, 2001), 303 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Kutscher, Carol Bosworth, “The Early Years of Hadassah, 1912–1921,” Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1976, 129Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Reiss, Nira, The Health Care of the Arabs in Israel (Boulder, 1991), 31–32Google Scholar.

¹⁹ See also Tomes, Nancy, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge, 1998), 139Google Scholar.

²⁰ The most important of them was The Federation of Jewish Women (Histadrut Nashim ‘Ivriot), founded in Palestine in 1920 to help Hadassah with its educational and social work among lower class women.

²¹ Rosen, George, A History of Public Health (Baltimore, 1993), 350–58Google Scholar; Davies, Celia, “The Health Visitor as Mother's Friend: A Woman's Place in Public Health,” Social History of Medicine 1 (1988): 39–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² On colonial nursing, see Holden, Pat, “Colonial Sisters: Nurses in Uganda,” in, Holden, Pat and Littlewood, Jenny, eds., Anthropology and Nursing (London, 1991), 67–83Google Scholar; Birkett, Dea, “The ‘White Woman's Burden’ in the ‘White Man's Grave’: The Introduction of British Nurses in Colonial West Africa,” in, Chaudhuri, N. and Strobel, M., eds., Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington, 1992), 177–88Google Scholar; Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon; Nestel, Sheryl, “(Ad)ministering Angels: Colonial Nursing and the Extension of Empire in Africa,” Journal of Medical Humanities 19 (1998): 257–77CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Marks, Shula, Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class and Gender in the South African Nursing Profession (Houndmills, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Divided Sisterhood, 78.

²⁴ Ibid., 208–10.

²⁵ Holden, “Colonial Sisters,” 75–76.

²⁶ See also Marks, Divided Sisterhood, 208.

²⁷ One exception is Hunt's discussion of Congolese nurses in her A Colonial Lexicon. Hunt looks at male nurses as one of several types of “middle figures” between colonizers and subaltern populations. These figures were essential in mediating the processes that have made biomedicine “an ambivalent and distinct therapy system in much of contemporary Africa” (p. 160). Hunt's study highlights the complex processes of borrowing, adaptation, and innovation that went into the making of this new colonial social type.

²⁸ Yona, Lea Klinman, “Besimte'ot Yerushalaim ha'atika” [In the alleyways of the old city of Jerusalem], Ha'achot beIsrael [The nurse in Israel] 2 (1954): 21Google Scholar.

²⁹ For a similar point see, for example: Carrier, James G., “Introduction,” in, Carrier, J. G., ed., Occidentalism: Images of the West (Oxford, 1995), 22–23Google Scholar; Makdisi, Ussama, “Ottoman Orientalism,” American Historical Review 107 (2002): 768–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Lowenthal, Marvin, Henrietta Szold: Life and Letters (New York, 1942), 67–68Google Scholar.

³¹ Jacobs, Rose G., “Beginning of Hadassah,” in, Meyer, Isidore S., ed., Early History of Zionism in America (New York, 1958), 233Google Scholar. The “Verband jüdischer Frauen für Kulturarbeit in Palästina” was founded in Germany in 1907 in order to initiate projects in Palestine related to the health of mothers and children. Shortly before WWI, several women's groups in different European countries were identified with the Verband. Berkowitz, Michael, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914–1933 (Cambridge, 1997), 180Google Scholar.

³² Lownthal, Henrietta Szold, 68.

³³ Preamble of the Constitution of Hadassah, quoted in Miller, D. H., “A History of Hadassah 1912–1935,” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1968, 51Google Scholar.

³⁴ Brown, Michael, “Henrietta Szold's Progressive American Vision of the Yishuv,” in, Gal, Allon, ed., Envisioning Israel: The Changing Ideas and Images of North American Jews (Jerusalem, 1996), 75Google Scholar.

³⁵ Tomes, The Gospel of Germs, 188–95; Hoy, Suellen, Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (New York, 1995), 109–17Google Scholar.

³⁶ On the Henry Street Settlement, and the development of public health nursing in the United States, see ibid., 110–13; Estabrooks, Carole A., “Lavinia Lloyd Dock: The Henry Street Years,” in, Baer, Ellen D., ed., Enduring Issues in American Nursing (New York, 2001), 282–308Google Scholar; Rosen, A History of Public Health, 336–37, 343, 356.

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.

⁴³ Bullough, Bonnie and Bullough, Vern L., The Emergence of Modern Nursing (New York, 1964), 132–33Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Bartal, Nira, Chemla veyeda: Reshit miktzoa hasi'ud beEretz Israel, 1918–1948 (Compassion and Competence: Nursing in Mandatory Palestine 1918–1948) (Jerusalem, 2005), 36 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

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.

⁴⁷ For a recent study of Hadassah's activities in Palestine, see Simmons, Erica B., Hadassah and the Zionist Project (Lanham, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ According to a report from the beginning of the 1940s, one reason for the popularity of public health was the convenient working hours, especially for mothers, since it did not require night shifts. Bartal, Chemla veyeda, 200.

⁴⁹ Brown, Michael, The Israeli-American Connection: Its Roots in the Yishuv, 1914–1945 (Detroit, 1996), 144Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ The Zionist ‘Health Committee’ was in charge of coordinating the various health agencies that operated within the Yishuv. It was one of the subcommittees of the National Council, a representative body elected by Knesset Israel, the assembly of local communities acting for the Jews of Palestine. The executive of the National Council was charged with executing the decisions of the National Council and Knesset Israel.

⁵¹ Lowenthal, Henrietta Szold, 188.

⁵² Szold, Henrietta, “Speech at the First Nurses' Graduation, 1921,” Ha'achot beIsrael [The nurse in Israel] 6 (1960): xiii [The speech is published here in English]Google Scholar.

⁵³ Over the following years the number of applicants diminished significantly. The ratio between applicants and women accepted usually ranged between 17 and 50 percent. Bartal, Nira, “Hahachshara hate'oretit vehama'asit shel achayot yehudiot beEretz Israel bitkufat hamandat, 1918–1948, bir'i hitpatchuto shel beit hasefer la'achayot al shem Henrietta Szold beYerushalaim (Theoretical and Pactical Training of Jewish Nurses in Mandatory Palestine, 1918–1948, through the Prism of the Hadassah School of Nursing, Jerusalem),” Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 2000, 404 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

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⁵⁶ Landsman, “A Few General Rules for Teaching,” n.d., CZA J117/312.

⁵⁷ “Beit Hasefer La'achayot Hadassah” [Hadassah School of Nursing], 14–17, CZA J117/538.

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.

⁶¹ “Takanot beit hasefer la'achayot Hadassah al shem Henrietta Szold” [Ordinances of the Hadassah Henrietta Szold School of Nursing], 24 Dec. 1937, CZA J117/355; Feinberg, Achayot mesaprot, 61–64; 67–70.

⁶² Cantor, Shulamith L., “A Nursing School in Palestine,” American Journal of Nursing 40 (1940): 882Google Scholar.

⁶³ Seligsberg, Alice L., “A Modern Training School for Nurses in Jerusalem,” American Journal of Nursing (July 1921): 722–23Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Bluestone, E. M., “The Hadassah School for Nursing at Jerusalem,” American Journal of Nursing 28 (1928): 1094Google Scholar.

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

⁶⁶ Bak-Kipnis, Zippora, “Zichronot mitkufato harishona shel beit hasefer” [Memories from the early days of the school], Ha'achot beIsrael [The nurse in Israel] 6 (1960): 28Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Feinberg, Achayot mesaprot, 62.

⁶⁸ Bartal, Chemla veyeda, 272–73; see also Zippora Bak-Kipnis, “Zichronot,” 28–29.

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.

⁸⁴ Brachyahu, Mordechai, Beit hasefer ve“hagan”: Hilchot bri'ut gufanit venafshit [The school and the kindergarten: ways of physical and mental health] (Jerusalem, 1942), 14Google Scholar. On the perception of the health visitor as the mother's friend in England, see Davies, “The Health Visitor as Mother's Friend.”

⁸⁵ Rabinowitz, A. B., “Sfarim: ‘Avodat hahigiena bevatei hasefer’ me'et Dr. Mordechai Brachyahu” [Books: ‘hygiene work in schools’ by Dr. Mordechai Brachyahu], Ha'isha [The woman] 3 (1929): 40–41Google Scholar.

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⁸⁷ Quoted in Simmons, Hadassah and the Zionist Project, 20–21.

⁸⁸ See, for example, Rafael, Vicente L., “Colonial Domesticity: White Women and United States Rule in the Philippines,” American Literature 67 (1995): 639–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stoler, Ann, “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth-Century Colonial Cultures,” in, McClintock, Anne, Mufti, Aamir, and Shohat, Ella, eds., Dangerous Liaisons (Minneapolis, 1997), 343–73Google Scholar.

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⁹⁰ Pesach, “Ha'achot veha'avoda hatsiburit.”

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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⁹⁵ Cantor, “A Nursing School in Palestine,” 884.

⁹⁶ Berman, S. A., “Lete'um ha'avoda bemerkazei habri'ut” [On the coordination of the work in the health centers], Harefu'a [The medicine] 31 (1946): 12Google Scholar.

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