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“WE ARE HERE TO BRING THE WEST, NOT ONLY TO OURSELVES”: ZIONIST OCCIDENTALISM AND THE DISCOURSE OF HYGIENE IN MANDATE PALESTINE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Extract

Thus wrote Dr. Asher Goldstein in the Hebrew daily paper Haʾaretz (The Land) in 1935, lamenting the disregard for hygiene among Palestine's Jews. In Goldstein's text, hygiene is metonymic to Western progress, which the Jews were to bring with them to Palestine. Yet the Jews in this text occupy an ambivalent position: they are not only to bring the West to the “entire backward Orient” but also to themselves. A hygienic way of life, far from being a secured component in their cultural compendium, is presented as a goal yet to be achieved. Indeed, it constituted a project in which Dr. Goldstein—author of several hygiene manuals and editor of the health column in Haʾaretz—played an important role.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

NOTES

Author's Note: Funding for research included in this article was received from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Women at Brandeis University, the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation, the Women Studies Forum with the National Council of Jewish Women, Tel Aviv University, the Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, and the Tel Aviv University School of History. I am grateful to all these institutions for their support.

The article is based on my dissertation research on hygiene education within the Jewish community of Palestine during the Mandate period. I thank my supervisors, Billie Melman and Deborah Bernstein, for their devoted guidance and support. Special thanks to Gadi Algazi, Jennifer Robertson, Natalie Rothman, Smadar Sharon, and the three anonymous IJMES reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. All translations from Hebrew are mine.

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25 One Palestinian pound equaled one British pound.

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39 “Le-Shipur shel Tel Aviv” (On Tel Aviv's Improvement), Haʾaretz, 10 March 1929.

40 David Margalith, “ʿAl ha-Dizenteryah ba-Arets” (Dysentery in Palestine), Haʾaretz, 3 October 1938.

41 Brachyahu to the Hadassah management, 28 April 1935, CZA J113/348.

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49 Sass, Ha-Higyenah, 50.

50 Brachyahu, Haye Adam, 77.

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61 My use of Mizrahi is anachronistic. Contemporary designations varied. Most common was bene ha-ʿedot ha-Mizrahiot, literally, “of the Eastern communities,” which today carries derogatory connotations.

62 D. Deutsch, “Shimru et ha-Yeladim” (Take Care of the Children), Haʾaretz, 23 November 1924.

63 Rachel Pesach, “Yarude ha-Mishkal bein ha-Tinokot ve-ha-Sibot le-Kakh” (Underweight Babies and the Reasons for It), Ha-Ahot (The Nurse) 6 (1946): 17.

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73 “Ha-Ahot ve-ha-ʿAvodah ha-tsiburit ve-ha-hevdel beinah u-vein ahot be-veit ha-holim” (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.

74 For example, Bertha Landsman to Henrietta Szold, 13.7.1924, CZA J113/1422; Landsman, “Rehobot Health Welfare Center Work from May 1924 to November 1926,” CZA J113/1412; Nurse Hilfer, “Safed—Report on Health Welfare and School Hygiene Service, October 1931–33,” CZA J113/365.

75 Elias, The Civilizing Process; Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Nice, Richard (London: Routledge, 1984)Google Scholar.