In the epilogue to Aharon Meged's famous book, "The Living on the Dead," the protagonist - a young writer who traces the character of a revered pioneer from the days of the Wall and Tower - meets the widow of the mythological pioneer.
He snatches in the face the ugly truth: the one who had to write the biography was not a "reluctant hero" but an egotist who chased dresses in spear, abandoning his family to make a living on his own in the home front;
Not a man who educated his children to love the homeland but a man who fled from his fatherhood to the front, leaving his son crumbs of ideology that sent him to die in battle.
Questions of family life versus contribution to the country are shattered in this imaginary-literary encounter, between myth and politics and family practice and feminism, and their opposite resonance, which does not include Hanita or Hebron - I heard in my head throughout the conversation with Dr. Atia Zer, Which investigated the role of women at the beginning of settlement in Judea and Samaria.
Affects to this day.
Weiss., Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
When I returned home, I saw this post on Facebook: "I am writing an academic article on the story of the women's settlement in Beit Hadassah. A left-wing professor reads what I wrote. Professor: The women here did a really crazy thing, you are aware of that, right? Dr. Zer: Yes;
Professor: You need to explain, academically, how women whose family has been the center of the world are willing to give up a normal family life for the sake of the ideal.
You have to think academically, compare it to other studies;
"Dr. Zer: Women in Beit Hadassah who said that compared to women who established settlements in the early 20th century, their difficulty is not that great.
Women of the turn of the century paid a heavy price for their ideology;
Professor: You can not compare them.
it's not the same;
Dr. Zer: Why? If according to the accumulation of evidence this is what gave them the inspiration and power, why take it from them? Professor (upset): You can not compare Hebron to Hanita! Dr. Zer: Why?
Professor: Because it's not academic! "
Full suffrage
Zer (46) recently completed her doctoral dissertation at Ariel University on the subject "behind the scenes and in front of them: the involvement of women in the process of establishing settlements in Judea and Samaria between 1968 and 1981."
On the eve of International Women's Day, it is interesting to look at the subversive window that opens in this doctoral dissertation - as interesting as a book of political history - and try to understand the settlement enterprise from a gender perspective that is not common to its judge.
Zer is the daughter of Rebbetzin Miriam Levinger, who passed away towards the end of her research, and to whom her daughter dedicates her doctoral dissertation, and of Rabbi Moshe Levinger.
Rabbi Levinger is known as the "father of the Jewish community in Hebron", but anyone who knows the history of Gush Emunim knows that if Rebbetzin Levinger had not decided to pack for the Seder adventure at the Park Hotel in Hebron, a year after the Six Day War, children's clothes and washing machine - there was no settlement in Hebron. There was no settlement at all.
The first settlers in Kedum, Photo: Gershon Allinson, Herman Hanania / GPO
Despite this, the nickname "the mother of the Jewish community in Hebron" did not stick to it.
Anyone who reads her daughter's research can assume that if it had been up to her, history would have applied the processes differently and given equal weight to the women who acted behind the scenes, only without moving them to the forefront of the stage.
Remember and know the details - without forcing glory on them.
What corpus are you based on when you go out to research the female history of Judea and Samaria?
”There is a lot of research reference to women in the Zionist enterprise.
I also relied on research done on the subject of women in the kibbutz, and civilian women.
In relation to women settlers there is very little, most of the research on Gush Emunim is critical.
One of the canonical articles is by Prof. Tamar Elor about the women who founded Rachel - 'Sheila does not see Iceland'.
This is an article that is very much present in the discourse and has a lot of reference to it.
She examines in real time the activities of the founders of Rachelim, and claims that they use gender, as women and mothers, and try to mobilize support from their opponents as well.
"Following this study, there are critiques of women in the settlements, and the main critique is represented, for example, in an article by Prof. Michael Feiga, who calls the phenomenon 'soft power.' "In addition, a critique of the fact that women had the opportunity to take positions of power and they did not seize, 'continued to let men lead even when you had a window of opportunity,'" it said.
And do you agree with this theory?
The settlers left the stage for the men?
"No. Whoever imagines that they were at the forefront of the stage and did not take the opportunity to revolutionize, does not understand their inner world and values. The first settlers had no problem with their status, they were whole, why would they take the opportunity 'to bring about change'? "
Rebbetzin Levinger with Moshe Arens, Photo: Gershon Allinson, Herman Hanania / GPO
Isn't that a little privileged?
Your mother was a strong woman.
It brought about a de facto change.
She did not need the stage.
"My mother is just one representation in the research I did and out of the women I interviewed - women from different population strata who do not have a privileged common denominator that gave them the drive to act."
Maybe they were all women who used to undo themselves?
For an ideal or for a man.
"I do not enter into this oppressive discourse. A woman, like a man, has the right to choose. I have not met anyone whose choice was blocked because she is a woman. When they began, in the late 20th century, to explore the world of women as part of the historical world, one conclusion was that once you "Leaving the woman at home you take her out of the national story. Here, women felt that inside the house they were doing the national story. Women felt that their home would be an example of the homes of Israel, and felt they were willing to live a difficult life and live in difficult places to settle the land."
Set an agenda
Daniela Weiss, one of the famous pioneers of settlement in Samaria, is one of the interviewees in a study conducted by Zer.
When you read about her, you see that she is a feminist prototype - she started a family and established localities, she was elected to serve as head of a municipal authority long before the latest trends, she has a political influence to this day and her fourth generation grew up in Samaria.
I draw the attention of a stranger because despite all this, Weiss does not identify with the feminist movement.
“Traditional feminism has been the driving force of settlement in Judea and Samaria.
This is a perception of a woman who on the one hand wants to go out and influence in the public arena, and on the other hand is satisfied with her place at home and does not want to make a difference there. "
"When I tried to resolve this conflict, how an influential and leading woman does not identify with the feminist movement, I recognized innovations in research, for example in the field of employment. In the early years of settlement there were no norms that would stop women from developing. Less commonly, women in the early settlements were very dominant because everything was new, and social definitions came from the procedures they established.
"Women, for example, served on the education committee, and if they decided that the school would be involved and boys and girls would study together - an essential decision for the character of a locality - so it was. They became spokespersons and principals and entrepreneurs. Herself in charge of information; Ina Vinyarsky from Tekoa established the settlement of El David (now Nokdim) in response to the murder; women led the agenda, creating a new reality without patterns that would stop them. "None of them defined themselves as feminists."
What makes the difference?
"When I was trying to figure out the gap, I was looking for a name for this kind of feminism. There are all kinds of feminism - Oriental, Western and based on tradition. I invented a name for it: Traditional."
Traditional feminism is an oxymoron, ostensibly.
"In the eyes of traditional feminism was the driving force of settlement in Judea and Samaria. It is a perception of a woman who on the one hand wants to go out and influence in the public arena, and on the other reconciles with her place at home and does not want to make a difference in this arena. "Family. Western feminism sees the family as a depressing factor."
Your research uses feminist theories but turns its back on them.
"In one of the courses on feminism that I took as part of my doctorate, Dr. Helena Rimon brought texts from Jewish women from the 16th century to the present day, and talked about the feminist world that forces women to think a certain way, about feminist patronage.
Through her I became acquainted with both the depth of feminism and criticism of it.
She placed two songs opposite each other, Yona Wallach and Sivan Har-Shefi, one mocking the institution of the family and the other reconciling with it.
Rimon herself, who immigrated from Russia, said ‘Do you know what it is for a Russian woman to have a child and a spouse?
its a dream.
So many men have died in wars, a woman who has a husband and a child is a lottery.
There are no feminist Russians, in Russia you just want to be a woman and a mother.
This is a course that has greatly influenced me.
As a result, I felt I wanted to enlighten right-wing religious activist women. "
"We did not use children"
Zer describes in a dissertation how on a cold night in 1979, a group of mothers led by her mother decided to break into a historic site, the abandoned Hadassah House in Hebron, assuming that the government would not evacuate women and children.
But the government laid siege to this group, and women without their spouses but with many small children were left there without running water and without electricity, without proper educational frameworks.
The murder of the six young men who came to perform a kiddush about a year after the group was established there, eventually led the government to approve residence there, and later the settlement in Hebron that exists to this day.
"I less go with my children to mass events like demonstrations. Something on the inside does not want to be present in an evacuation or a struggle. Hopefully I manage to convey the messages to them in other ways, that's my personal tendency."
You were there too, as a little girl. Looking at this event from a gender perspective is a novelty, how do you as someone who was there as a child look at it as a mother?
"I was very small during the Beit Hadassah period, I have flashbacks. I process the experiences into a film I managed to interview my mother, who explained that for her Beit Hadassah was an option because she could come to it with the children, and even during the Yom Kippur War when asked to staff a medical center. "In Kiryat Arba - she checked if it was possible to come with the children. The stay with us was first and foremost. From the outside it may seem that she wanted to take advantage of the situation, but it was a derivative and not the goal in advance."
Even today there are claims of the use of children "for the sake of settlement."
For example, the campaign they did in the young settlement that is not yet connected to electricity.
"The settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria is a family enterprise.
It is not like the second aliyah of the Barbakist pioneers, who were single and the unmarried girls of that time.
It sets the settlement enterprise apart from its inception, it was a revolution of families.
But did not bring the children to be treated or used.
When you see children, it is clear that this is a place of settlement.
Regardless of the users or not, when there are children it is clear that people live here. "
And your childhood experience? You grew up in Hebron, you live in a settlement on the back of the mountain, you defined your overall experience as complex.
" "
And how does it affect your mothers?"
"I less go with my children to mass events like demonstrations. Something inside does not want to be present in evacuation or struggle. Hopefully I can convey the messages to them in other ways, that is my personal tendency. When you live in a challenging place you are very busy surviving. And when you are not busy surviving you find out More worlds. "
What worlds have you discovered?
"The world of academia. I started studying at a later age for a bachelor's degree. 29."
It's not considered late, you know.
"For a religious woman with six children, this is not the ideal time. I wrote my master's degree on the beginning of the settlement in Hebron, it was a fascinating job to dig in the archives and find new things. I discovered that the decision to establish Kiryat Arba was revolutionary. "Opponents, there were then only 11 ministers in the government. Until then, the policy was not to decide, and suddenly an urban settlement. 250 housing units."
Did the mothers delay your doctorate?
"I gave birth to my youngest son in the middle, my 11th child, and two months later my second grandson was born so I froze school for a few months to get by with all the chores."
Her four eldest children are married, and they all live, like her, in Har Bracha.
And what next?
"I hope opportunities open up for me in academia. Now I'm just into it."
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