Professional Women in the Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine: Shaping a New Society and a New Hebrew Woman

Abstract:The purpose of this article is to shed new light on the entry of Jewish women into the public sphere in this period and on their achievements, and to briefly hint at the difficulties they encountered. It will outline the contours of the collective contribution made by professional women to the civil society of pre-State Israel during the first half of the twentieth century. In this pilot study, I will discuss only a few extraordinary professional women who strongly influenced their respective fields. I will focus on four areas—medicine, social work, education and dance—with special attention to the new social approaches that these professional women tried to institute. My goal is to consider the subject from a comprehensive perspective: How did the work of women contribute to the public sphere in the Mandate years, and to the forging of another kind of new Hebrew woman?