(Author: Glenda Woolf, Vol. 76, #3, Spring 2021)
During Mandate times, many young women immigrated to Israel from Russia, hoping both to work the land and establish a socialist lifestyle. The words of a few of these women are recorded in the book The Plough Woman, edited by Rachel Katznelson Shazar. The book was first written in Hebrew and published in Israel in 1928. A Yiddish translation followed and was published in America while the English version, translated by Maurice Samuel, appeared under the title The Plough Woman in 1932. The Herzl Press, in 1975, published a second edition from which the following excerpts are taken.
Fifty women wrote of their experience in leaving home and settling in a new country with a desire to cultivate the land. Some identified themselves only their initials while others used their full names. A few subsequently became famous. They included Deborah Dayan, Golda Meyer, and Rachel Janaith, who became the wife of Izchak ben Zvi, the second President of the State of Israel.
The long-ago words of three of these brave women pioneers are presented here.
*********************************************
Miriam Schlimowitz of Ain Charod, arrived in Palestine at the beginning of the Mandate years. Of the role of the government she is silent. Of the role of women in the new settlements she has much to say:
We had been brought up in and by the Russian revolution …..we believed that the wall that divided man’s work from women had fallen in one of the forever………Soon after my arrival I went to work in one of the kvutzoth of the Galilee. I was bitterly disappointed when I perceived how small was the role which women played. ….Would it therefore not be better for me to return to my earlier work and be a teacher again?…..I was offered the job of teacher in a large kvutzah which had a school. On the way……I made a detour to the farm of women workers at Nachlat Yehuda. The work the women did there made a tremendous impression on me. Here were women carrying on without help, on their own initiative and responsibility and doing as well as the men. I made up my mind to try once more for land work.
Looking back it appears she must have been a talented teacher since she was accepted but to work on the land half a day on condition that she taught the women Hebrew in the evening. Yet she writes very little about teaching, but much of her work on the land. The lack of sufficient water caused hardship. They demanded and received a cistern. After much negotiation with the National Fund they managed to acquire more land. Following more negotiation they received a tractor……….and only then…. “did we see the land ploughed….We began at last to carry out the complete plans of the settlement” (pp159-162).
Here are the words of Sarah, of Chavurath HaPoalath near Haifa, at the time of the 1929 Arab riots:
It was on Friday evening August 23rd 1929 that the comrades came back from the Nesher cement factory outside Haifa to guard the settlement……..our watchman was called to Haifa to the workers’ council. They told him we would have to leave our place because it was rumored that the riots were going to spread from Jerusalem to the entire country………..After a long conference we decided not to leave the place, for we knew, that once it was abandoned it would be completely destroyed………………………….
Sunday morning…again the demand from Haifa that we abandon the position…..At five o’clock two automobiles come from the Nesher, and now the men speak determinedly, “The place has to be abandoned.”
It was a fearful night we passed in Haifa………As soon as it was light we got into the first automobile we could command……When we saw the watchman standing at the door of the dining-room a load fell from our hearts…..
At eight in the morning we observed a crowd of Arab men and women, numbering between thirty and forty approaching us. They were armed with clubs…..we saw the Arab women trying to pull the men away from the gate…..….Before long three Arab automobiles arrived. One of them turned to the Arab village, the other went to Haifa, and the third stopped with the crowd.
The watchman exclaimed, “I’m going out of here! I’ll find my way to Nesher and have them send an automobile” ……He saddled his horse and set out at a gallop……..
Twenty minutes of horror passed. We locked ourselves in the dining room, the only building with stone walls, and waited there, pale and helpless.
…….we heard the shrill liberating whistle —the comrades of Nesher had arrived in an automobile……..the road passed by the Sheik’s house. …..and the Sheik sat on a white horse delivering an address.
..a crowd of young people had detached itself, and was waiting for our car, and as we flew by a hail of stones came crashing round the automobile.
……At noon the next day, a column of smoke rises from the corner of the horizon……the hayrick blazes and we begin to hope that will be the sum total of the damage…..
Early in the morning we asked the four Englishmen that had been sent to defend the Nesher to take us over to the farm…
Nothing at all is left of the barracks….The store room is empty…..fragments of the smashed incubator lie scattered on the ground ….
We look at the tree nursery. Everything is green and fresh and undisturbed. We breathe once more. The ruffians did not understand, that for us, the nursery means everything…..
…we must leave …sitting in the automobile we begin to make plans for getting back the same day in order to water the young trees (pp130-4)
On this hopeful note the entry ends.
Looking back we can only wonder at the bravery and commitment of these women. The Arabs from the village that attacked them are still in their homes not far away. The British do not allow the Jews to have arms. Danger remains, though the British have for the moment subdued the worst rioting.
The life is hard, with few creature comforts. Yet they are elated by the discovery that the nursery is untouched. They seem to concentrate on that, rather than the destruction of their housing and their implements.
The riots were the result of false rumors, sent out by the Mufti that Jews were attacking the Wakf. Today social media is made use of rather than automobiles to create false narratives and instigate destruction.
Rebecca Broisman wrote of the founding of the chavurah of Petach Tikvah:
We managed to get three old tents and set them up in the narrow lot opposite the workers club in Petach Tikvah – much to the astonishment of passers-by.
The morning after we had set up the tents we went out to look for work. Meanwhile a grocer promised us food on credit until the first wages came in. We were five in number at the outset and two weeks later our number swelled by an additional seven.
…..Winter was approaching and the doubts grew…….would we be able to build a barracks before the rains came?…..What we longed for was a piece of land of our own…..
After much effort the Agricultural office of the Federation of Labour obtained a piece of land for us…
They were still living in tents when….
On the morning of the first rain we broke the ground for our vegetable garden……The struggle for work was long and cruel…
Evenings the girls came home from the work which it had been so difficult to find. The table was narrow, the food meager, but the conversation was eager and comradely……every day a new girl came to join the chavurah.
Towards the end of the rainy season the received some barracks which housed the kitchen and dining room as well as newly hatched chicks , while they continued to sleep in tents.
Nevertheless…The first year passed and we could say with calm certainty that we had been successful and founded a new economic unit of workers. (pp173-4)
The women’s kvutzoth were a short lived phenomenon. These women later became merged into kibbutzim and moshavim. However, for the women who arrived in Palestine from Russia, alone, friendless, and with few material possessions, but a burning desire to work the land, these women’s kvutzoth proved a lifesaver.
Rachel Broisman, who wrote this article, went on to become principal of the Agricultural school run by Moatzet Hapoalot in Petach Tikvah.
The book covers a vast array of subjects. There is coverage of strikes. There is a strike against PICA, when it reduces the pay of women workers form fifteen to ten piasters a day. (pp121-3) There is a strike in Acre against the appalling conditions in the Nur match factory (pp124-6). In both cases the British police are called and brutally break the strike and throw the women in prison.
There are discussions about childcare and about the worker’s clubs. There is an article by a woman on the Moshav Ovdim of Nahalal (pp150-8). A woman who is a builder of houses in Tel Aviv writes of her struggle to be accepted by the men with who she works. (pp176-9)
Many wrote anonymously and to this day we have no idea of who they were, or what became of them.
The editor of the book The Plough Woman was Rachel Shazar, who became the wife of the second President of Israel. She arrived in Palestine in 1912, and during her lifetime played many different roles, from teaching, working the land, assisting in DP camps, travelling abroad to talk to Pioneer women’s organizations, authoring numerous books and assisting her husband in his Presidential duties.
Here we can see the results of her interest in the words of the pioneering women of the Mandate time.
Glenda Woolf, a frequent contributor to Jewish Affairs, is a novelist and essayist whose articles and stories on Jewish themes have appeared in Jewish publications worldwide. Her novels, published under the name Gita Gordon, include: South African Journeys (2002), Flashback (2007), Mystery in the Amazon and Scattered Blossoms (both 2008) and Guest House (2012).
