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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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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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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.
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