crisis gender and modernity Flashcards
kadivision of Poland
divided and occupied by three neighbouring powers: the Russian Empire, the German Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Russian Poland
: The Russian partition of Poland, known as Congress Poland, was the largest and most populous portion of the divided country. The Poles in Congress Poland experienced varying degrees of Russification policies, suppression of Polish culture and language, and limited political autonomy.
German Poland
The German partition included areas such as Pomerania, Poznań (Posen), and parts of Silesia. The German authorities pursued a policy of Germanization, suppressing Polish culture and promoting German language and institutions. Poles in these territories faced discrimination and restrictions on their political and cultural rights.
Austrian Poland
The Austrian partition, known as Galicia, included the southern regions of Poland, including Kraków (Cracow) and Lviv (Lemberg). Unlike in the Russian and German partitions, Poles in Galicia enjoyed a greater degree of cultural and political autonomy under Austrian rule. The region became a center of Polish culture and intellectual life
growth of polish nationalism pre ww1
Various political movements emerged during this period, advocating for Polish independence, cultural preservation, and political rights. These included nationalist movements, socialist organizations, and cultural societies. The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a revival of Polish culture, literature, and art, known as the “Young Poland” movement. Polish intellectuals, writers, and artists played a significant role in preserving and promoting Polish identity and heritage.
- Political activism and resistance against foreign rule intensified during this period, with Polish nationalists organizing protests, demonstrations, and underground movements. However, the authorities of the occupying powers often responded with repression and crackdowns on dissent.
nature of Polish nationalism pre ww1
- Poland had no state so had to rely on their language, faith (Catholicism) and history for a sense of nation. Sensitive to any notion of people allying with the other side- suspicious of Lithuanians and Jews. In fact literature and culture continued to dominate particularly in Warsaw
Polish insurrection pre WW1
- The fate of Poland became a subject of diplomatic negotiations and power struggles between Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary.
- 1863- failed polish insurrection so Russians tried to limit the spread of Polish culture and assure predominance of Russian culture and Orthodox religion
role of women’s history
women’s stories and experiences have been neglected. Focuses on how language changes our structure of thought. Gender as a useful character of analysis- should not just add women/ look at women’s experiences but look at how gender as a construct can destabilize or challenge standard narratives. Human society is structured around binaries (a main one= gender). Understanding how gender is connected to power opens up insights. Paula Hyman looks to this. Women experiences don’t just add a dimension or are not just a basic addition.
It was not enough, she pointed out, to ‘Add women and stir.’ If I may continue her female culinary imagery, it was necessary to recalibrate the recipe.
eg Kelly- Women did have a Renaissance, she concluded, just not during the period we commonly label the Renaissance. Therefore, the nature of the Renaissance as conventionally defined had to be rethought.
law in Galicia
- school attendance was mandated by law for all children in Galicia As citizens of a constitutional monarchy since December 1867, a Rechtsstaat, Galician Jews enjoyed equality before the law, and freedom of movement, domicile, assembly, religion, expression, occupation, and association, as well as access to public offices. In practice the extent of these rights in their application to Jews was sometimes limited, such rights were something Jews in the bordering Russian Empire could only imagine.
population in Western Galicia
- Polish Catholics constituted the absolute majority in rural and urban areas in Western Galicia, including in Kraków. School education in Western Galicia was marked by its emphasis on Polish language and history and the cultivation of a strong Polish identity, of which Catholicism was an essential part.
East Galicia population
- in Eastern Galicia, whose capital was Lwów (Lviv, L’viv, Lemberg), was composed of a majority of Ruthenians (Galician Ukrainians) with Polish, Jewish, and Armenian minorities. In addition to being multi-ethnic, it was multi-religious, with Christians of different denominations in addition to Jews, all living in close proximity to each other.
secularisation of Galicia
- passing the fundamental laws about the rights of citizens in December 1867,
- On May 25, 1868, the two houses of the Austrian Parliament approved the three so-called May Laws that abolished the control of the Roman Catholic Church in matters of matrimony and education and regulated the interconfessional relations between citizens based on equal treatment of all recognized churches and religious societies. Prior to the promulgation of the May Laws, education in the Habsburg Empire had been the exclusive province of the Roman Catholic Church
- In addition, the law mandated school attendance for boys and girls between the ages of six and fourteen. A girls’ school had to be established in locales where at least eighty girls were enrolled. In addition to the required subjects, the school had to teach girls “female handicraft” as well as housekeeping.
Polarisation of Galicia
- The Polish Club agreed to support major government legislation in exchange for the Polonization of the Galician administration, court system, and the schools, which included making Polish the instruction language at the universities of Lwów and Kraków. By 1870, the Austrian government granted Poles the autonomy they desired- Transferring local decisions on education policies to the Galician school council, in which all members were Poles (the first Jew, Leon Sternbach, became a member in 1905), not only resulted in the Polonization of almost all Galician public schools, but ensured that their character remained distinctly Christian
Polonisation undermining Jewish education
- Threatened Jewish Heders where most boys continued to be educated in late 19th century- from June 1874, special instructions were forwarded in August by the Galician governor to district education councils requiring that ḥeder teachers apply for a license in order to be able to continue their operation. Ḥeder teachers who intended to teach only religious subjects had to register in the local Jewish community councils, which were responsible for inspecting the sanitary conditions of the place according to public school guidelines. Attending a ḥeder that taught only religious subjects did not exempt one from the required compulsory schooling
difference in education between boys and girls
- The gap between school attendance of boys and girls kept widening in the following years- … The concern that many Galician Orthodox Jewish parents expressed for protecting their sons from state-mandated education stood in marked contrast to their lack of concern with respect to their daughters.
- Contracting out the education of Orthodox Jewish girls to institutions outside Jewish society brought about a fundamental transformation of past norms and a revolution of sorts. The girls were schooled according to a state-mandated curriculum and underwent an unavoidable process of socialization with Polish classmates and engagement with Polish culture.- they were taught Polish language, history, and culture in institutions that valued these subjects. Although they studied Judaism in their religion classes in school, they were not taught to value the subjects learned by their brothers or the ḥeders in which they were taught.
Fisherman on what modern culture is
Modern culture = a body of writing, and of artistic & other expression, that is basically secular in its assumptions and orientation
- modern cultures consist not only of authors, but also of readers and audiences. A vibrant modern culture has a numerically significant audience that is diverse, with different levels of education and refinement, and with different areas of interest
- Literature that is homiletical, basing its ideas on Biblical verses or Talmudic passages, is not modern literature. There must be other values – aesthetic, social, political, philosophic – beyond the religious tradition
language of modern culture pre 1880s
- For most Jews in the Russian Empire, modern education and culture were something one acquired in Russian, or in German. And modern Jewish writing was something done in Hebrew. To modernizing Jews of the mid-nineteenth century, Yiddish symbolized the old world they were rebelling against – Jewish social isolation, religious superstition, and cultural backwardness. Yiddish was the shtetl, the kheyder, the Hasidic shtibl. It was the opposite of modernity.
- The overwhelming predominance of a single mode of expression (fiction) is itself a sign of weakness. It indicates that people are satisfying their other modern cultural needs or interests in other languages. That was indeed the state of Yiddish, until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. There was fiction, but nothing else.
emergence of modern Yiddish culture
o When we apply these three criteria to Yiddish culture – secularity, diverse modes of expression, and a sizeable, diversified audience – all signs point to the emergence of such a culture in the last quarter of the 19th century
Yiddish theatre
in 1879 the main Yiddish theatre company was moved to metropolis of Odessa. performances moved from the hall of the craftsmen’s club to the Marien Theatre, which held 1,500 seats. In the early 1880s, the Marien theatre presented Russian shows four nights per week, and Yiddish shows three nights per week. Soon there were two or three competing Yiddish companies in Odessa
- Goldfaden performed only in major cities, not in towns (shtetlekh), i.e. locales with less than 10,000 inhabitants.- his theatre was secularized as were city dwellers, but not yet those in smaller towns
external imposition on Yiddish theatre
- In April 1883, the Tsarist Ministry of Interior issued a ban on Yiddish theatre… For a few years after the ban, Goldfaden was able to perform to packed audiences in Warsaw, in the nominally autonomous Kingdom of Poland, where the ban was not yet enforced.
Yiddish language and politics
From What One Lives” - first published in Yiddish in 1887, it gave a readable primer on Marxism and the ideal of socialism; and subsequently it became a staple of Yiddish socialist literature The shift to Yiddish took place in the 1890s.
o The proto-Zionist and socialist pamphlets of the 1880s were the first sprouts of a genre of Yiddish writing that would flourish in later decades. Their appearance indicated that there was a Yiddish readership capable of, and interested in, devoting their sustained attention to matters of politics.
readership of Yiddish weekly
- Zederbaum estimated that his Yiddish weekly had 7,000 subscribers, scattered across the Pale of Settlement. While this was enormous leap from the 500–750 subscribers to Kol mevaserin the 1860s, it was a far cry from the circulation of 175,000 by the two largest Warsaw Yiddish dailies Haynt and Moment in 1912
- In the 1880s, many subscriptions to Yidishes folksblat were shared (that is paid for) by two or three people, and copies of the newspaper passed through many more hands than its co-subscribers. Zederbaum claimed that there were ten readers for every subscription.
urbanisation of jews - political implications
- In the 1880s, many subscriptions to Yidishes folksblat were shared (that is paid for) by two or three people, and copies of the newspaper passed through many more hands than its co-subscribers. Zederbaum claimed that there were ten readers for every subscription.
- In the cities there was no social control by the kahal & rabbis - there was freedom to grow lax in religious observance.
- Here Jews were a minority, rather than a majority.
- Jews were exposed to modern Russian & Polish culture.
- The migrants to the cities felt a need for modern types of information & modern types of entertainment
rise in Yiddish literature
- Rising status of Yiddish literature - 1880s - was the recognition of Yiddish literature by members of the Russian-Jewish & Hebrew intelligentsias as a legitimate and even valuable entity [main Russian-Jewish author to offer such view was Shimon Dubnov]
reason intelligentsia latched on to Yiddish
- Usually scholars have pointed to the change in attitude of the Jewish intelligentsia toward Yiddish as the key factor & have tied it to the changed atmosphere of the 1880s, in the aftermath of pogroms , when quest for integration lost its plausibility & various proto-nationalist views grew
inclusivity of Yiddish culture
- Notion that Jewish society was divided into 2 groups - a modernized intelligentsia and the “simple masses” - is a MYTH, A TROPE, used by Russian intellectuals such as Dubnov. Instead there was intricately stratified community in the throes of dramatic social change, which produced a diverse Yiddish readership & audience. When the founders of modern Yiddish literature and theatre produced works in the 1880s that were not for the simple masses, works that Dubnov and Levinsky complained about as inappropriately high-brow, their authors knew what they were doing. They were not ahead of their audiences; they were responding to the interests and needs of a growing and changing readership
urbanisation of Jews
- The greatest social transformation in Ashkenazic Jewry in Russian Empire in second half of 19th was urbanization, migration from shtetlekh to cities.
- Evidence - Between 1855 & 1897 Jewish pop of Odessa increased from 17,000 to 139,000. And of Warsaw from 40,000 to 220,000. Similar processes took place in many other cities
Jews played a very significant and visible role in financing and building the railways. As large-scale manufacturing and modern transport expanded, many Jewish peddlers, carters, and petty retailers–finding their livelihoods directly threatened–would be forced to abandon their villages and join the exodus to the growing industrial cities
the railway and Yiddish culture
- An Important facilitating factor for the rise of modern Yiddish culture was the growth of the Russian railway system. (In 1855, the Russian Empire had 570 miles of rail track. In 1890, it had more than 19,000 miles of track.) Yidishes folksblat actually had few readers in St. Petersburg, where it was published. But it could be distributed with ease, speed, and at modest expense by rail to all major cities in the Pale of Settlement.
*
divide between city and towns in modernisation
Most shtetlekh were not yet connected to the railway system, and were therefore not in contact with modern Yiddish culture in the 1880s
- In the 1880s, the audience for modern Yiddish culture was in the cities, and not [or not yet] in the shtetlekh, which were bastions of tradition.
urbanisation and Polish identity
- Weeks- The combined effects of industrialization, railroads, state educational systems, military service, and simply a higher degree of personal mobility created a situation in which large numbers of Europeans came to perceive their identity primarily in ethnic and national terms. Nor should ideological factors be ignored: by the late nineteenth century (and, in many areas, earlier) it had come to be broadly accepted that a nation deserved if not its own state, then at least far- reaching cultural autonomy.
physical separation between Jews and Poles
- in the particular context of Eastern Europe, the stark differences in language, culture, dress, and everyday life that separated the Jewish masses from the surrounding population made their self-definition as a nation logical, if not necessarily inevitable. Furthermore, Jews had enjoyed communal autonomy in the Polish Commonwealth. Although the Jewish kahal was abolished by Nicholas I in 1844, Jewish institutions continued to exist in the form of schools, burial societies, and religious organizations. To state matters baldly, in the mid-nineteenth century most Polish Jews lived in a quite separate world-social, cultural, institutional, even to a great extent economic-from their Christian Polish neighbours. The partitioning powers had, of course. absolutely no interest in breaking down the barriers between Polish and Jewish
the Jewish question and Poland
Weeks- * a “Pole” is defined as a person who supports Polish cultural, political, and national aspirations, then a Jew (“Pole of the Mosaic Law,” to use the contemporary phrase) can easily be accepted into the fold of Polishness. This conception of Jews gradually shedding their linguistic, cultural, and external differences and becoming integrated into the Polish nation was, in fact, the most prevalent proposed solution for the «Jewish question” before the very end of the nineteenth century.
why was it difficult for Jews to assimilate
Weeks - * Jewish identity was closely tied to scrupulous observance of traditional modes of behaviour and dress, even when these were not, strictly speaking, religious precests. Thus any Jew who dared to go against tradition by, say, dressing in “European” clothing or shaving his beard could very easily find himself treated as an apostate by his own community.” Similarly, a Jewish woman who wished to live an independent existence rather than marry would have a difficult time fitting into the community
the great difficulty of balancing Jewish and “European” identity should not be underestimated; Aleksander Guterman and others, for cultural assimilation (i.e., learning Polish and outwardly conforming to Polish norms of dress and behavor) of the first generation to “culminate” in conversion and a total loss of Jewishness in the second or third
Conceptually, the over- whelming identification of Catholicism with the Polish nation made it quite difficult for Jews, even if Polish-speaking, Western-clad, and “enlightened” in religious practices, to be accepted as entirely Polish.
what was advocated for in terms of Jewish assimilation
- But even the weekly Izraelita, the foremost “assimilationist” journal in Poland from the later 1860s to the eve of World War I, aimed not at an obliteration of Jewishness but at the transformation and further development of Jewish religious and cultural traditions as “Poles of the Mosaic Law.”
Jews as seemingly integrated in partitioned states
- Traditionally Jews had followed the precept that “the law of the state is the law”: that is, Jews too must obey the laws of the state where they reside. But political power had been taken from the Poles and was firmly in the hands of the Russians. Culturally and even economically, Jews who wished to prosper needed to know Russian-the only language, for example, used in education above the primary level
How Jewish assimilation in portioned powers prevented their Polishness
- Polish irritation at the failure of the “Jewish question” to solve itself was thus considerably exacerbated by the widespread feeling that Jewish migrants from the Pale (generally termed “Litwacy” or Litvaks) to Warsaw and other Polish cities served (consciously or otherwise) as agents of Russification.
- Weeks - After that point, the only kind of assimilation still possible was an absolute and unconditional denunciation of one’s roots: only the Jew turned antisemite could be accepted fully into the Polish national community.
Jews still tried to assimilate
- Weeks- This is not, of course, to suggest that Jews after 1905 failed to assimilate in the sense of learning Polish, donning modern fashions, or participating in Polish political and cultural life in the interwar period. On the other hand, one finds scant evidence in the post-1905 years of assimilation in the sense of becoming integrated into the Polish nation or-crucially-having even a Polish-Jewish identity validated by their non-Jewish neighbors.
Jewish legal equality
, in the 1860s Jews in Prussia and Austria were granted equality in most respects. The Jews resident in the Kingdom of Poland, though not those living in the Russian Pale of Settlement, were granted legal emancipation in 1862.
A generation or two later, many Polish antisemites would argue that the “prematurity” of this law had severely strained Polish-Jewish relations because Jews had exploited their equal rights to enrich themselves, primarily at the expense of Poles.
In fact, legal equality remained for most Polish Jews something of a fiction, as restrictions on Jewish entry into higher education and government employment continued to be practiced. This reality, however, did not prevent Polish antisemites from claiming that Jews enjoyed “double rights”: as Jews (in the form of being allowed separate Jewish schools and community organizations) and as “citizens.”
urbanisation in general
- Modernization means many things: urbanization, technological advances, the rise of “the masses” in both political and economic terms, the advance of the secular over the religious. In all these areas the Polish lands did modernize in the second half of the nineteenth century. Warsaw almost quadrupled in size between 1850 and 1914, and Lódé expanded almost tenfold. The Polish capital was connected to St. Petersburg by rail in 1862 (a connection already existed to Vienna), and the railroad net expanded considerably in the ensuing half-century.
In the Austrian and Prussian partitions, however, much less change took place.
segregation in the cities
Weeks- In the cities, the traditional separation of religious groups was harder to maintain. To be sure, Jews congregated in certain parts of towns—Nalewki street in Warsaw most famous Jews and Christians came into contact with each other more and more. By the early twentieth century it was no longer so easy to distinguish Jews, in particular those from the educated middle class, from Poles.
This “blurring of categories” was denounced by antisemites in the same terms of outrage
Polishness and superiority
- From the start, assimilation presumed an inherent superiority of Polish or “European” culture over “Asiatic” Jewish customs. Even a writer as sympathetic to the Jews as Eliza Orzeszkowa clearly expected that over time, Jews would alter their religious practices, shed “superstitions,” and recognize the greater “logic” and attractiveness of modern Polish culture (itself only just developing in those years). Assimilation always retained a colonial aspect, the presumption of a more advanced, superior culture
(Polish/European) “generously allowing” a more backward group to join it. It must be stressed that the negative views of traditional Jewish culture were expressed not so much by antisemites–who took such things for granted–but by liberals who compared todav’s backwardness with tomorrow’s enlightenment.
billing point of Polish-Jewish relations
- One “large” and one and one “small” event brought Polish-Jewish relations to the boiling point.
o The large” event was the 1905 Revolution or, more precisely the disappointment at its failure to deliver on Polish aspirations. This intense disappointment, combined with a general perception that Jews now opposed Polish interests,
o paved the way for a “small” event: the Fourth Duma elections in Warsaw, which ended in the general Polish boycott of Jews. when Jewish electors in Warsaw demurred at the idea of sending to St. Petersburg a representative who would not promise to uphold Jewish equal rights, their rather timid protest unleashed massive outrage in Polish society, including its liberal segments
Considering how little the Polish representatives in the Third Duma (1907-1912) had accomplished, it might seem absurd that anyone cared who represented- Poles, of course, cared very much indeed because of the symbolic value of Warsaw as the capital of a country that existed only in the hearts of Polish patriots.
economic boycott of Jews
the clerical antisemite Jan Jelenski emphasized the fusion of economic and religious struggle against the Jews. As good Catholics, Jelenski argued, Polish peasants must isolate themselves from Jewish economic interests and strengthen themselves by founding their own Polish cooperatives, savings banks, and stores. In a land where petty commerce and retailing were overwhelmingly dominated by Jews, the economic arguments of Jelenski must have made sense to more than a few Poles
the entry of (relatively) large numbers of Jews into the free professions in the late nineteenth century could be perceived as a direct threat to Polish livelihoods and hence, in Roman Dmowski’s formulation, a weakening of the very sociological foundations of the Polish nation. Following such arguments, the health of the Polish nation was dependent upon Polonizing commerce, trade, banking–in short, the middle classes
female higher education in Poland
Krakow - the Baraneum was an institution of higher learning for women established in 1868… It offered courses in literature, science, and the arts, for which students had to register and pay tuition, in addition to free public evening lectures. Between the years 1901 and 1924, a total of 691 Jewish women were enrolled for courses there compared with 3,023 Catholic women.
growth of Feminism in Poland
Kraków became a centre of feminist activities, albeit with a Polish patriotic tone. Because the law barred women from involvement in political associations, those activities were limited to the cultural and educational spheres. One such centre was the Reading Room for Women (Czytelnia dla Kobiet), an association formally approved in 1895. The reading room had a library stocked with books and periodicals, many of them promoting feminist ideas.
Haskalah
also known as the Jewish Enlightenment, was a cultural and intellectual movement among Jews in Europe during the late 18th and 19th centuries
o advocated for secular education, including the study of languages, sciences, and humanities, alongside traditional Jewish religious studies. They believed that education and knowledge were essential for social and economic advancement
o Jewish integration into the broader European society. They encouraged Jews to adopt European customs, languages, and professions, and to participate in secular culture and politics
o promoted religious reform within Judaism, - They sought to reconcile Jewish religious beliefs with modern scientific and philosophical ideas, often challenging traditional religious authorities and practices.
o contributed to a revival of Jewish culture, literature, and art. Jewish writers and poets produced works in Hebrew and other languages
Haskalah and gender traditionalism
- The Haskalah did not consider Jewish law the single, central definer of a Jew’s social behaviour, and its proponents there- fore were not obliged to accept halakhic limitations upon women’s education…. they nevertheless did not depart significantly from the traditional Jewish women-excluding world in which they had grown up. As far as they were concerned, women remained outside the maskilic circle, which they considered an all-male club
Werses’ generic biography of the maskilim entitled ‘The Maskil as a Young Man’, and such is supported by Feiner’s own exploration, which revealed culturally conservative Haskalah attitudes towards women.
female involvement in Haskalah
- A few—Devora Efrati, Yetti Volrener and Rachel Morpurgo—can already be identified by the mid-nineteenth century.Their numbers rose toward the mid-1860s, after which we have increasing evidence of female attempts to join the hegemonic Haskalah center by authoring secular writing in Hebrew.
obstacle for women in Haskalah
- We know of only of two women who managed to publish entire books in Hebrew:
- the major obstacle that stood between a nineteenth-century Jewish woman and maskilic texts: lack of a working knowledge of Hebrew and of the Hebrew canon. The male maskil, coming from within traditional elite scholarly circles, always started his journey towards modern enlightenment after mastering a wide range of Jewish canonical texts, studied intensively in the heder and the beit midrash. But girls rarely attended a heder
- To gain that knowledge as a woman you required the support and encouragement to learn modern Hebrew from your family - the good fortune that the maskilah enjoyed in not having to rebel against her family and hide her reading. However they faced isolation in friendships which men didn’t… + Depends on marriage situation-
Miriam Markel-Mosessohn, who was childless, married to a maskil who gave her moral support, and enjoyed a relatively secure financial situation. It seems that she could devote most of her time to reading and writing- All
runaway girls background
- Between the years 1873 and 1914, hundreds of Jewish girls disappeared from their homes, found shelter in the Felician Sisters’ convent in Kraków, and converted to Roman Catholicism- most of them were minors.
- between the years 1873 and 1914, there were 340 conversions to Catholicism of individuals staying in the Felician Sisters’ convent, 14 of them of non-Catholic Christians and the rest Jews
common theme in runaway story of girls
- one common theme runs through the stories of the girls who ran away: the young woman’s desire to avoid an incompatible marriage arranged by her parents when she is very young.
the story of the girls - author and location
Manekin
- Western Galicia, specifically Kraków, as the main arena in which the stories of the thirty Galician Jewish minor girls that ran away took place
Jewish/ female social scene in Krakow vs towns
Jewish girls who had lived their lives in Kraków had friends with similar backgrounds and similar experiences. They could also provide each other with a sense of solidarity and social cohesiveness by attending theatre and lectures together, as even a pious woman like Sarah Schenirer did. Kraków had a visible Jewish community with Jewish neighbourhoods, synagogues, shops, and markets.
in villages and small towns Jewish life was mostly confined to family life indoors. When a young Jewish schoolgirl walked out of her house, she was already on the boundary between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. This seems to be the principal reason why most of those who converted in Kraków came from the surrounding small towns and villages.
Austria and female education (secondary schools)
- the Austrian authorities refrained from introducing public high schools for women that offered matriculation exams, especially since they viewed the female nature as unfit for academic studies. As a result, only private gymnasia initially prepared their female students for the matriculation exams
- Galicia was quite advanced in the development of female secondary schools. Of the 4,997 female secondary school students in the Habsburg Empire in 1912, 3,606 were in Galicia
female university education in Habsburg empire
- women were first admitted as regular students to universities in the Habsburg Empire in 1897, and then only to the philosophy faculties. (In 1900 they were admitted to faculties of medicine and in 1919 to law faculties
differing reactions to runaway girls
- Throughout the entire period of the Jewish runaway phenomenon in Galicia there was no formal response from the Jewish rabbinic leadership. It should be noted that the problem was primarily an Orthodox one…. This lack of action stood in stark contrast to the attitude of the Church, which became extensively involved in the education of girls through local convents. Kraków convents were particularly active in female education at all levels, establishing thirteen private primary schools of different types (Lwów had eight primary convent schools) as well as two private teachers’ seminaries.
Anna Kluger - the fleeing
When Anna was fifteen, her parents arranged her betrothal with the fourteen-year-old
It was fully expected by her parents that Anna would follow the path of other Kraków Orthodox Jewish women, i.e., that she would marry and end her formal education. Anna wanted to continue her studies during marriage so her parents banned her from taking books from the library. She married the man after 2 years of betrothal - half a year later the marriage had not been consummated.
Anna decided to flee from her home. She apparently planned her escape carefully, leaving on August 25, 1909, together with her younger sister, Leonore (Leja), who was studying at the time for her matriculation exams
Anna Kluger - court backing
petitioned the district court in Podgórze to (1) recognize their freedom to study; (2) permit their residence outside their parents’ home; (3) compel their father to provide appropriate living expenses; and (4) release them from his custody. In Anna’s case, the petition was based on two claims: abuse at home and interference with her studies
o An appeal to the Supreme court resulted in a decision where they repealed the decision of the lower court and called for a guardian for the sisters “to protect their rights”… The sisters’ request for financial support was also granted… The court obliged the father, Wolf Kluger, to support each of the sisters with a monthly sum of 200 crowns, as they had requested
running away to a convent and religious abandonment
- not all Jewish women who sought the temporary refuge of a convent wished to abandon their religion. Anna Kluger stayed briefly in a convent so that she could pursue her desire for higher education free of parental interference. She wished to take advantage of the educational opportunities for Kraków women that had expanded considerably in the first decades of the twentieth century
Dinner- urbanisation and assimilation
- The period of most Guttmacher petitions, the early 1870s, was one of wrenching transition. Increased mobility and urbanization resulting from the momentous technological and legislative changes of the 1860s encouraged more and more Jews of partitioned Poland to break away from their communities. Passively traditional Jews were increasingly confronted with friends, business competitors, spouses, and children who had “mingled with the Gentiles and learned their ways,” as well as those who had “deviated from the proper path,” no longer followed “the ways of the Jewish religion at all,” preferred the company of non-Jews, or had gone so far as to convert to Christianity, each presenting what Katz has called a “possible alternative” lifestyle.
response to female rebellion from Orthodox
- Sarah Schenirer [young woman from Krakow] - was a learned religious enthusiast and Orthodox ideologue who sought to rescue the daughters of her contemporaries by providing them with an emotional and intellectual allegiance to Orthodox Judaism that their mothers lacked.
est a religious afternoon school in 1917 - the Beit Yaakov movement introduced formal religious education for Orthodox girls, it also controlled & filtered their exposure to secular studies.
Beit Yaakov movement and continued restriction of girls
believed that through indoctrination and education, and employing the tools of contemporary youth movements the daughters of the ‘lost generation’ of orthodox Jewish women would profoundly and enthusiastically embrace their Orthodox identity.
- Beit Yaakov schools explicitly discouraged higher education for their charges by refusing to prepare them for university entrance exams
despite the new Orthodox primary schools, thousands of Jews continued to convert during the 1920s and 1930s or simply attended secular educational institutions against the wishes of their families
story of rebellion to traditionalism
- Attending the theatre would be treated as a “crime against God and man.” – from an exceptionally pious house- The two became covert theatre partners
- Years later, Bernard ran into Srulówna (the covert theatre goers) on the street accompanied by her children. Now she was “stooped, with a wrinkled face and dim eyes.” They chatted a bit about her father’s store, which she now ran, and of course made no mention of their past exploits. Then Srulówna was called away sharply by her husband, a bearded Jew with a long kapota.
story - traditionalism didn’t necessarily mean non agency
Dynner- Srulówna seems to have chosen her own path, and her earlier exposure to secular western culture suggests, upon further reflection, that it was an educated decision. It almost certainly helped preserve her relationship with her parents, considering their abhorrence of that culture. And though we do not have access to Srulówna’s inner spiritual life, which may have been richer than Bernard imagined, we do have passing mention of a significant mundane factor: Srulówna had assumed the daily operation of her father’s store and may have, in fact, inherited it. These economic assets and skills suggest a kind of agency
female sacrifice in rebellion
- Guttmacher petitions - Nevertheless, many other petitions remind us of what women who made that choice may have had to give up: the empathic ear of a rabbinic sage like Guttmacher, family relation- ships, kinship networks, and empowerment deriving from their economic enterprises, often familial or kin-based.
value of men’s education over women’s
educational success were exclusively written on behalf of sons.
* In matchmaking - men were valued for their mastery of Talmudic study, in addition to their yihus (familial prestige) and wealth. In some cases, a poor young man without yihus who pos- sessed the self-discipline to achieve Talmudic expertise might be sought after by wealthy unlettered heads of families and achieve upward mobility, which provided much added motivation for study. Potential brides, in contrast, were valued mainly for their promised dowries, economic skills and assets
necessary purity of women
- Parents of girls who had suffered an accident that resulted in a broken hymen were sure to register the accident with a well-known rabbinic authority, lest their daughters’ virginity be doubted on their wedding night
- Occasionally, a daughter ran off with a non-Jew and converted, a decision that could undermine the matchmaking prospects of any unwed siblings and cous- ins. One father of an apostate actually requested “that God quickly kill her, may her name be forgotten.”
