Abstract:
The Society for the Preservation of the Health of the Jewish Population (OZE) was an organisation dedicated to providing medical aid to Eastern European Jews ravaged by war, revolution, poverty and disease during and after World War I. The OZE\'s top priority was addressing the health needs of Jewish children and teaching mothers how to \'properly\' raise their infants, as children were believed to be the backbone and future of the Jewish nation. Analysing the OZE\'s public-facing newspaper Folksgezunt (People\'s Health), this paper examines how the OZE used reigning ideas in the Western European and North American scientific community around race and hygiene packaged in Yiddish to transform Jewish women into \'modern mothers\'. Modernising maternity required Jewish women to be completely reliant on medical authority and relinquish traditional forms of childcare. At a time when Jews lived in different newly established nation-states of Eastern Europe, transforming maternity practices was part of a larger project started by Jewish physicians in the Russian Empire to unite Jews by defining them in national terms, replacing religious and parochial definitions. This paper uses discursive and gender analysis to explore how the OZE saw women\'s abilities (or not) to raise a healthy Jewish nation as a crucial part of Jewish national diaspora politics. Hence, this paper emphasises the political nature of a seemingly apolitical humanitarian project by uncovering how the image of a modern Jewish mother facilitated a vision of Jewish cohesion and perseverance through health.
摘要:
保护犹太人口健康协会(OZE)是一个致力于为遭受战争蹂躏的东欧犹太人提供医疗援助的组织,革命,第一次世界大战期间和之后的贫困和疾病OZE的首要任务是解决犹太儿童的健康需求,并教母亲如何“适当地”抚养婴儿,因为儿童被认为是犹太民族的支柱和未来。分析OZE面向公众的报纸Folksgezunt(人民健康),本文研究了OZE如何利用西欧和北美科学界围绕意第绪语包装的种族和卫生的统治思想,将犹太妇女转变为“现代母亲”。现代化的生育要求犹太妇女完全依赖医疗权威,放弃传统的育儿方式。在犹太人生活在东欧新成立的不同民族国家的时候,转变产妇做法是俄罗斯帝国的犹太医生发起的一个更大项目的一部分,该项目旨在通过在国家范围内定义犹太人来团结犹太人,取代宗教和狭隘的定义。本文使用话语和性别分析来探讨OZE如何将妇女的能力(或不)视为将健康的犹太民族作为犹太民族侨民政治的重要组成部分。因此,本文通过揭示现代犹太母亲的形象如何通过健康促进犹太人凝聚力和毅力的愿景,强调了一个看似政治的人道主义项目的政治性质。