The Invisible Women of the Settlement of Hadera in Eretz Israel

1891 1914
Nina Rodin
Director & Curator of The Khan Museum, Hadera Israel

With their own hands, the settlers of Hadera dug

graves, for their next of kin, for their friends and
neighbors, but they did not desert their settlement. [It
was] courage on the verge of insanity !
(Dr. Hilel Yaffe , 1894)

The new council building of the Hadera

settlement ( moshava) was inaugurated
on January 1928 in a grand ceremony.
The guest of honor was the prominent
poet Haim Nahman Bialik, whose
presence and warm words were much
appreciated by the audience.
The event marked the end of a dark
chapter in the history of Hadera .

Dr Hillel Yaffe1893

Hadera's council building 1930

In the course of the first three decades of its existence, forty percent of the
towns inhabitants perished from the lethal malaria prevalent in the area
during that time.
The survivors paid tribute to the pioneers by adorning the assembly hall of
the new building with their portraits. They nominated Dr. Max Shapiro , a
chemical engineer, land surveyor and an amateur artist, to paint sixty two
oil portraits (of which only eleven survive today). Apart from his artistic
skills, Dr. Shapiro was considered a member of the founders' clan he
married the daughter of D.B. Berman, the head of the settlers in 1891.
Like so many settlers he, too, lost a baby who contracted malaria.
Strange as it may seem, the impressive panorama of portraits did not
contain a single woman.

This astonishing fact persuaded us to look into the issue of the

relationships between men and women in the early days of Hadera.
We know the names and origins of
each of these invisible women. Since
the death of young husbands from
malaria was quite common, a number
of wives who remarried had up to three
surnames, as it was customary for
them to keep the surnames of their
deceased husbands.
However, whereas shocking facts
about Hadera were occasionally
published in the Zionist periodicals in
Palestine and abroad, it was the faith
of the men which usually grabbed the
headlines. Take for example the story
of Reuven Goldenberg and Shlomo
Butkovsky, who came to Hadera in
1893 and shared a tiny room in the
Khan building. In August 1898, both
contracted malaria. The moshava
physician, Dr. Hillel Yaffe, transferred
them to the hospital in Jaffa, where,
within one week, they died and were
buried. The couple was referred to in
the papers as The Lovely and the
Pleasant. The tragic event did not
prevent their mothers from Making
Aliyah shortly afterwards, bringing
with them the younger members of
their families.
On the other hand, the press ignored
the story of the young girl Esther
Glossgal, a sole survivor of an entire
family of founders, which took place
practically at the same time.
What are our sources of information concerning the women of Hadera?
Direct written and/or photographed materials is extremely scarce. Unlike

the women of Rishon le Zion, Petah Tikva or Jerusalem, Hadera had no

female authors, who could write about life from their own perspective.In
our historical archives no diary, memoir note, or even a simple notebook
written by pioneer women is kept. We do, however, have documents of
similar character written by male members of the colony, from which
conclusions about their views of life can be drawn.
Who were those men and women? Where did they come from? And what
was their cultural and spiritual world?
Two decades before the turn of the 19th century, anti-Semitic pogroms
took place in southeastern Europe. Millions fled to the West, mainly to
America. Just a trickle of the great immigration wave, went to Zion. This
wave is known as The First Aliyah.
Around 1890, four groups of Hovevey Zion (Lovers of Zion) from Czarist
Russia associated in order to fulfill the ideology of their movement and
establish an agricultural settlement in Eretz Israel. To begin with, they
authorized eight delegates, who were instructed to purchase a tract of 7000
acres of fertile land south of Caesarea.
Impressed by the abundance of water and the greenery of the land, the
inexperienced men overlooked the malarial swamps that were prevalent in
the area and confirmed the transaction.
The price paid to the Arab landowner was far in excess of the lands
worth. It must be strongly emphasized here that the purchase did not result
in the displacement of Arab population. Arabs familiar with the nature of
the area avoided it. Moreover, when hearing upon it being purchased,
people considered the buyers mad or stupid to do so.
A few months later, the first pioneer families arrived. They landed in a
backward oriental country, situated at the southern edge of the vast
Ottoman Empire. The area suffered from 400 years of corrupt Turkish
regime that entirely neglected its inhabitants. It did not take long for the
early Haderans to realize how difficult their life would be at their new
home.
The women pioneers wives, mothers, daughters and grandmothers, were
bound to pay the heaviest price for the venture. It is hard to imagine the
hardships that these women suffered. They came from well-off families.
They were educated and well read. However, they were ill prepared for
life in their new home. In 1891, as they landed in the teeming oriental port
of Jaffa, they were abruptly thrown into a crude Middle Eastern
environment. Upon arriving in Hadera, they had to take up temporary

residence in an abandoned and dilapidated Arab farmstead (the so-called

Khan ), in anticipation of obtaining building permits for their private
homes. They had very little time to adapt to these surroundings: families
had to be fed, laundry washed, children bathed and the miserable looking
rooms cleared. In addition, they started to cope with illnesses and frequent
deaths.
The first thirty years of Hadera were critical. Quite often, the settlement
reached the verge of extinction. Only towards its fourth decade, after 210
casualties out of 514 inhabitants, was its position secure.
But it would be wrong to portray Hadera as a male dominated society,
compelling women to act against their will. We have evidence that women
made their own choices, acting with deep ideological motivation.
The outstanding story of Haya-Rachel
Kotler Nahumovsky Millner is worth
telling. Born in Russia at the town of
Slobodka near Kovna, in 1872 and grew
up in a well-off family. Sometime during
the 1880s, she became a member of
Hovevey Zion club, where she met her
future husband Menahem Mendel
Nahumovsky. As soon as they got
married, they were determined to make
Aliyah and fulfill their ideals. Mendel
was nominated by his society as their
Haya Rachel with two of her
official representative in Palestine. In
children
1891 they bought a tract of land in
Hadera and enthusiastically started to
experiment with farming. Together with
their comrade-settlers, they started
draining the neighboring swamps.
Mendel became a muchtar , the
settlers representative and negotiator
with the greedy Turkish officials. Haya
Rachel helped with the family livestock
and plantations. The family grew: they
had four girls and a boy. The tragic saga
started with the death of baby Luba. A
short while afterwards, Mendel
contracted a severe infection, which he

ignored, and died in 1902, at the age of

36.
The young and pregnant widow had to cope with the economic and
agricultural matters of a big household and a large farm. Moreover, death
remained a frequent visitor in her home; her newly born baby girl did not
survive for very long. Another girl, Batya, died of malaria in 1913 at the
age of 17. In the course of a quarrel with a Turkish soldier, her only son
Matityahu injured a knee. Haya Rachel had to take him for a medical
consultation in Vienna. In those days, such a trip was considered an
extremely difficult, expensive and unusual act. While abroad, they were
informed of the death of the teenager Tova back in Hadera.
Haya-Rachel refused to listen to friends advising her to sell the property
and leave Hadera. She was determined to continue the family enterprise. A
few years later, she married Noah Millner, a widower from Jaffa. Noah
had five young children, whom she raised together with her surviving son.
To her astonished friends she said, These children need a mother. Having
lost my children, I am capable of giving warmth to these poor victims of a
cruel fate.
Being assertive woman, she encouraged her second husband to become
involved in Haderas public life while she continued to manage the family
farm. In 1917, during W.W.I, the Turkish army imposed a night curfew,
whilst conducting a search of the moshava, the aim of which was to
apprehend members of the N.I.L.I. group (Who assisted the British army
during the war). Risking her life, Haya Rachel managed to warn them and
save them from being caught.
Haya Rachel is unique, but we know of at least three more widows who
successfully managed big households and farms, even though they had no
a prior experience or training in such matters.
Fani Feinberg, whose husband,
Israel-Lulik died in 1911, at the age
of 46, lost her son Absalom five
years later, when he was 28 years
old. He was a member of the NILI
organization. In 1917, whilst
crossing the Gaza strip on his way
to meet the British officials in
Egypt, he was assassinated by
Bedouins near Rafah. Fani stayed
Fani Feinberg with her grandchildren
in Hadera, managing her big farm
1920

on her own, although her wealthy

family in Rishon le Zion would
rather have her stay with them.
Rachel Samsonov, pictured here in her wedding dress,
lost her husband, Yaakov, at the age of 48. He had been
a busy muchtar, tending the Haderas official matters
more than his own. Rachel undertook the burden of the
family farm and large dairy.
These three women are indeed exceptional. While their
husbands were alive, they supported them and backed
their community activities, at the same time taking care
of their farms obligations. They left us no written
document, but their homes were, in fact, unofficial
institutions. They were open to the needs of the local
community, be it banquets for the settlements official
guests, school festivities, weddings, or public meetings. Rachel Samsonov
1908
Distinguished guests stayed in their big family houses for
days on end.
On top of everything, the Hadera women had to create an extra income for
their households. Times of depression were quite prevalent under the
Ottoman rule. Pests and locusts attacked crops, taxation was rapacious and
robberies of crops and property were common.
The women opened domestic restaurants in their homes, let
accommodations to laborers and passing guests, and took care of small
auxiliary farms at the back of their houses.
All this cannot be reflected from the minutes of the moshava council
discussions. Just once does one witness the womens presence at the
assembly meeting where they had no voting right. They stood at the back
of the assembly hall and raised their voices, demanding that Hadera
should hire a professional midwife. The protocols indicate that male
members of the council represented the women when issues concerning
property ownership were raised. Sometimes, however, this extended to
personal and intimate matters as well.
In 1961, on Haderas 70th anniversary, the poet and documenter
Y.L.Shneorson, published the book Talking with Pioneers. It was based
on long interview sessions with women-pioneers who came to Hadera in
1891. Neither of them expressed bitterness or frustration about being taken
to the place where they lost parents, husbands, and children. But the

simple, matter-of-fact way they narrate the shocking things they went
through, indicates their central role in the early phase of Hadera.
It should be noted that the above characterizes the situation of the farmerwomen in the rural areas of Eretz Israel at the time. Other women, living
in mixed (Arab-Jewish) cities, or in the moshavot supported by Baron
Edmond de Rothschild, conducted an altogether different way of life. We
know of women teachers, pharmacists, nurses, physicians and midwives
who were hired by Hadera. Their course of life was different from the one
taken by Haderas women pioneers.
In 1912, two decades after Haderas founding, another group of olim
(immigrants) joined the settlement. It consisted of 40 families of Yemenite
Jews. Having dwelled for hundreds of years among hostile Moslem
neighbors, in the southernmost area of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, they
were remote from the new trends of western Zionism. They considered
their Aliyah as a religious act of obeying the commandments of the Torah.
On coming to Eretz Israel, they settled in small neighborhoods adjacent to
the established First Aliyah moshavot. .
Due to their oriental features and their unique habits, as well as their
peculiar Hebrew dialect, they were initially - looked upon with suspicion
by some.
Being short of additional working hands, Haderas
farmers approved of their arrival, but they neglected
to prepare housing for them. So, on their first
summer in the moshava, they dwelled either under
eucalyptus trees, in wooden sheds, in storehouses or
even chicken coopsIn winter, they took up shelter
in the remains of the old Khan building. Two years
later, with the J.N.F.s assistance, they managed to
build their tiny private concrete houses, in the
northern end of the settlement and called their
Three Yemenite
neighborhood Nahaliel (Gods land).
comrades 1933
The Yemenite mens life were harsh. They had to
compete with the skilled Arab laborers for work in
Haderas fields and plantations ; no allowance was
made for the fact they were Jewish. Adjustment to
the new life required a lot of energy and
perseverance. But as in any other immigration saga,
the Yemenite women undertook the heavier burden.

As members of an ultra religious society, they had

limited rights. Unlike the women of the earlier
immigration wave, they were illiterate. Joining
Hadera meant an ongoing inward and outward
struggle for these women.
The economic distress of their families compelled them to look for extra
income. They worked in the founders households, learning new skills as
they went along. They developed auxiliary farms in their back yards. As
was the case for their men, they also had to compete with more
experienced Arab women laborers for poorly paid jobs. They sold their
hand made basketworks and traditional embroideries. Some helped their
husbands with the new enterprise of beekeeping.
They, too, paid the Hadera death toll when members of their families
contracted malaria and other illnesses caused by malnutrition.
In Eretz Israel, the Yemenite woman was torn between two opposing
poles: on the one hand, her traditional position in the family as an obedient
wife and mother and on the other, her new ambition to improve her
familys lot according to western standards. As a result of her extended
role as an economic supporter of the family, she started to question her
husbands dominance and claim her independence Our knowledge of the
Yemenite woman is late and indirect. The Yemenite women, whose
memories we have recorded, were born around 1910. Their mothers life
stories are remote and the agony their daughters have heard of, is softened
by nostalgia.
The Israeli society is composed of diverse communities and the history of
Haderas early phase, represents the challenges facing current and future
waves of olim. The processes are much quicker of course, the terms are
entirely different, but the principles are very much the same.

Hadera 2002