My project, Understanding the top-down and bottom-up development of emotional styles in a modern colonial context: The case of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine, aims to asses how the colonial context (within which early Zionism operated) impacted Early Zionism and Yishuv discourse on the settlers’ emotional styles; and to analyze the implementation of this discourse on the ground, in the Jewish community that coalesced in Palestine until 1948 in light of the colonial context and conflicts that arouse in those years. After concluding the last two years of research at the Center for Jewish Studies and Harvard University, I am now posed to write the outcome of the project, a monograph attentively titled Wandering Souls: Emotional Styles and the Emergence of the “New Jew” in Palestine, 1891-1948. As it currently stands, the book is comprised of five chapters:
Chapter 1: Emotions and the New Jew in Zionist and Yishuv Discourse
The first chapter examines the discourse on appropriate ways to experience and express emotions in early Zionist thought and the public discourse of the Yishuv. It begins by analyzing the role of emotions in shaping the character of future Jewish settlers, as depicted in the writings of early Zionist thinker-activists such as Ahad Ha’am (the pen name of Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, 1856–1927), Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), Aharon David Gordon (1856–1922), Abraham Isaac Kook (also known as Rav Kook, 1865–1935), and others. The chapter then explores emotional narratives in the personal writings of Yishuv activists from diverse ethnic, gender, political, and generational backgrounds. Finally, it investigates the varied uses of the concept of sentimentality in Hebrew public discourse in Palestine from the early twentieth century onward. The chapter shows that emotional restraint, while widespread and significant, was not all-encompassing and faced both resistance and alternative emotional styles.
Chapter 2: New Emotional Styles Through Novel Conceptions of ‘the Child’
The second chapter analyzes attempts to foster new emotional styles in practice by adapting and popularizing novel psychological and educational theories and methods in the Yishuv. It focuses on early child psychologists in Palestine, most of whom immigrated from Europe after training and working at some of the leading institutions of the time. The chapter explores the advice literature they produced for caregivers—primarily parents (mostly mothers) and kindergarten teachers—and the emotional styles they sought to promote. It shows how, particularly under the influence of psychoanalysis, children’s tendency to be motivated by emotions was framed as natural and legitimate. Caregivers, however, like all adults, were expected to act rationally and, guided by professional advice, steer children away from their innate sentimentality toward a non-sentimental adulthood. This expectation was rife with Orientalist and gendered assumptions regarding the need of mothers—and, more broadly, parents from “the East,” which at the time referred to both Eastern Europe and the Middle East—to accept the authority of men with cutting-edge Western education. By submitting to their advice, these professionals argued, Jewish parents in Palestine would help their children meet their families’ expectations. Even more crucially, the chapter demonstrates how the distinction between the sentimental child and the rational adult was constructed to advance an emotional style aligned with the goals of the Zionist national settlement project.
Chapter 3: Anger and Restraint on the Military-Political Level
This chapter reexamines one of the most pivotal political and military phases in Yishuv history—the policy of Restraint (Havlaga in Hebrew) during the 1936–1939 Arab-Palestinian revolt—through the lens of the history of emotions. During the revolt, the Hagana—the Yishuv’s main paramilitary organization—chose to strategically abstain from retaliating against deadly attacks on Jews. Instead, the Yishuv’s leading political forces decided to rely on British forces to suppress the rebellion while focusing their efforts on fortifying existing settlements and establishing new ones with British support. This policy sparked significant friction and debate within the Yishuv. While Jewish right-wing militants rejected it outright, engaging in indiscriminate violence against Arab communities, resistance and frustration also spread through mainstream Zionist parties. The chapter analyzes both the moral and pragmatic arguments of the policy’s supporters and opponents. In doing so, it highlights debates over the role of emotions as a motivation for political and military action, as well as their consequences for Zionist conduct and broader Jewish-Hebrew culture and internal divisions at the time.
Chapter 4: Fear, Helplessness, and Revenge in the Face of the Nazis
Since 1933, and especially during and after World War II as the full scale of Nazi atrocities against Jews became clearer, Yishuv and Zionist public opinion reflected a wide range of emotions. Fearing for their collective future and feeling helpless in the face of a relentlessly antisemitic Germany, action-oriented Yishuv leaders and activists struggled to find ways to protect their people and their movement. During the final stages of the war and its aftermath, as the world came to grasp the extent and horror of the Holocaust, the Yishuv and Zionist drive for revenge manifested in numerous ways, including concrete plans for retaliation against specific Nazi operatives and even the German people as a whole. This chapter analyzes the experience and expression of fear, helplessness, and revenge in the private writings of activists and leaders, as well as in political and public debates over issues such as defending the Yishuv, enlistment in the British Armed Forces, attempts to mobilize international support, and, later, efforts to prosecute and avenge the perpetrators. The chapter reveals how these emotions and their connection to action or inaction gradually shifted from the Nazis and their German and other collaborators in Europe to the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, the actual competitors of the Jewish Yishuv over land and sovereignty.
Chapter 5: ‘Thin Soldierly Coarseness’: Emotional Styles during the 1948 War
Many of the Jewish soldiers in the 1948 war belonged to the generation raised on the ethos of the “new Jew.” As such, they embodied both the success and the limitations of this project. The war subjected their character to ultimate tests, such as longing for loved ones back home, witnessing the devastating death and injury of comrades, fearing for their own safety, hoping for victory while dreading failure, and grappling with the widespread death and destruction they inflicted on enemy soldiers and the Palestinian population alike. This chapter analyzes the emotional styles reflected in soldiers’ letters from the front to family members and friends. It explores how these styles aligned with, and in some ways diverged from, the ethos and practical guidance described in earlier chapters. The chapter argues that, by the end of the Mandatory period, the anti-sentimental style indeed helped soldiers endure the difficulties and horrors of war. At the same time, however, it discusses the obstacles that the aversion to experiencing and expressing strong emotions posed to coping with the emotional burden of wartime ordeals, as well as the ways soldiers found to resist and overcome this aversion.
