Bezalel’s textile programs recruited poor and abandoned women across Jewish ethnic groups

Evidence

Schatz specifies that the four hundred women were “widows, divorcees, agunot [women abandoned by husbands], orphans, and daughters of poor fathers.” Bezalel, tochnito u-matrato, 8. Other sources, among them a statistical table of Bezalel students published in early 1911 suggests that about a third of the (all female) students in the rug and in the lace departments were speaking Yiddish (hence of Ashkenazi origin) and all the others were of Sephardic, Arabic, and other oriental languages speaking groups. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 1193

Categorization

• QUESTION: The craft-women’s poverty profile and ethnic mix raises the question of whether Bezalel’s ‘artisanal revival’ rhetoric masked gendered welfarism aimed at destitute women.