“In Kibitkas through Snow…” Faithful Wives and Fragile Masculinity in the Late Soviet Jewish Movement

Abstract

The article explores the participation of women in Jewish national movement: their family roles, activism and their images in the narratives of the movement. The sources and the scholarship of the movement often mentioned an important role of its women. However, for all great numbers and activism of these women, they were not seen as independent actors: their struggle was the struggle for husbands and sons. Activism and self–sacrifice of the women notwithstanding, their role was viewed as that of helpers, and this fact has been articulated in the sources and seen as natural. The movement’s rhetoric is patrilineal, activists linked their Jewish consciousness with fathers, learned the language of fathers and desired to go to the fatherland. As a result, synchronically and diachronically, a new Jewish nation has been constructed as a predominantly male community, faithful women–helpers’ presence remained at the background and confirmed the male activists’ heroic self–image and made it possible to create a new and desirable masculinity of cunny and fearless fighters against regime.