Israel’s Very Own Mother Day

Mother’s Day is a concept with a long tradition. In different countries, the custom of dedicating one day a year to mothers began at different times, and is celebrated on different dates. Although in many other cultures Mother’s Day happens in spring, in Israel it is marked in the winter. Hebrew Mother’s Day – which became “Family Day” in the 1990s – is celebrated on Lamed BiShvat. As the letter lamed holds the numerical value of 30, this means the 30th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat, which usually occurs in February.

The first time Mother’s Day was observed in Israel was probably on May 12, 1935, coinciding with the American Mother’s Day, when the women of the Hadassah organization held a large-scale collection of donations for the planting of 10,000 additional trees in the Hadassah grove in Kiryat Anavim in the Judean Hills, located west of Jerusalem. The Davar newspaper of that day praised the women’s thoughtful idea of replacing the custom of giving flowers to mothers with planting trees. But it took time for the concept of Mother’s Day to catch on in Israel.

Only 16 years later, in 1951, did a renewed movement to celebrate Mother’s Day in Israel begin. The children’s newspaper Haaretz Shelanu asked its readers on what date Israeli Mother’s Day should be officially celebrated. In response to the question, the girl Nechama Frankel, later to become researcher Nechama Biderman (1939-2017), sent a letter to the newspaper in which she suggested celebrating Mother’s Day on the anniversary of the death of Henrietta Szold, who founded the Hadassah organization. The newspaper accepted the 12-year-old’s suggestion, and proposed to celebrate Mother’s Day by calling on fathers and children to replace mothers in housework and not allow them to do laundry, grocery shop or cook on that day, also suggesting giving mothers gifts such as flowers and generally trying to make them happy.

However, several years passed before the date proposed by Frankel was officially accepted. In the meantime, the first city to celebrate Mother’s Day institutionally was Haifa, where Mother’s Day was set for the third candle of Hanukkah, and over time other cities joined in. In 1956, the pseudonymous “Daughter from Tel Aviv” wrote in a newspaper that she envied the girls of Haifa and said that when the women of Haifa celebrated Mother’s Day, she joined them in spirit and sent her mother a fragrant bouquet of flowers. In the 1960s, Mother’s Day was recognized as part of the celebratory days implemented in the education system, and eventually became established, as suggested by Frankel, on the day of Szold’s passing, the 30th of Shevat.

The symbolic mother

The reason Mother’s Day was linked to Szold was Szold’s activities, which, according to the same children’s newspaper, made her “worthy of symbolizing the Hebrew mother.” Szold earned this title due to her work for the benefit of the Zionist settlement and the Jewish people, most notably the establishment of the Hadassah Health Organization, which promoted practical Zionism in the field of medicine in the country, and the centralization of care for the youth immigration from Germany after Hitler came to power, an activity for which she was called “Mother of the Youth Immigration.” Szold, who was a member of the Health Committee and other social committees, also established the welfare offices of the local authorities. Her work with youth and her concern for the health and welfare of children and the entire Zionist movement earned her the role of “the Mother of Zionism,” even though she herself had no children and never married.

But Szold was not only the Zionist mother who cared for the welfare of children and adults in Israel; she was also a woman of intellect and literature. She worked at a publishing house, where she was actually the editor-in-chief, but as the only woman in a world of men, she was called a secretary, and received almost no mentions or credit. She also had to deal with many restrictions in her studies due to being a woman, and her intellectual pursuits were impeded by many difficulties and barriers. For example, when she was, as an exception, allowed to study at JTS, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, her acceptance was conditioned on her not receiving the local rabbinical ordination at the end of her studies.

Mothers are not appreciated enough

Mother’s Day is considered a day on which the importance of the mother to the family is recognized and her actions and roles are appreciated. Apparently, this is a day that celebrates the value of mothers, but the idea that there is one day a year when a woman does not have to work alone in the struggle of household chores only emphasizes the fact that on other days of the year, mothers are not valued enough.

This is a day that calls for acknowledging mothers for their domestic duties, but the choice to mark it specifically on the date of Szold’s death shows an understanding that the day of appreciation for women should be broader. Szold experienced harsh disappointment in her romantic life, and her biography, full of ups and downs, embodied the many difficulties of living a life as a woman in a world of men, even though she was not a mother in the biological sense. She proved that women do not really need to wait for a single day to have their work celebrated, because their actions in the domestic and public spheres can affect the agenda for the rest of the year as well.

Whose day is it anyway?

In the 1990s, due to changes in traditional roles within the family unit, it was decided in Israel to change “Mother’s Day” to “Family Day.” The modern family has many faces, and the assumption that every home has a mother and that in every home the mother fulfills the “maternal” roles has lost its validity. According to the Ministry of Education, “this day comes to emphasize the bond between family members and their commitment and joint contribution to the family unit.”

This ostensibly transformed maternal roles into parental roles, eliminating the assumption that the mother carries out tasks different than those of the father and that any day that is not Mother’s Day is in fact Father’s Day. However, it is precisely contemporary feminist circles that are today calling for the restoration of Mother’s Day, because the maternal role, they claim, is essentially different from the paternal role, and giving up on Mother’s Day prevents the possibility of dealing with the questions of maternal roles in society, the status of women, and what makes mothers unique.

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