Orthodox, zionist, socialist, female: A new identity for women in the early religious kibbutzim

The religious kibbutz sought to amalgamate values of communality and equality with Jewish law and tradition. On the one hand, it declared its commitment to equality between the sexes and to the involvement of women in all areas of life; but on the other, it remained faithful to religious principles that restricted women. This forced it to deal with gender issues in the areas of work, family and religion, attesting to the conflict between the new concepts of gender that the kibbutz had adopted and the traditional concepts by which it continued to abide. The unprecedented nature of the religious kibbutz came to expression in the raising of gender questions hitherto considered taboo as subjects of public discourse, since, with the establishment of actual kibbutzim, implementing the new ideas ran into difficulties, not least because of the influence of tradition. From a distance of time, the religious kibbutz may be seen as having been a site of the ideological germination of a gender revolution within religious society, creating within it a foundation for gender change.