This program originally aired online via Zoom on Wednesday, November 4th at 6:30 pm Eastern.
Author Melissa R. Klapper joined AJHS historian Andrew Sperling to discuss her latest book Jewish Women at Home in the World: Gender Judaism & American Identity.
Throughout her career, Melissa R. Kapper has revisited travel as a prominent footnote in women’s lives. The presence of trips abroad not only dotted the biographies of privileged women coming of age, but also those of activists. Her latest book is a testament to the richness of this subject, focusing on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period that scholars call “the democratization of travel.”
After the American Civil War, advancements in technology allowed for the development of large steamships that could cross the Atlantic with relative speed compared to wind-powered sailing ships. Voyages that once took weeks now took only days, reducing the time required for a trip abroad. The impact of the 1921 and 1924 immigration restriction laws gutted the volume of immigrants coming to the United States, leaving ships with low occupancy. To make up for lost revenue, many companies renovated their ships to create small cabins designed for an economy tourism experience. Combined with a relatively peaceful political situation in Europe, which allowed for an investment in infrastructure. These factors combined to allow middle-class and working-class individuals the opportunity to travel in ways that had been out of reach for generations prior.
Klapper chose to organize her book thematically to address the different ways in which Jewish women traveled and the motivations behind them. While some were focused on sightseeing, other women participated in what we now call mission-driven travel, educational travel such as study abroad, travel for activist purposes, or to reclaim their heritage. Other women traveled abroad to work for non government organizations (NGOs) such as the Jewish Welfare Board, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the American Joint Distribution Committee. Travelers ventured outside of Europe as well, venturing to Russia (later the Soviet Union), Latin America, Egypt, and other parts of North Africa, Asia, and Palestine.
Topics covered in this discussion:
- Once the Soviet Union was established, travel increased from outsiders wanting to see for themselves how the new communist country was functioning. The Soviet Union kept very tight control over the experience of travelers and monitored the activities and movements of those who had been admitted via their tourism office.
- Women from the United States who traveled to places in Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were more often experienced travelers who had the funds and skill set to undertake the journey.
- When Jewish women of European and Ashkenazi identity traveled to North Africa in the late 19th century, they often encountered Jews of color. This was critical in challenging some assumptions around Jewish identity and illuminated how diverse Jewish experiences and identities could be.
- Travel was a liberating experience for women, who were freed from the daily domestic duties they may have had at home. Travel also required different clothing for ease of mobility, which freed women from the restrictions that daily clothing may have imposed on their lives. Women also found romance and participated in sexual experiences while abroad; ships, in particular, were known as locations for affairs and dalliances.
- Late 19th-century and early 20th-century travel for women was considered safe, though issues of violence did happen; they were rare.
- Antisemitism was a common experience for Jewish women traveling in the late 19th-century and early 20th-century; hotels and, in some cases, entire spa towns barred Jewish participation. Social antisemitism was pronounced and frequently overheard and experienced.
