Institutions for Abandoned Children in the Jewish Yishuv and the Shaping of their Social and National Identity, 1934-1948

Personal, social, and national problems have been attributed to the phenomenon of ‘abandonment’ in the Jewish Yishuv, which involved thousands of children wandering the streets without supervision. Some of these children were absorbed into closed institutions, both national and municipal, which viewed themselves as substitutes for the family and were meant to provide the children with a framework of physical and emotional support. The article describes the institutions for abandoned children established by Tel Aviv Municipality and the Jewish National Council and the therapeutic and educational approaches they adopted and examines their role in the process of shaping the social and national identity of the children. The institutions differed from each other in their day-to-day functioning, but they all shared the aspiration to shape the children’s social and national identity, with the goal of facilitating their integration into society. In the social domain, the institutions aspired to avoid labeling the children as abandoned or delinquent and attempted to guide them towards normative lives; however, the mere presence of the children in a specialized institution already labeled them and influenced their self-perception. In all the institutions, vocational training was a prime channel in identity formation. In urban institutions, the industrial element was emphasized, while in rural institutions, it was the agricultural element, which was the flagship of national endeavor. The national emphasis on the shaping of children’s identity was for some of them a springboard to social integration; however, others felt even more abandoned in institutions founded on value systems far removed from their personal worlds. The insights that emerge from the article highlight the necessity of integrating a value-driven goal within the identity-shaping process. Such a goal—whether national, social, or personal and whether particularistic or universal—provides a child with a horizon to strive towards and internal motivation for growth and development, even from within a crisis.