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This article presents a feminist perspective on polity, religion, and gender in the Yishuv. It analyzes how each of these three categories is shaped by its intersection with the others while simultaneously constituting the whole. Two major decisions that were enacted in the 1920s—women's right to vote and the institutionalization of the Chief Rabbinate—serve as case studies of the formation of these categories, as well as of the creation of social boundaries, the politics of inclusion and exclusion, and the culture of political arrangements in the Jewish state-in-the-making. Women were both the focus of and significant actors in these multi-dimensional conflicts. They won their rights for equal citizenship in terms of suffrage, but lost their personal status rights as a result of the institutionalization of the Chief Rabbinate.

Does a blurring of the boundaries between civil society and the military lead to a redefinition of gender roles? This article examines the social meaning of the practices and rhetoric of parenthood in Israel through the prism of parents' increasing intervention and involvement in the army between 1982 and 1995. The claim is made that parenthood practices have become a reconstituting mechanism of the gendered division of roles. More specifically, the article argues that the separation between military and family, and between public and private-domestic, remains unchanged despite family involvement in the military. The basic interpreting frames in military-family relations are constructed in terms of the family's traditionally defined role. Paradoxically, the entrance of the family into the public sphere reiterates and reinforces basic assumptions about the nature of the family and its discursive boundaries, along with women's taken-for-granted status in the private-domestic sphere, and men's activities as representing the public sphere.

Does a blurring of the boundaries between civil society & the military lead to a redefinition of gender roles? This article examines the social meaning of the practices & rhetoric of parenthood in Israel through the parents' increasing intervention & involvement in the army between 1982 & 1995. The claim is made that parenthood practices have become a reconstituting mechanism of the gendered division of roles. More specifically, the article argues that the separation between military & family, & between public & private-domestic, remains unchanged despite family involvement in the military. The basic interpreting frames in military-family relations are constructed in terms of the family's traditionally defined role. Paradoxically, the entrance of the family into the public sphere reiterates & reinforces basic assumptions about the nature of the family & its discursive boundaries, along with women's taken-for-granted status in the private-domestic sphere, & men's activities as representing the public sphere. Adapted from the source document.