search
Alexandria Fanjoy Silver

Women of Valour

I became a feminist when I had my first daughter. It also happened to coincide with the infamous “grab ‘em by the p***y” tape a few short weeks later. The joint experience made real for me that the work of female empowerment was far from over; something that I knew intellectually previously, but hadn’t really felt until that moment. In the last decade, I’ve watched as women’s rights groups flexed their muscles, as reporting standards got better, as more people were able to name the way women were often blamed for their own sexual assaults. I saw women I admired like Emma Watson & Michelle Obama advocate for these rights and freedoms, and I began to believe that when my daughter was a teenager, things would be better for her than they were for me. And then October 7th happened. 

All of the women who spoke out for others fell silent when it came to Israeli women. Naama Levy, Liri Albag, Emily Damari, Shiri Bibas and others merited no mention, no campaign. When a video of Naama Levy being pulled by her hair and dripping blood from her genitals was followed by a Hamas video of five bleeding young women being taunted with a future of sexual slavery, there was still nothing. I watched Ayelet Levy Shahar get booed by crowds outside the UN as she came to talk about her daughter. And yet UN Women and other organizations stood silently by, and I realized that there was a new replacement in the justification of sexual aggression: they were imperfect victims not because of their outfits or the amount of alcohol they drank, but merely because of their Jewishness, their mandatory draft, their uniforms.

I spent nights losing sleep over the fate of these young women. Women, being more physically vulnerable (generally) than men, tend to suffer most in crisis and war. But the last week has proved one thing: the power and endurance of the Jewish woman. The women who instantly became embodied representations of the Eishet Chayil, the woman of valour. Of course, for many, this phrase evokes a balaboosta, the master of the private sphere. But I believe that for my generation of Jewish women, Emily Damari’s damaged hand making the “rock on” sign, and Liri Albag pumping her fist while walking onto a stage in Gaza will be the moments I return to again and again to show my daughter the meaning of female strength. And perhaps it is in the vulnerability of the explicitly female experience where the heart of the lioness lies. 

Women have been tied to the Zionist project since its origins. One of the major sources of tension between Jews and Arabs in pre-state Israel was the fact that women were working in the fields alongside the men and were immodestly dressed. Women were part of the Labour Zionist movement from the beginning, in the army, in the government. Revolutions have been made on the backs of women, with both the French and Russian revolutions originating in the unlikeliest of groups: women, rioting for food and bread for their families. Overlook the strength of women — particularly when the wellbeing of their family is at stake — at your peril. 

There is also an explicitly female experience of Jewish survival, even in the hardest of times. In wartime Europe, it was women who took on unprecedented roles in their families, as they were often able to pass as couriers far more easily. Many women, due to financial reasons, were sent to Polish public schools and therefore had far more passable language skills than the oft-Yiddish-speaking men; they also could more easily survive a strip-search. The stories of the women of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were well-documented in Judy Batalion’s The Light of Days. But the women in these hellish periods also used specifically female qualities to survive. Women in the Holocaust had an additional level of hell thrust upon them: sexual violence, pregnancy and childbirth. Women were far more likely to die than men as a result. And yet, memoirs of female survivors of concentration and death camps reveal patterns of bonds and relationships formed in the crucible of the camps that helped them survive, in a way that men’s memoirs do not. Often women were able to create and maintain friendships that thrived because of their traditional nurturing roles. They were able to work together and care for each other, finding solace and strength in their fellows, in a way that was often not paralleled on the men’s side. Memoirs are full of stories of shared rations, of sacrifice for others when they were ill, of volunteering to carry the huge pot of soup so that their sick friend could get the accompanying extra ration, of deep dependence on each other for succour and sustenance. Despite the fact that their being women made them more vulnerable, it was their femaleness that helped them survive longer. 

I believe, from the limited testimonies we have from these women, that one of the reason these women look relatively hale and healthy, strong and solid, despite their weeks and months of agony, is due to those bonds. Emily was cared for by Romi after she was shot and she lost two fingers; Romi reported to Emily’s mother how much Emily meant to her in their time in captivity. The four female soldiers released today were held together, apparently, until close to the end. Doron was held separately from them, and history and logic dictate that isolation would play a large role in her clearer frailty. While Hamas has been known to drug released people in order to make them appear happier at changeover, the relative strength of all seven women is fairly clear. This, despite the fact that they were forced to be domestic servants, were often held in tunnels, that they went months without basic medical care, sanitary conditions, or the ability to shower.

Of all of the women released, Emily Damari has quickly become a symbol in Israel, one of strength and tenacity and resilience. She turned her injured hand into a symbol of resilience, of the future. That semiotic representation is only bound to grow from today’s revelation, that she tried to stay in Gaza in exchange for Keith Siegel, a 65-year-old hostage in poorer health. But she’s not just a symbol of Jewish resilience, she’s a symbol of female Jewish strength. A strength born of history, of her gender, of her bravery. And you have to credit the survival of her and Romi to each other – she may not have survived 400+ days in captivity without Romi, a trained paramedic, to care for her. Romi may not have survived without Emily’s strength and encouragement. Many people are shocked at how hale and hearty the seven women look, considering all the fears for their treatment, how malnourished Eden Yerushalmi and Hersh Goldberg-Polin were at their death.

But there’s a part of me that’s not surprised. If you look to the past, you see that women have a remarkable capacity to survive hard times, particularly together. And there can be no doubt that despite the horrors of their 470+ days in captivity, they survived. Liri Albag reported today that they “showed [Hamas] that the stage didn’t bother [them]. [They] are stronger than that.” True Neshot Chayil indeed.

About the Author
Dr. Alexandria Fanjoy Silver has a B.A. from Queen's University, an MA/ MA from Brandeis and a PhD from the University of Toronto (all in history and education). She lives in Toronto with her husband and three children, and works as a Jewish history teacher. She writes about Jewish food history on Substack @bitesizedhistory and talks about Israeli history on Insta @historywithAFS.
Related Topics
Related Posts