What Does the Word Lesbian Mean in 1923?

I attended a talk with this title at a seminar in the UCLA department of Jewish Studies.  The speaker was a historian from Tel Aviv University Ofer Nur. 

I did not expect much from the talk so I was really surprised as to how the talk progressed and especially the comments from the diverse audience. We started talking just about the word lesbian, but the discussion evolved into cultural differences and human attitudes toward unusual and misunderstood behaviors.

The actual topic was: “What Does the Word Lesbian Mean in Palestine in 1923?”

This was how the seminar was advertised:

“This seminar is based on an unpublished manuscript of a novel, written in 1923 by Sara Rappeport (1890-1980) member of kibbutz Beit Alpha, entitled: “The Wives of Sheikh Husseini.” This exceptional novel describes a love affair between a kibbutz member and an Arab Sheikh that ends in marriage, a baby boy named Ishmael, and membership in the Haifa branch of the Palestine communist party. The word Lesbian appears in the novel and Nur explores its meaning and context. The use of the word “Lesbian” in Hebrew in Israel begins in the late 1950's. Going back to an isolated use of the word in 1923 can teach us something new about same-sex relations in the imagination of those who lived in Mandatory Palestine and in Israel. Dr. Nur will reconstruct the context in which this exceptional novel was written and the relationship of the writer with her literary mentor at the University of Gottingen during WWI: the German thinker Lou Andreas Salomé (1861-1937). Rappeport’s novel realizes the particular variety of feminism that Salomé espoused.”

Sara Rappeport, the writer of this novel is described as progressive/radical Bohemian, German feminist asking the question: “How do women live in Patriarchy?”

While at the university Sara studied chemistry and her husband studied mathematics/philosophy.  They also belonged to a literary club named “Salome,” lead by Lou Andreas Salome.  The book “The Wives of Sheikh Husseini” was written as a poly-amoric fantasy. We saw the quote from this 1923 fantasy including the word Lesbian: Women used to pick wives for their sons and nephews by talking to the girls and even touching and fondling them with “almost lesbian thoroughness.”

The discussion was around the history of the word homosexuality, which was coined in 1860 in medical and literary publications.  Any previous references in the bible and other sources refer to specific unusual behaviors that were not referred to as homosexuality.

One of the questions asked referred to sheikhs and their harems: “How common was it among their “wives” to be lesbian?”  Dr. Nur stressed that this is a “loaded” question and it is certainly “politically incorrect” to ask.  However he himself did ask this question at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva.  A female Muslim professor answered yes, it is common after much hand wringing.

The following discussion was about East/West differences in the attitudes toward touching, hand holding, fondling among friends and relatives.  One guest commented that American Indians refer to trans-genders as “Two Spirits” and they are considered higher spirits and are given male/female names simultaneously.  Another comment: In French the word lesbian could be “Les Bien” meaning The Good!

This was a surprising seminar as one narrow topic in Jewish history turned into a survey of humanity, east west attitudes toward touching and public displays of affection, and global progress of understanding behaviors such as homosexuality or mental illness.  

About the speaker:

Ofer Nordheimer Nur teaches at the Multidisciplinary Program in the Humanities and the NCJW Gender and Women’s Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. Primarily a historian, he received his PhD in 2004 at the department of history at UCLA. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre d’Études Juives at the EHESS in Paris from 2003-2005 and at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 2005-2007. He’s the author of Eros and Tragedy: Jewish Male Fantasies and the Masculine Revolution of Zionism (Academic Studies Press, 2014).