ABSTRACT
Pressures for educational reform were beginning to come from diaspora circles as well. "Productivity" was one of the rallying cries of the Haskala, and Western European philanthropists, weary of pouring good money after bad into a bottomless haluka system, gently nudged the Yishuv toward productivity. Philippson had long advocated modern education, modern medical facilities, and a self-sufficient economic base as the only real solution to recurring Jewish crises in Palestine. Severe restrictions on Jewish occupations, joined with anti-Semitism and perceptions of economic exploitation of Christians by Jews, turned the very feudalism that had protected Jewish exclusivity into a state of insufferable poverty and oppression. Much depended upon commonly accepted norms, and within the Jewish community male authority over religious, communal, and family affairs—the very ground upon which the entire social order rested—was jealously guarded. In the perilous realm of Jewish/non-Jewish relations, too, conformity to agreed-upon norms helped preserve the social peace.
