ABSTRACT
One Sabbath afternoon all we young people assembled in the house of a favourite young married couple to discuss affairs from our own point of view, which, naturally enough, was not always approved of by our elders. After a while we got on to the question of the “emancipation of women,” which was already in the air. Now we girls had talked it over already among ourselves, but to-day the young men were present too, and they declared that in principle it was all very well, indeed quite right, that women should have their say in communal matters, but they would have to be prepared for having a vote by quite a different system of education. This was always a sore point, because most of the young men had studied and passed their High School or University examinations, but several of the girls had also attended a high school in Russia, but had been shut out from the Universities by the 68Russian “percentage” and had managed, often at great sacrifice on their own and their parents’ part, to go to Switzerland, Paris, or Berlin, and complete their studies there. Others had come with their families to Palestine, leaving an uncompleted school course behind them, and these were the most persistent of all in the matter of the vote, because they were suffering, so they felt, from a double injustice : they might not have a vote because they had not obtained a degree, and this degree they had been prevented from obtaining. “Well,” said one of the young fellows pulling a paper out of his pocket, “you girls will like this,” and he read aloud an article on the women of America, telling how they were not only insisting on their “rights” but were, in a fair way to obtain them sooner or later.
