Jessie Sampter lived at Kibbutz Givat Brenner, shown above in 1935, until her death in 1938. (Israel Government Press Office)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Her relationship with Szold began before that textbook, going back to something like 1910 or 1911. Sempter looks up to Szold and Szold also recognizes something in Sampter. They try having her be a speaker for Hadassah and I think for reasons related to her disability that just doesn\u2019t fly. I\u2019m also not sure Sampter was very charismatic. She might have in fact been a kind of difficult person. But pretty early on in her own Zionist development she is writing for Hadassah. Sampter thinks of Szold as a mentor, and even tries out being a little bit more Orthodox, but then kind of backs off a little bit later.<\/p>\n
She died in 1938, 10 years before statehood, but already the armed struggle against the Arabs and the British in charge of Palestine had begun. You write that she was a pacifist who supported Jewish armed defense in Palestine.<\/em><\/p>\nShe bought a gun at one point. She was like, \u201cI have no idea how to shoot it, but I\u2019m gonna put it here in case somebody needs to come in and use it.\u201d She\u2019s a pacifist except that she believes that sometimes we might need to defend ourselves. Her position moves back and forth. She experiences some of the armed conflict in Palestine, although it\u2019s clear she thinks the real bad guys are the British, who she thinks are setting up Jews and Arabs to fight it out for resources and land. <\/p>\n
She has moments of being more interested and understanding of Arabs than some of her contemporaries. And then she also has moments of saying that the Arabs have more to learn from Jews than Jews have to learn from them. It\u2019s not quite as one sided as it is for many others. On the other hand, it is clear which side has her basic loyalty.<\/p>\n
She had a number of well-known friends, but again, she\u2019s hardly as well known today as they are. What about her body of work might still be valuable or worth knowing about today?<\/em><\/p>\nWhat\u2019s compelling is a little bit about her body of work and a little bit about her own story. She makes us think about the real variety of possibilities for Zionism. I think, today, Zionism has a much narrower set of meanings than it did in Sampter\u2019s time. She gestures toward other possibilities.<\/p>\n
Give me an example. How did she broaden the definition of Zionism? <\/em><\/p>\nI think the disability example, which includes both her own life and what she wrote, shows us that there are ways of imagining society that don\u2019t have to privilege an able-bodied, frankly male vision of society. Also, \u201cMizrahi\u201d wasn\u2019t functional at that time, but her Zionism does really try to think about how the Yemenite Jews and Moroccan Jews fit into it. The Zionist vision that prevailed in Israel was an Ashkenazi one. Her example could be a resource for people who might want to imagine the contemporary state of Israel in different ways.<\/p>\n
You write that after she died Sampter became a \u201cquotable philosopher, appearing in Weight Watchers inspirational books, on websites and on a roadside in India.\u201d What sort of quotes appealed to pop culture?<\/em><\/p>\nOne of Jessie Sampter’s quotes, taken from one of her poems and popularized in a book of quotations by women, appears on a sign in Ladakh, India. (Wikipedia)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Most of those are actually the same quote, which is \u201csimplicity is the peak of civilization,\u201d which is weirdly in the middle of a poem. So I thought that\u2019s kind of strange. How did Weight Watchers get this thing? I traced it back to a rabbi who was doing a collection of quotes of Jewish women. I did in fact go hunting for the road sign in India. I think the internet plays a role in why so many picked up that one quote.<\/p>\n
How else do we access her today? Are any of her books in print? Is there a monument to her?<\/em><\/p>\nSome folks at Givat Brenner still remember her and still tell stories about her. The rest house she helped found is still standing, although it is no longer a rest house. I don\u2019t know if any of her books are in print. She\u2019s not very well remembered. I think there are reasons for that. I think her being single is actually one of them. It\u2019s often families that are good at memorializing and publicizing the importance of people. And I think it\u2019s because her Zionism was not actually the Zionism that got picked up as the mainstream. She doesn\u2019t fit what people imagine that group of pioneers to be.<\/p>\n
My argument in the book is not that \u201chere\u2019s this really influential woman we\u2019ve forgotten.\u201d It\u2019s almost, \u201clook, this woman wrote all of these things, and was really well connected, and wasn\u2019t influential. But she shows us these roads not taken.\u201d<\/p>\n
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