Debating Social Change and the Jewish Nation: The Polish-Jewish Weekly Ewa on Jewish Families and Birth Control (1928–1933)

Abstract

The objectives of the debates on birth control and thus of the concepts of family planning had changed in East Central Europe after World War I as a result of the founding of nation states. The respective dominant as well as non-dominant national groups colored them nationally by focusing on the development of their own nation. A particular example of the inherent national coloration of the transnationally effective discourses on birth control is the Polish-Jewish women's weekly Ewa. In the late 1920s, when a nationwide marriage and abortion law was being negotiated under the conditions of an authoritarian regime in Poland, Ewa took up these debates in order to sketch a specific Polish-Jewish image of the family. The publication also embraced birth control as a national challenge, but did so under a Zionist banner. The article assesses Ewa's important contributions to tracing and influencing the understanding of birth control and the images of modern families and women in the Polish-Jewish milieu during the interwar period.