West - CPC - Spring Membership Celebration and Hadassah Faire - 2026

Come join your Hadassah friends for a Hadassah Faire and basket drawing, featuring guest speaker Dr. Viola Alianov-Rautenberg!

She will discuss, "How to Cook in Eretz Yisrael: Gender, Homemaking, and the German-Jewish Immigration to Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s"

For the sixty thousand German Jews who escaped Nazi Germany and found refuge in Mandatory Palestine/Eretz Israel between 1933 and 1940, migration meant radical changes: it transformed their professional and cultural lives and confronted them with a new language, climate, and society. In her talk, Viola Alianov-Rautenberg will tell the story of German-Jewish migration to Mandatory Palestine/Eretz Israel by examining the realm of home and homemaking. Based on contemporary cookbooks, recipe collections, and newspaper articles, she will argue that the question of homemaking, cooking in particular, was of decisive interest both for the homemakers and the absorbing bodies in the Yishuv.

Dr. Viola Alianov-Rautenberg is a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute's Pacific Office at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a historian of Jewish, German, and Israeli history of the 19th and 20th century with a special interest in questions of gender, home, and migration as well as sound and music. Her first book, No Longer Ladies and Gentlemen: Gender and the German-Jewish Migration to Mandatory Palestine, was published by Stanford University Press in 2023 and won the Shapiro Award for Best Book in Israel Studies (sponsored by the AIS). Her current research project explores songs and singing in German-Jewish history.

All are welcome! New and potential members, Hadassah Associates, spouses, and partners. Bring a friend and introduce them to Hadassah!