"In Hadassah and the Zionist Project, Erica B. Simmons uses original historical documents to examine Hadassah's roots in the American Progressive movement and assess some of the American field-tested projects that Hadassah exported to Palestine including visiting nurses, school lunches, and playgrounds. She traces Hadassah's involvement in the Youth Aliyah child rescue movements, which saved thousands of youngsters from Nazi-occupied Europe as well as from the beleaguered Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa, as its education projects tried to make Israelis out of young refugees from all over the world during the first decades of statehood." "The book is distinguished by its historical approach - rooted in the analysis of original archival material, including publicity brochures, newsletters, and correspondence as well as the contemporary Zionist and mainstream American press - and its fresh perspective in showing how American Jewish women played a leading role in achieving Zionist goals and shaping the Jewish state. It is intended for students, scholars, and anyone interested in American Jewish history, Israeli history, women's studies, the history of philanthropy, Progressivism, and the emergence of the welfare state."--BOOK JACKET.