‘Intimate Neighbors’: Life in Shared Apartments in British Mandate Palestine

Abstract

This article discusses a distinct form of urban housing that flourished in the Yishuv during the British Mandate, in which a family dwelt with other families or individuals in the same household. The article coins and defines the term ‘intimate neighborly relations’ and uses it to analyze the living experience of shared apartments and to describe the relationships that were formed between the residents. An anthropological analysis of the overlap between neighbors and home that is implied by the concept of ‘intimate neighbors’ refines our understanding of private and family space among the Jewish middle class in Palestine. Moreover, the article demonstrates the role of gender in neighborliness and urbanity and uncovers how women shaped the intimacy in the shared apartments. The main argument in the article, based on autobiographical and legal documents alongside popular representations of the practice, is that living together with ‘intimate neighbors’ involved inconvenience, embarrassment and even disgust. At the same time, and despite the difficulties, ‘intimate neighbors’ provided a form of human interaction in an immigrant society, in which many experience alienation and loneliness. Finally, the relationships among ‘intimate neighbors’ were simultaneously a personal experience and a public-national issue, especially in the 1940s when it became a widespread phenomenon and conflicts between neighbors escalated.