The 1931 British-administered census of Mandatory Palestine reported an alarming number of cases of “infirmity.” One-fourth of the Jewish population was affected by congenital or acquired disability, including deafness, blindness, and “imbecility.” By the mid-1930s, the Jewish National Council (Va’ad Leumi) and privately funded philanthropic efforts had joined forces to assist the disabled by setting up special schools, clinics, and institutions. Physicians and other medical professionals used European diagnostic standards to screen the population, and identified a broad range of people who were eligible for rehabilitative services. When the economic downturn of the early 1940s led to a reduction in resources, physicians responded by narrowing their definitions of disability, depriving many people of support. I suggest that this reassessment of bodily and cognitive fitness driven by economic constraints called into question the popular ideal of the “strong Zionist body-mind” by generating an alternative and more stringent clinical and bureaucratic understanding of what it meant to be able-bodied and able-minded.