Early Hebrew Schools in Eretz-Israel
by Judith Cooper-Weill
The person most responsible for the
renaissance of Hebrew as a spoken language, Eliezer
Ben-Yehuda, traced the revival of the modern tongue to an autumn gathering
at the home of the writer Yehiel Mikhal Pines in 1882, where it was decided
that discussions would be held exclusively in Hebrew. Seven years were to pass
before the first school in the world ever to establish its teaching curriculum
entirely in Hebrew was founded in Rishon Lezion in 1889. Soon after came a
short lived private Hebrew school in Jaffa, whose director was Yisrael
Belkind, one of the founders of the noted youth villages of Shfeya and Ben
Shemen.
The Zionist Hovevei
Zion movement in Russia, founded by Ahad
Ha’am (Asher Ginsburg) in 1889, had a secret order known as Bnei
Moshe or "Sons of Moses." Established in Jaffa in 1893, the
movement never exceeded 160 members, but they constituted the elite of
political Zionism and were influential in promoting modern Hebrew education
and publications. In a continuing language war, German vied with French and
English as the preferred language of instruction, while Russian and Yiddish
also had their promoters.
The disciples of Ahad Ha’am had a
specific agenda. They proposed establishing a "national college" in
Jaffa to meet the needs of European immigrants who preferred urban life to
farming but did not want their children to be educated in the ultra-orthodox
Talmud Torah (heder) schools, which had a virtual monopoly in the
towns. Neither did these immigrants wish their children to be educated in the
Christian mission schools. Rather, they aimed for a Hebrew and general
education, similar to that provided for the children of the agricultural
settlements, where general subjects were already being taught in Hebrew.
The founders of the Jaffa school had
to look abroad for funding since this was impossible to find in Eretz-Israel.
The only available source was that of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in
Paris, the one Jewish international organization that had established schools,
especially for students in Arab countries. The Alliance decided to include
Palestine in its worldwide network of French-language schools, the main aim of
which was to produce competent administrators and civil servants. Graduates of
the Mikve Yisrael agricultural school, founded by the Alliance in 1870, often
served in neighboring countries: one became manager of the royal gardens in
Egypt and another took up a position managing an agricultural school in Tunis.
So although the aims and outlook of
the assimilationist Alliance were actually quite different from those of the
nationalistic Jewish settlers in Eretz-Israel, a branch of the Alliance was
opened in Jaffa and an application made to open a school there.
The Alliance’s school for boys, Kol
Israel Haverim, was opened in 1892. The Jaffa branch of the Alliance
applied to Hovevei Zion in Odessa,
which allocated a yearly budget for the school. The Jaffa group hoped to be
able to withstand ideological pressure from the Alliance in Paris, in view of
the financial contribution from Odessa and the assumption that they could
control the school’s curriculum. Due to their not being subject to Ottoman
authority, the group was known as the Avtonomia Russit (Russian
autonomous entity).
The school for boys was followed
shortly by a school for girls, headed by Rosa Yaffe. Most of the 78 pioneer
pupils were sephardic girls who had been enrolled at the Scottish Mission in
Jaffa. By 1897, there were 250 students. The governing committee was pleased
with the rapid growth of the school but the Hebrew teachers at both
institutions wanted nothing less than to create a "national Hebrew school
in curriculum and spirit." One by one, they substituted Hebrew for French
instruction in general subjects. This enraged the directorate in Paris, which
demanded that things return to the status quo ante. The principal of the
boys’ school did not demur, but Rosa Yaffe staunchly defended the Hebrew
teachers’ standpoint. The dispute pitted Jaffa and Odessa against Paris.
Eastern European Hebrew newspapers debated the issue, Bnei Moshe members
discussed it, and the controversy swelled until, one decade after the founding
of the schools, it was accepted that no compromise could be reached.
In 1902 the property was divided: the
boys’ school, together with two-thirds of the land, remained with the
Alliance, while the girls’ school was transferred in 1903, together with its
principal, to the sole authority of the Odessa Hovevei
Zion. French was confined to being taught as a foreign language. In 1920,
following the establishment of the British
Mandate in Palestine, it was supplanted by English.
The "Avtonomia" school was
established in 1906 in the Neve Shalom quarter, which arose alongside the
first Jewish neighborhood of Neve Tzedek (founded 1887) beyond the walls of
Jaffa. The school soon became a lively cultural and educational centre. The
teachers lived on the second floor, above the classrooms, and were involved in
the activities of the developing Jewish political movements and national
institutions. Some edited general and youth magazines while all joined forces
in translating a play into Hebrew, tackling one act each and even taking part
in the production. In fact, the Hebrew theatre had its beginnings here in the
form of "tableaux vivants" and "flying posters" - using a
balcony for a stage - as well as the first drama studio. Inevitably, the local
religious forces voiced vehement disapproval, branding the street where the
school was situated Treifengassl (Yiddish: treif = impure), just
as they condemned other "immoral" places in the developing yishuv,
(the pre-state Jewish community of Palestine.
The building was also used to house
immigrants who could not afford to stay at an inn or hostel, and there was
even space for a printing press, adult evening classes, and synagogue services
during the festivals. Teaching methods were assessed and parties, ceremonies,
and readings were held. The Hapoel Hatzair and Poalei Zion ideological movements met there, as well as numerous other associations and
political groupings. Jerusalem schoolchildren came for holidays and scribbled
on the walls. Even a fledgling secret service used the premises: it was called Ma’ash, the acronym for Mishma’at-Avoda-Shtika (Discipline-Work-Silence).
In early 1904, the Odessa committee
had managed to bolster the girls’ school with new forces: Mordechai
Krishevsky (Ezrahi), a brilliant Hebrew teacher, was brought in from
Jerusalem, while from Russia came Yehiel Yehieli – an outstanding teacher
and director, whose name soon became synonymous with the successful and
prestigious Hebrew school for girls. Its renown even reached Irkutsk, Siberia,
where a Jewish philanthropist was inspired to finance – through the Odessa
committee – the construction of an impressive new building for the school
along the seam dividing Neve Tzedek and Neve Shalom. This building, with its
large assembly hall, became the pride of the community. In later years the
revisionist leader, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, would stand on its balcony to address
new recruits to the Jewish Legion, which
served in the British army in the First World War. Prior to the establishment
of the state, the Haganah (precursor of
the Israel Defence Forces)
had its headquarters there. The charismatic dancer and choreographer Baruch
Agadati organized his legendary Purim balls during the thirties in this building which received a new lease of life
when, in 1989, it became the Suzanne Dellal Dance Centre.
At the end of 1903, the Herzlia High
School (Gymnasia Herzlia) had been founded with bravado and 17 pupils
in the apartment of Fania and Yehuda Metman-Cohen near the Jaffa clocktower.
Eventually housed in a landmark building in Tel Aviv only to be torn down in
the 1960s to make way for the city’s first sky-scraper, the Gymnasia Herzlia
would serve as a model for Hebrew secondary schools all over the world.
While more and more parents chose to
send their daughters to the Yehieli school rather than to the Scottish
Mission, the girls were limited at first to just four years of education.
Moreover, the week was curtailed: on Fridays they helped their mothers at
home. On the eve of the First World War, 160 pupils studied at Kol Israel
Haverim, while the school for girls had ten classes with 450 pupils.
A Teachers’ Seminary was built in
1913 by Hovevei Zion and named after the activist writer Akiva Levinsky. When
the seminary and its attached trainee-school moved away, the girls’ school
under Yehieli took over the building. A mixed school (boys and girls together)
was housed in the Chelouche complex comprising factory, synagogue and
residence which adjoined the Street of the Schools in Neve Tzedek.
The first teachers’ seminary in the
country had been established by the German-Jewish Hilfsverein (Ezra)
charitable organization. In 1906 it founded an Ezra school in Jaffa. The
Jerusalem-born director, Elazar Yehuda Halberstetter, had graduated from the
Ezra college in Cologne but was the first native-born school principal in
Jaffa. Ezra students had the opportunity to study commerce or train to be
teachers within the organization, which expanded to include a school for girls
and a kindergarten, at the height of the language conflict and consequent
"persecution" of the German loyalists. At its peak, Ezra - with the
help of Hovevei Zion and the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA) - managed
27 schools in the country.
The First World War, however, put
paid to the struggle for German-language domination. The national Hebrew
school network by then encompassed 3,200 pupils. Some still remember the
"language patrols" (Yehudi daber Ivrit - "Jew, Speak
Hebrew!") which urged people to speak Hebrew in the street.
A religious charitable and
educational association in Jerusalem called Ahva set up a branch in Jaffa, where some of its members founded
a new neighborhood alongside Neve Tzedek. Their "progressive"
leaders were unhappy at the idea of educating their children in the existing
talmud torah schools, where instruction was mainly in Yiddish, so they started
what became a fully-fledged Hebrew school supported by the religious Mizrahi
movement from Frankfurt-am-Main. This was the first religious Hebrew school in
the country and its name was Takhkemoni. In 1913 it had 250 pupils.
The Sha’arei Torah talmud
torah was founded by Rabbi Naftali Herz Halevy near his pioneering home in
Neve Shalom. Named for the visionary spiritual leader, Avraham
Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, it was soon augmented by the addition of the first
vocational school, where mechanical engineering and handcrafts were taught,
combining Torah with learning a trade.
The decision to teach in Hebrew
occupied many educators in writing and translating textbooks. The Jerusalem
rabbis "excommunicated" these "modernist" tendencies,
especially at the school for girls which was turning out the mothers of the
next generation.
Swiss university graduate Nissan
Turov was principal of the school for girls until 1912, when he took over the
teachers’ seminary. Turov’s staff included the finest Hebrew educators of
the day; together they set syllabuses and curricula, composed and published
textbooks which were in use for years. some of the staff were among the
founders of the Hebrew Teachers’ Association, the first professional union
in the country.
Rabbi Kook, who became the first
Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Eretz-Israel, was a man of action with the soul of a
poet. Blessing the moon as the Sabbath went out, he was often to be seen dashing from his house into the nearby
street to pick up a discarded newspaper so that the sacred Hebrew letters
would not be trampled in the dust.
Sources: Israeli
Foreign Ministry
* Judith Cooper-Weill was born in Britain and immigrated to Israel in 1964. A translator and writer on literature and art, and contributor to several English-language magazines, her most recent work is a book on the neighborhood of Neve Tzedek in Tel Aviv, where she lives. |