Between Leadership and Caring

The teachers who taught in the modern schools of Ottoman Palestine were central actors in the transmission of pedagogical ideas, educational concepts, and teaching methods. They served as agents of a modern Jewish education that did not exist in Ottoman Palestine until the establishment of schools belonging to large networks, the schools in the villages and the modern Hebrew schools. Their primacy as teachers in modern educational institutions meant that, alongside their role as teachers, they took on additional roles that enabled and promoted the existence and development of modern education. With the establishment of the Teachers’ Union, meetings among modern teachers gained a national framework. These meetings enabled the transmission of different educational and cultural approaches and ideas, as well as suggestions for processing and adapting them to the local reality. The three models of women teachers in Ottoman Palestine reflect the transmission of the three models of femininity in Europe. Hebrew education, which was less institutionalized and more revolutionary than the education provided in the European networks, offered fertile ground for the emergence of a model of the teacher that combines professional identity, independence, equality in marriage, and an ethos of family life.