Almost one month after The Jewish Chronicle published extracts of an interview with Miss Annie Edith Landau, Headmistress of the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem, in its issue of August 27, 1915, the newspaper printed a very (very!) lengthy follow-up article of a very different nature: A transcript of her wide-ranging speech, given in Camperdown House, Aldgate, on Sunday, September 19, 1915, to the Anglo-Jewish Association. This was four months after she’d been forced to depart Jerusalem for Alexandria, in light of Ahmed Djemal Pasha’s decrees concerning “Jewish enemy aliens” in the Yishuv.
In her speech, Miss Landau speaks of several things.
She begins with her longing to return to and live in Jerusalem in particular and the Yishuv in general, and segues to a discussion of the the economic challenges faced by Jewish refugees living in Alexandria. However, most of her talk is devoted to practical challenges of life in the Yishuv under rule of the Ottoman Empire, such as the availability of foodstuffs, and, in terms of religious practice and communal solidarity. Particularly fascinating (at once disturbing, frightening, humorous, perplexing, and intriguing) are accounts of her interactions with Turkish officials, such as the Governor of Jaffa, Zeki Bey, the nobleman who was Commandant of Palestine when the war broke out and who resigned his commission owing to conscientious scruples, who she deemed an “Ohev” Yisroel. And, as the subject of discussion in the Chronicle’s article of August 27, “the mighty Djemal Pasha himself”.
Overall, her speech is peppered with substantive vignettes, anecdotes, the consistent tone of which is characterized by profound sense of pride.
She would return to Jerusalem a little over two years after the publication of this article, and remain there for the remainder of her life.
Here’s the article…
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JERUSALEM AND THE WAR
BY MISS ANNIE E. LANDAU
The Jewish Chronicle
September 24, 1915
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Painting of Annie Edith Landau, from “Yad Ben Zvi To Honor Annie Landau With Exhibit”, by Gil Tanenbaum, at Jewish Business News, June 5, 2014.
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When asked if I would come here to-day, the day after Kippur, to tell you something of the work of the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem, in order to bring home to you what the school means to Jerusalem, to say a few words on life in the Holy City during the past year, I gladly assented, because, besides wishing to awaken your interest in our Jerusalem school, I thought that my speaking would help us both a little in the present period of storm and stress and responsibility. For me, the unburdening of my heart would help me to bear the terrible pain of exile which has been my share for more than three months now. And you – I thought you would be strengthened in heart by hearing as it were, a message of love and hope and trust from the Holy City, towards which our thoughts so often turned during yesterday’s prayers. Jerushalayim, ir hakodesh, the place, which despite wordly trouble and distress, to-day, as of yore, calls forth the jubilant soul, victory portrayed for us, to cite the tiniest portion of our Yom Kippur prayers in our beautiful Marc Kohen.
Here in London I have my mother, my sisters and brothers, dear relatives, and kind friends who are all more than good to me, but I sometimes think the longing for Jerusalem is more than I can bear. I stayed in Alexandria two long months when its climate was at its worst, hoping from hour to hour, from day to day, that the march of events would let us return at once. Erez Avotenu, “the land of our fathers” – sisters and brothers in Israel – does the phrase not thrill you with a pain exquisite in its intensity? Does it not bring a lump into your throat and the smarting tears to your eyes as it does my own? Does it not make each one of you wish to put out pleading hands to God in Heaven as I have done every day since I left it with the sobbing prayer, “Oh God for how long is this?” “Oh God let me go back!” Erez Avotenu: “the land of our fathers” – each part of it with its own peculiar charm, the rugged strength of Judea, which makes one understand the unbending character of the people it brought forth, the springtime waving fields of corn and wonderfully beautiful flowers breathing sentiment as they gleam in the softly smiling “Yam Kinneret,” the Sea of Galilee. “Happy the eye that saw all these things,” we may say of the land of our forefathers even to day, and were I never able to go back – which God forbid – the influence of them could never leave me. You want to hear about this war year in Jerusalem. Even before Turkey had actually entered into the great war, the blight of it all had fallen on us in Palestine. As soon as war was declared in Europe the banks could no more do any business; they could no longer pay out their cleints who had large current accounts and, of course, the Jewish bank could no longer stand by the Colonies which, with their vineyards, orange, almond and olive groves, were steadily working towards success. In Jerusalem, which, with its 60,000 Jewish inhabitants of a total population of 120,000, with its crowded Yeshboth, its eager Jewish schools, its modern Jewish hospitals and Jewish scientific laboratories, is – despite the absence of industries proper, and despite its overwhelming numbers of people dependent on charity – the hub of all Jewish movement in Palestine, the stoppage of help from abroad made things very bad. As drafts in European banks could no more be changed, numbers of really bekoved people receiving monthly remittances from their children abroad were reduced to
A DESPAIRING STATE OF WANT.
When I came down to Alexandria I brought with me a whole bundle of cheques, each for sums of money not more than 5 [pounds] on English banks which I had cashed for old men and women who, after vainly trying to exchange them in the town at even 50 per cent loss, came up to the school to me with the pledges of the devotion of distant sons and daughters in their trembling old hands as worthless paper, they had been told. The very old ones could not understand the situation. “Nemmit net fer ungut,” they pleaded with me – “sir sannem doch immer gezohlt geworren”. What was clear to them, however, was that butcher and baker and grocer could only give short credit, and that the fellaha from whom they bought their greenstuff and eggs much have cash down. I had a pretty hard economic nut to crack myself at the time. The banks were giving us 1 [pound] per week in gold, no paper was current them, and I had hundreds of children and a resident staff to feed, but I had fair stores of necessities to fall back upon, and I had credit, which, however, I had no means of extending to others. Faithful friends, however, came forward and I managed to send the old folks all away with the full 25 francs for the [pound] tied up securely in a corner of their handkerchiefs, and their parting, “May you live long for the Mitzvah: you have earned the world to come and healthy years,” was real music to my ears. I accounted myself the happiest or mortals to have earned the handshake of these good old people – shabby and world-worn though they were.
Sometimes a letter handed in at the gate would precede the coming of someone – for my Soudanese doorkeeper is a formidable person – and the manipulation of my name, owning to the Babel of tongues used in Jerusalem made me the object of much innocent chaff on the part of my friends at times. “Hageveret Miss Lander,” Mademoiselle Miss Lando, Mr. and Mrs. Landau, and Hamelka Shevo (Queen of Sheba) some of the envelopes I cherish say. This last needs the explanation that our school has had as its temporary home some four years the Abyssinian Palace. I am glad to say that except in two cases, though the cheques were well over a year old, the Alexandria Bank had no trouble in collecting them, and these two have lately been met since I came to London. During September and October the
ECONOMIC SITUATION BECAME WORSE.
The Government mobilised its forces and had to requisition from the shopkeepers in the town and from the colonists on the land for the upkeep of the soldiery, and the Government could not pay for its requisitions. In spite of it all, we Palestinians had felt that the war had not touched us really as it had our fellow-creatures in Europe, and there is an Arabic sentence which says that if the whole foot of misery is planted on the world, not more than its heel will have touched Jerusalem. The then Commandant of Palestine, with his headquarters in Jerusalem, Colonel Zeki Bey, was not alone a charming but a resourceful and helpful man. We were all jubilating one November day as an order had been given for demobilisation and the troops were being drawn off – when lo, like a thunderbolt it came – our dread expectancy of months – Turkey had been dragged in at last and the Great War had us in its cruel grip in real earnest. The colonists had to give up their horses, their carts, their oxen and cows, their labourers, and – sorest wound perhaps of all – their irrigation pipes which conducted the water to the orange groves. In Jerusalem every cab-horse was taken and all enemy property was confiscated to be used for military purposes. The Evelina property was one exception. Very soon Palestine was like a corked-up bottle. There was no means of getting in foodstuffs and other commodities. Every day necessaries went up fearfully in price – it was a real catastrophe to even the richest Effendi with the Oriental’s sweet tooth to have to pay 40 piastres for a rottel of sugar – close on seven shillings for six pounds of the commodity. Soon there was no rice, no coffee, no sugar at all in the town. Pins, needles, buttons, cotton, brooms, matches, soft goods, in fact everything which we get from abroad were not to be had. There was a quantity of petroleum in the country which rose to an enormous price – from ten francs to sixty piasters a box – through unscrupulous speculators. The municipality seized it and sold it for twelve francs per box, and in very small quantities, to the poor, when in turn the military authorities seized it from the municipality. When I left Jerusalem most people were burning candles. For Pesach the Sephardim were allowed to buy seventy boxes, and the Ashkenazim, much more numerous, of course, 250 boxes of petroleum for their respective communities, and it was a curious sight to watch the lines of thousands of people with little cans and bottles waiting their turn to be served at the stores opened for the purpose. No-one would willingly have a dark Seder night; you had to have a ticket showing how many people you housed, and according to this number you were allowed to buy a certain quantity. As no Russian white flour was coming in, we were glad to eat bread made of native dark flour. We were never without it – there is sufficient corn and barley in the country, as so exporting could be done – but bread went up in price, increasing the sufferings of the poor.
AMERICA CAME TO OUR AID SPLENDIDLY.
and has never relaxed its efforts on behalf of the poor. Palestine will never forget the coming of Mr. Louis Levine, the Secretary of the Federated Jewish Charities of Baltimore, who accompanied the American collier “Vulcan,” which brought 900 tonnes of provisions, collected entirely by Jewish Americans for the needy of Palestine. 55 per cent of which provisions went to the Jewish, 15 per cent to the Christian, and 30 per cent to the Moslem populations. It is, however, natural that the relief from America could not cope with the situation – which meant keeping the country on charity for an indefinite period. The Anglo-Palestine Bank had tried to help its clients by issuing registered cheques, but the man in the street had to lose 25 per cent when negotiating them – money-changers and some cute tradespeople got them thus cheaply and paid their debt in the Bank at the full value. Thus once more it was the bekoved men of very small income that suffered. Then came the Government decree declaring the Anglo-Palestine registered cheques worthless and ordering all holders of such, on pain of severe punishment for non-compliance with the decree, to deliver them up to the Government, which would get them cashed for the people. Not a single cheque was forthcoming. We were all looking forward to the early vegetable and fruit season – a big water-melon and a couple of loaves of bread will feed a whole family for a day – when, to heighten our misery the locust plague descended on us. I shudder now when I recall how day was turned into night by its advent; such a visitation was beyond human remembrance in Jerusalem. The locusts flew over us first without descending and laid their eggs, the real danger, around Jaffa and in the colonies. Efforts were made by the Government to cope with the plague, but to no effect; and soon, when the young locusts could hop, but not fly, which is the fatal time for vegetation, you could see them moving solidly, like a closely packed army, across the fields, and when they left a field it was as bare as the back of your hand. Nothing was spared; we had hoped for the olive trees, they are bitter, and locusts do not like bitter things. They feasted first on the tender, sweet almond trees, the peaches, the vines, the vegetables and melons, but soon what had been grey-green olive trees were swaying their skeleton limbs; not in the wind, but from the weight of thousands of our unwelcome, clinging visitors. They settled in Jerusalem; we found them in our beds, on our tables, down our necks, and you would be startled by the person to whom you were talking, making a grab at you, taking off an locust or two which you hadn’t noticed! We bowed our heads in prayer at this one blow, we knew not what more we could do;
FOR MONTHS WE HAD BEEN FASTING TWICE A WEEK.
little children of five insisted on doing so; we had said Ovinu Malkenu twice daily all these months ago; the tense tones of the Shofar rang out morning after morning; it seemed at time as though we must be heard on High, and we went through our daily duties quietly, hopefully. You will have noticed that I have harped on the economic distress. I should like to say that most of the time it was only economic distress to which we Jews of Palestine were subjected. There have been reports that the Jews of belligerent nationality were ill-treated. That was not so, with the exception of one very short period – the end of December and during January – and the brunt of it fell on Jaffa. Jerusalem felt it but a little. Naturally, in a country like Turkey, much depends on the individual character of those in command. Thus there was the Governor of Jaffa, who humiliated the Jews where he could, “son of a dog,” being his way of addressing a Jew; while Zeki Bey, the nobleman who was Commandant of Palestine when the war broke out and who resigned his commission owing to conscientious scruples, is a true Ohev Yisroel; and the Dictator in Palestine and Syria, the mighty Djemal Pasha himself, one of the three men who rule Turkey’s destiny since a few years ago, is a kind and well-meaning man at heart, though Judaism in general, and Zionism in particular, have been mischievously misrepresented to him, causing him to judge us harshly at times. He told me, however, that Turkey’s action in allowing belligerent Jewish subjects to become Ottoman was a concession to the Jew. The non-Jew in like case was interned. To prove to me that he was not unfriendly to Jews he told me that a few years ago he was the patron of a big ball given in Constantinople in aid of the funds of the Jewish Hospital there, and a very large sum was collected, three times the amount collected at a ball the same week given by the Heir to the Throne in aid to the Red Crescent. I took the opportunity during this conversation to ask him to allow the Jews who were employed on railroad making to observe our Sabbath. He knitted his brows and said it was war time. “I know, Excellence, but these men are not in the fighting line – let them work longer hours on other days if it must be – but for us Jews it is a dreadful thing to desecrate the Sabbath – it belongs to God.” “But surely the Haham Bashi can give them a dispensation?” “No, Excellency; no Hashem Bashi can stand between the Jew and his God.” “What would you do it I commanded you to break the Sabbath?” “I couldn’t obey you, Excellency.” “But what if I’d have to order you to be shot for disobedience; you are under martial law.” The scrutinizing eyes were on me. “Well, then, you’d have to have me shot – no Jew may think of his life if he is asked to desecrate the Sabbath through malice aforethought,” I asserted calmly. He laughed and then sighed, and said, “How you love your religion,” and abruptly left the room. On his return we got up to go, and I anxiously said, “What about the Sabbath, Excellency; will you not give the order that the Jews may keep it?” “It is already given,” he said, kindly. He loved to question me on Judaism and on Jews, and he was fond of teasing me by saying gruff things of them.
“YOUR JEWS ARE UNSUPPORTABLE – THEY MUST BE EXTERMINATED”
– he once called to me before a whole assembly after some cock and bull story about the Colonies had been told him. “No, Excellency,” I retorted as I came up to him – “no one can do that – read your Bible and you will see that Jacob wrestled all night with the genius of Esau – that was the foreshadowing of our fate; we are Jacob, and the part of the world which is unkind to us is that genius of Esau. When morning broke Jacob was lame – but not exterminated. “You comprenez, Excellence” – meaning “do you catch on?” It was at the mercy this man, the supreme power in Palestine since Turkey joined in the war, that I left the Evelina School, at the end of last May. It was he who had, owing the good offices of dear friends, chief among them Mr. Henry M. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador at Constantinople, allowed me to stay in Jerusalem last December, though when giving me the permission he told me quietly that I was suffering from three maladies; being English, being a Jewess and, to cop it off the head of an Anglo-Jewish School. Not very encouraging this, but I was hopeful because he had been so very obdurate at first in all intercession on my behalf. I meant to make a good fight to stay for on my staying depended the welfare of nearly 700 children and a big staff. If I had gone then the school would have shared the fate of all other enemy institutions and even Ottoman Jewish ones – it would have closed down – and what it would have meant you can imagine, if 700 children were left to roam about the streets filled with soldiers. Any risk to me personally could not possibly outweigh what was at stake. “Let her become ottomen,” he wired from Damascus, his then headquarters. “No,” was my answer. “After the war,” he temporised. I could not promise anything, and was going to feel pretty helpless when he decided to make Jerusalem his headquarters prior to the Suez Canal Expedition. One of his first acts on arrival was to come to the school, and since then he has been our firm friend. He
COULD NOT WITHSTAND THE LITTLE CHILDREN
who unfortunately caught his hands and played with the huge sword dangling at his side. In our Baby Room an amusing episode took place: he asked a four year old kidlet if she knew who he was. I had to translate. The first two years at school are all Hebrew. “Bite-aat Yohdaat mi hadoun hagadol haze.” (Do you know who this great man is, my child?) “Ken gevirti.” (“Yes, my lady”) the baby answered in the stately Hebrew phrasing. “Adoni Gamal Hagadol.” Consternation was writ large on the faces of all the Hebrew-speaking grown-ups present. I shook in my shoes and, turning the colour of a beetroot, almost lost my presence of mind in the desire to laugh. How should I translate to this man before whom all Palestine and Syria trembled? The child had unconsciously repeated – probably having heard it from a big brother that morning – the pun that was being made on the name of our Excellency. Djemal means in Turkish “The Beautiful”. The initial which in Turkish s spoken sofly is rendered hard in Hebrew, giving us “gamal,” which means “Camel,” and as there were two Djemal Pashas in Jerusalem then – the second being City Commandant and inferior in station to the other – the other Hebrew youth had at once styled the two men “Gamal Hagadol and Djemal Hakatan.” I had not heard the bon mot yet – it was but the day after his arrival – and I certainly wasn’t going to translate to his Excellency that our little girl, eyeing him with wide open gaze, was saying, “Yes, my Lord is a Big Camel.” The situation was saved by our Sudanese porter bringing Turkish coffee – the tiny cup of which is a polite intimation to visitors that you give them permission to leave. I stepped quickly forward to present His Excellency’s cup – an attention which brought me a lovely bit of sweetstuff next’ day – and the situation was saved, for by the time I had taken the cup from the tray and was back with it he hadn’t waited for an answer but was going round helping to do stick-laying and letting the babies kiss his hand and put it to their foreheads, the Oriental reverent greeting. “I shall
NEVER ALLOW YOUR SCHOOL TO BE ANNIHILATED,”
he said to me afterwards. “Would to Allah we had more like it!” It was these words of a Turkish gentleman – and I have found that the Turk is a clean enemy and keeps his given word – which, when my friends thought it best for me to go amongst my own in Egypt, allowed me to leave Jerusalem at last with a tranquil conscience. Last winter’s tormenting possibility no longer existed, and though I went very reluctantly, I knew my going would no more be fatal to the school. I have regular news that the school goes on exactly as it always has done – no one interferes with it. Only its head is absent and all are kind enough to say they miss me. “Come back, you’re wanted here,” they write. “Rumour has it that you are back here; are you?” one letter says. Form what I have already said you will understand that the Evelina School played an important part from its regular school work. The American consul once wired to Constantinople that if the Evelina School were closed it would create a panic in the town. It was a centre of hope for the whole Jewish population; the hundreds of children going quietly to this enemy school day after day unmolested was an antidote for the fear which caught many people when institution after institution was forcibly closed. Anxious men and women crowding in to ask for advice were helped by the bright optimism which was in the atmosphere here. You learn to smile, however heavy your heart may be when you know that your pupils and your staff take their cue from your expression when you answer their morning greeting them as they troop past you to their classrooms. I want to awaken your interest in this Jerusalem school of ours with its nearly 700 children of Jerusalem’s poorest, 700 children who are taught free, among whom we gave 57,963 fresh meals during the past school year. We are only an elementary school – something like one of your schools down here – only the pupils are taught in Hebrew and in English, and Arabic they all know, of course. I am quite candid about the fact that we do not aim so much at instruction as we do at education; we don’t aim at turning out university candidates, but we do want our girls to
GROW UP AS GOOD, TRUE JEWISH WOMEN,
and, I say it brazenly and unashamed, we bring them up as – I caught the fitting expression yesterday from our preacher at the Dalston Station – I say we bring them up in what so many people stigmatize as fossilized Judaism. I say, thank God for this fossilization which teaches allegiance to and not alienation from the faith that has kept us alive through forty centuries, and I thank God that our dear President here has always approved of, and has always stood by, me in my endeavour in this direction. What I ought to have here to-day is a series of cinematography films to show you what goes on in the Evelina School day in, day out, of the school year. These pictures would remain with you as no words of mine can. The changing films would lead you from our dental surgery on the ground floor – fitted up from money procured at our needlework exhibition we had here a couple of years ago, together with the Bezolel Art School – to our eye clinic, in which an average of one hundred and eighty children last year received daily treatment by the nurses provided us free by the American Daughters of Zion, who thus treat sixteen schools in Jerusalem, under a clever oculist. You would be shown our sick-room, with its wide sofas having fevered little forms, children taken ill with the Jerusalem form of malaria while in school, and whom we cannot send home with their temperature over 103. We give them a vinegar wash down and a hot cup of tea, and very often they are back in class in a couple of hours. The whole of our six hundred and sixty-nine children were vaccinated in this room by our visiting school doctor last year, when we feared an outbreak of small-pox, and it is in this room that you would see the rows of children after school clutching a Raphael Tuck and Son’s picture in their hands as backsheesh for the swallowing of the bitter quinine pill which is their prescribed prophylactic treatment against malaria. This is a room of many uses, and here after school hours the hygiene and first aid and care of infants and invalids’ lessons are given to the older girls – these are in English. Our picture screen would not be empty for a minute and would next show you the great workroom with its wage-earning ex-class girls, bent over Sepher mantles and Aran-hakodesh curtains all on order. You might like to watch the set over there making their own clothes of those of their mothers and sisters. The picture-films of the classrooms would keep many of you there for the whole lessons. The curriculum is carried out in an equal number of Hebrew and English lessons, except in the Infant School, which for the first two years is all in Hebrew. How they would charm you – the object lessons or bread, from the ear of corn to the dinner-table – all illustrated by beautiful black-board drawings and specimens and all in pure beautiful Hebrew. The tots from four to six will show you their free brushwork pages of Seder-tables and Ruth’s yellow wheat and yellow ripe oranges in the green grove, of Rishon-le-Zion or Petach Tikvah. In our top class you would see a film showing a delighted tourist – an English-Jewish minister – listening to our girls explaining, in Hebrew, again, of course, a knotty point in the Kizur Shulchan Aruch, and I can tell you that on leaving that room I heard him mutter, “By Jove, they’re stunners.” Among the refugees from Belgium here in London are four Evelina girls, whom Mr. Hermann Landau discovered at the Shelter, and to whom Mr. and Mrs. Arthur E. Franklin have given a home. Those girls are fair specimens of what the Evelina girls are, they are
EQUALLY AT EASE IN HEBREW AND ENGLISH,
and they are children of whom any school in London could be proud. It would do your hearts good to hear some of our elder girls speak on Thursday afternoon, when we close till Sunday, as only our workrooms are open on Friday half the day. We always talk about the Sedra of the coming Shabbos, as girls do not go to Synagogue in Jerusalem, and I have never seen a visitor untouched by the sight of these hundreds of children trooping down in twos to the singing of a march song of the top classes, after a prayer honouring the Sabbath is said followed by my “Shabat Shalom,” and the seven hundred throats answer “Shabat Shalom umvorach”. But another set of pictures is on the screen – this time rather sad ones. You see the dining-room, and it is here that you will note on how little our Jerusalem children can exist. See the crowded long tables bare even of a tablecloth, each child with its plate of soup and a slice of bread – a very thin slice since the war began because we have so many more to feed – there two kiddies eating from one plate, an orphan is sharing her meal with a girl who has a father and therefore cannot go on the list. “What’s that voice over there?” a monitress is scolding. “Ha yalda ra meoud hi lo chavetza birchotz hayadayim vehi lo lakachat et hamori – is her excited answer to my query as to what is wrong. The girl has not washed her hands as all have to do. No girl goes home; those who do not get the mean from school bring it; she has not taken the piece of bread cut ready for the blessing. We turn away sadly when we have investigated. The little one is rebellious. Why should she wash her hands and make “Hamozi”; she has nothing to eat; she gets no free dinner; she, too, has a father; he has been ill and can earn nothing, but he exists and our regulations are hard, necessary, so as our means are inadequate. Yet another scene there, in the dining room, is that showing the teacher on duty called in to arbitrate. Sivya has sold to Tamar for a halfpenny her prize for being never absent, never late, for a month, fallen to her share our of fifty girls for a raffle; the smell of the soup is so good and she is so hungry, and when the transaction is completed and the soup monitress has the plate ready for delivery, the enormity of it breaks on Sivya and she cries, “No. I’ll go without; give me back my
NEVER ABSENT, NEVER LATE, PRIZE.
Tamar won’t give it up – teacher must decide. And yet another film shows you the crowds of mothers on an Admissions Day begging for those free dinner which for many of the children are the only meal in twenty-four hours. “Hat Rachmonus – acht putzelech kinder – nit fer Aich gedacht – gebt a ‘biel’ warmes – wos is – ain kind mehr – sie verd net a ‘sach’ essen.” Brothers and sisters present here to-day, do you blame me for having had to plead guilty, when I recently stood before my Committee, to having given more meals than I ought to have done? Would every one of you not have acted in like manner if you had gone once as I did into the Infant Room after Purim this year – we’d had half a week’s holiday for Tanith Esther – your Purim and ours, we keep Shushan Purim to find the teacher – little more than a child herself – weeping, and the cluster of children all around her pinching their cheeks in Oriental fashion and swaying in grief. “What is it?” “Adonai Yerachem,” the teacher sobbingly says, and I hear in dismay that little Sol – sunny was her name and sunny her nature – a little bright Sephardite, is dead, dead of hunger-typhus. The child had been away with ordinary Jerusalem fever. Chadachat is ke krank, our Ashkenazi mothers say, and we had been short-staffed during this year, and the teachers have had less time for visiting the homes of the children and so no one knew that little Sol’s whole family were starving and our bright little girl had given up the effort to live. And what have I had to do within the past three weeks? Send orders to Jerusalem, cut down children’s food one third and send off one third work-girls. I dare not think of the result of this, but I’ve had to do it. Ah, I must cut my coat according to my cloth I’ve been told. Ah, good people, I do not appeal to you to-day to give us money, God knows you are hard pressed enough to help in so many other quarters, but I do hope that when this war is over you will help us to feed our little children. Do not think your smallest contribution will not help. It will. Each five shillings yearly to the Anglo-Jewish Association will feed a child for close to two months. I would appeal to the children of England to create Children’s Leagues all over the British Empire for an Evelina School Free Dinners Fund, with child secretaries, who will forward their collections to the JEWISH CHRONICLE, which will send them to us. Sisters and Brothers, – as I stood giddy and faint in the surf-boat off Jaffa, waiting anxiously for the cruel Jaffa Commandant to decide whether he would let the American Consul go on board with me – a kind friend who had formed one of the party accompanying me from Jerusalem seeing my distress called over to me, “Hinne lo yonum velo Yishan Shomer Israel” – behold he sulmbereth not nor sleepeth the Guardian of Israel. And I found strength to answer from an anguished heart – Im Eshkacheth Jerushalayim tisbrach yemini.” Brothers and sisters in Israel, let not this phrase sung so sadly for the first time in our first exile from our country sound meaningless in your ears. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning.”
Miss Landau added to her paper a reference to some hospital work she had been able to do in Jerusalem. She had, she said, been unable to comply with the request of the Red Crescent to assist in the curing of wounded Turkish soldiers, giving as her reason her unwillingness to get Turks well again in order to fight against her country. She was then asked to give her services to a hospital for soldiers suffering from contagious diseases, being told that she would thus be protecting her own people. She complied and from January 26th to May 27th this Red Crescent Hospital was under her organisation. She arranged a new kosher kitchen and they had a complete hospital for Jewish patients and nurses. They were able to save ten Russian girls from expulsion by taking them in the hospital as nurses, as also nine Armenian and several Jewish men.
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The above paper was read at a meeting held at Camperdown House, Aldgate, last Sunday [September 19, 1915 – Sunday], when Mr. CLAUDE G. MONTEFIORE presided over a large gathering. Prior to calling on Miss Landau,
The CHAIRMAN briefly outlined the educational and political work of the Association and expressed the hope that Miss Landau’s account of the system at the Evelina School would, by showing the methods adopted by the Association, make it appear a worthy object of the support of Jewish residents in East London.
At the conclusion of Miss Landau’s paper,
The CHIEF RABBI, in moving a vote to the lecturer, said he wished to pay a tribute to the personality of Miss Landau. The work she had described could not have been done except by a personality. The Association was very fortunate in having Miss Landau, who was an Esheth Chayil, and a host in herself. There had been many teachers sent to the East, but a good number had only succeeded in separating the children from their parents, causing the young ones to look upon themselves as superiors. In the East it was not a question between Orthodox Judaism and advanced Judaism, but between no Judaism at all and the orthodox form of religion. In Miss Landau they had a personality, a valorous woman, who was at the same time in thorough sympathy with the children and their training in the ancient forms of the Jewish faith.
Miss LANDAU briefly replied.
The HAHAM proposed a vote of thanks to the Chairman. He said the he considered the meeting as exceeding in importance any of the public meetings he had had the honour of addressing in East London, for they were now facing the grave problem of the future of their people. It was significant in the highest manner that they had Mr. Montefiore presiding there that day. He had stood by Miss Landau, as she had explained, in her carrying on of their faith in the ancient manner, and they had to recognise his broadmindedness, his deep sympathy and keen understanding of the sentiments of their people in the East. Miss Landau had been doing what they considered to be Zionist work, and he ventured to think that Mr. Montefiore himself could not be impervious to the impression which the paper must have made on every one of them and to the fact that in educating the children of the Holy Land they were laying the foundation-stone of the re-establishment of the Jewish people in the land of their fathers. When their Chairman, in describing the educational work of the Association, had told them that there were not yet County Council Schools in the East, he (Dr. Gaster) had ventured, sotto voce, to say “happily,” because they did not wish their children in the East to be brought up according to the hide-bound rules that governed what might be the necessary education of the children in the West. The circumstances were quite different in the East, and only one who, like Miss Landau, lived there and knew the people, what they wanted and what was necessary for them, could give the children so fruitful an education as she had given them – fruitful because it was not an English education but a Jewish education.
In responding Mr. MONTEFIORE appealed for new annual subscribers to the Association, and hoped the function would result in increased interest being taken in its work. He referred to the assistance the British Government had at all times given them both in their educational and political work.
A goodly number of those present became members of the Association.
Some things to keep you busy, distracted, and intrigued…
Annie Edith Landau, at...
… A Fine Principle (no author), The Jerusalem Post, October 2, 2009
Anson, Daphne, “How The Headmistress Entered The Harem: A Vignette From Ottoman Palestine”, Daphne Anson Blog, August 16, 2011
Schor, Laura S., The Best School in Jerusalem: Annie Landau’s School for Girls 1900-1960 (Worldcat)
Montagu, Judy, Miss Landau, Educator Extraordinary – “’The Best School in Jerusalem’ Tells the Fascinating Story of the Evelina de Rothschild School” (Book Review of The Best School in Jerusalem: Annie Landau’s School for Girls 1900-1960, by Laura S. Schor), The Jerusalem Post, June 12, 2014
Ungar-Sargon, Batya, “The Jerusalem School That Turned Superstitious Jews Into Proper Brits – A new exhibit and book recall the Evelina de Rothschild School, which taught Jewish girls punctuality, self-reliance – and English”, Tablet Magazine, July 1, 2014
Djemal Pasha (Ahmed Djemal … احمد جمال پاشا … Ahmet Cemâl Paşa), at…
… International Encyclopedia of the First World War
Evelina de Rothschild School, at…
… Projects Jerusalem Foundation
Dr. Laura S. Schor, historian of Evelina de Rothschild School, at…
