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Answering the Call:

Nechama Leibowitz and the

Mizrachi Girls School of Jerusalem

n October 17, 1933 (27 Tishrei 5694), the Mizrachi years were taken from Germany to be educated in the Land
Girls School of Jerusalem began providing edu- of Israel in the spirit of pioneering Zionism. Nearly one-
cation and vocational training to religious girls third came from religious homes and demanded religious
O between the ages of fifteen and seventeen who education and a religious environment.
were born in the Land of Israel. The girls, who had primary
school diplomas, were initially admitted for a month-long “However, at that juncture it was scarcely possible to find
trial period; only after proving themselves in their studies kibbutzim or institutions where these youths might be
did they go on to spend two years at the school. absorbed.
The historical events of the early 1930s brought change to “Amid these circumstances, we saw fit to place the new
the institution’s mission. With Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, institution at the service of Religious Youth Aliyah as a
the need arose to help Jewish teenagers leave Europe, make vocational education center. Accordingly, eligibility for
their way to the Land of Israel, and integrate there. For these admission was broadened and the curriculum was slightly
teenagers, the Jewish Agency established a program called changed. Two hundred and fifty girls who arrived through
Youth Aliyah, the brainchild and creation of Recha Frier Youth Aliyah went through the Girls School, where they
(a German Zionist leader, poet, and author). Youth Aliyah studied gardening, sewing, and various disciplines. Con-
was managed by Henrietta Szold, an educator and Zionist currently, they received instruction from teachers of note
activist originally from the United States and one of the in Hebrew, Tanach, and history.”
founders of the Zionist women’s organization Hadassah.
Nechama Leibowitz: bringing Judaism
Through Youth Aliyah, children arrived in the Land of Israel
without their parents and were absorbed by kibbutzim in and Zionism to life
small groups. However, the religious kibbutzim of those days One of the best-known teachers to work at the school was
were small in number and unable to take in all of the reli- Nechama Leibowitz, a biblical commentator who would
gious children. And so the Mizrachi Girls School stepped go on to become a professor of Tanach and an Israel Prize
in to absorb religious girls who had arrived alone from laureate in education. Born in Latvia, she received her doc-
Germany through Youth Aliyah. torate from the University of Marburg in Germany. She
immigrated in 1930 to the Land of Israel, where she lived
Answering the call of the hour: with her husband in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Moshe neighbor-
taking in girls from Germany hood and worked at the Mizrachi Girls School and later the
Mizrachi Teachers’ Seminary, where she taught literature,
In 1938, there were sixty-five boarding students at the Miz- Tanach, and Jewish history.
rachi Girls School of Jerusalem, from Germany, Palestine,
the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia. The grounds of the In her book Nechama, Chayuta Deutsch writes: “In 1938,
institution extended over an area of one acre, on which were Mrs. Lotte Pinczower, director of the Mizrachi Girls School
a vegetable and flower garden, a nursery, and a chicken of Jerusalem, asked Nechama Leibowitz to join the school’s
coop. The building’s main floor included a cafeteria, kitchen, instructional staff. The Mizrachi Girls School then was a
sewing hall, library, club room, and office. On the two upper vocational high school for girls, most of them new immi-
floors there were dormitories, and on the roof was an “elec- grants from Germany without family. The encounter with
tric laundry”, then considered a state-of-the-art amenity. these girls was a true challenge for Nechama Leibowitz.
Nechama’s knowledge of German helped her form a con-
Bessie Gotsfeld recalled the early years of the school in an nection with them and enabled her to help them interpret
article published in HaTzofeh on October 12, 1943: “A short and understand Hebrew words.”
time after the opening of the Mizrachi Girls School of Jeru-
salem, the initial Youth Aliyah groups began arriving in the In a 1947 article by Professor Leibowitz, she describes the
Land of Israel. Young men and women in their adolescent girls who arrived at the institution in its early days, during

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