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"Children of Our Future" was a short essay published in 1929 in the Hebrew Teachers' Association jubilee book. It boldly claimed that future offspring of European Jews in Palestine were all fatally doomed due to the degenerative characteristics of the local climate. Such concepts stood in clear opposition to the dream of creating a regenerated type of New Jew in Palestine (referred to symbolically as "Hebrew," which was the ancient denomination of Jews in Palestine). What were the cultural concepts that inspired the article? Did it express a unique idea of the writer or, on the contrary, reflect deeper hidden fears and concealed disappointments of the Hebrew community? To what extent were such concepts a cultural reflection of wider European ideas about degeneration? This article tries to elucidate these issues. The Jubilee book was particular for two reasons: it represented one of the most influential activist groups in Jewish Palestine of that period--the Hebrew teachers--and it was, for its time, an unchallenged intellectual achievement by the wide scope of educational issues it treated as well as by the depth of its analysis. The article, in fact, was unique in trying to reconstruct a pupil "type" and in trying to understand the origin of its particular features. It was also seemingly unique in its interpretation of environmental influences, which stood in apparent contradiction to regenerative ideas that dominated the Jewish ethos in Palestine. But was it indeed unique or rather a reflection of alternative concepts that considered the regenerative trend with more critical views? In order to answer this the article should be placed in the larger context of psychological, medical and pedagogical European concepts concerning degeneration and regeneration and their reflections in the intellectual sphere of Jewish Palestine.

This article examines the need rural teachers felt for solitude and the place it took in their emotional world. Solitude was not seen by the teachers as a substitute for social life but, rather, considered as enriching it. Unlike loneliness, solitude was sought after and craved as it represented voluntary self-fulfilment in an environment that was considered culturally and often emotionally unfriendly, at times even hostile. Solitude became at the same time a barrier against bigoted and conservative local societies and a symbolic emotional space in which cultural craving could find a place. Teachers felt the need to preserve substantial distance while at the same fulfilling a kind of beneficial "mission civilisatrice". Expressions of teachers' solitude, common to various rural environments at that period, will be examined through the test-case of Hebrew settlements (= moshavot) in Galilee, where the interpretations of the idea of solitude seem an appropriate reflection of similar attitudes in larger rural European scopes. The article will explore the following issues: the origins of teachers' solitude as mental response to social tensions, the appearances of intimacy, apparently spontaneous but in fact totally controlled in order to preserve the symbolic hedges of solitude and intimacy, different expressions solitude could take and the way offences were considered as attacks on solitude as an emotional refuge. Finally, the article will go through the solitary worlds of one such teacher, Yehuda Antebi.

The article discusses relationships between farmers and teachers in the moshavot farming colonies of the Galilee region of Israel during the Yishuv period of Jewish settlement in the region, with a focus on the period from 1882 to 1939. Topics discussed include research methodology and the records contained in personal letters and diaries, the roles of teachers and farmers in the conflict concerning the economic independence of the moshavot, and the role of identity politics and collective narratives in this relationship.

Jewish settlements - moshavot - in Galilee in Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century were administered by a French Jewish philanthropic society, JCA. The JCA administrators, in their behaviour and in their world view, reflected the mentality which was framed by the French bourgeoisie culture during the Belle Epoque. An understanding of the bourgeois viewpoint is the key to comprehending the approach of JCA administrators to the world of the Eastern European Jews that resided in the moshavot. These conceptions led to a paternalistic, and even quasi-colonialist, attitude of the administrators towards the Jewish peasants. Thus, the encounter between those two social groups became tense and complicated, generating mutual loathing and frustration. This article describes the different expressions of these attitudes and tries to explain the process of their development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the decades preceding 1948, the Bedouin Amirs of the Fa'our family, leaders of the Fadil tribe, were dominant figures in the area of the meeting point of the borders of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. After World War 1, two mandatory powers divided control over the Fadil tribe habitat, forcing Amir Fa'our al-Fa'our to deal with new and serious problems necessitating new processes of adaptation. These were territorial, as tribal lands were now under different mandates; political, in dealing with conflicting British, French, Syrian, Lebanese, and Zionist goals; and personal, as debt became a decisive factor in decision-making. This article investigates the Fa'our family sources of power from the end of Ottoman rule and the ways in which new problems were dealt with during mandatory control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]