Skip to main content

Distributed for Brandeis University Press

The Best School in Jerusalem

Annie Landau’s School for Girls, 1900–1960

Annie Edith (Hannah Judith) Landau (1873–1945), born in London to immigrant parents and educated as a teacher, moved to Jerusalem in 1899 to teach English at the Anglo-Jewish Association’s Evelina de Rothschild School for Girls. A year later she became its principal, a post she held for forty-five years. As a member of Jerusalem’s educated elite, Landau had considerable influence on the city’s cultural and social life, often hosting parties that included British Mandatory officials, Jewish dignitaries, Arab leaders, and important visitors. Her school, which provided girls of different backgrounds with both a Jewish and a secular education, was immensely popular and often had to reject candidates, for lack of space. A biography of both an extraordinary woman and a thriving institution, this book offers a lens through which to view the struggles of the nascent Zionist movement, World War I, poverty and unemployment in the Yishuv, and the relations between the religious and secular sectors and between Arabs and Jews, as well as Landau’s own dual loyalties to the British and to the evolving Jewish community.

320 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2013

HBI Series on Jewish Women

History: Middle Eastern History


Brandeis University Press image

View all books from Brandeis University Press

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations • Foreword by Shulamit Reinharz • Acknowledgments • Introduction • Annie Landau’s Road to Jerusalem • An English Girls’ School in Ottoman Jerusalem • Rebuilding in British Jerusalem • Return to Frutiger House • School Magazine: The Girls Speak Out • Transitions: 1940-1960 • Epilogue: Lessons Learned • Notes • Works Cited • Index

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press