Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

L'éducation féminine en Orient : l'école de filles de l'alliance Israélite universelle à Galata, Istanbul (1879-1912)

1991; CDU SEDES; Volume: 10; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3406/hes.1991.1582

1777-5906

Esther Benbassa,

African history and culture studies

Abstract The Alliance israélite universelle, an organization founded by emancipated French Jewry, as a part of its work of «régénération» of Oriental Jewry, developed a vast network of French-speaking schools all around the Mediterranean. Staking on the role that women could play in the family for the modernisation, i.e. the westernization of the Jewish masses, the Alliance soon made of women education one of its priorities. The study of the school for girls of Galata, in a quarter of highly concentrated Jewish population, and in the vicinity of the European area, in a cosmopolitan city like Istanbul, reveals both the beneficial impact of a modern type education in a propitious context and its repercussions on the female Jewish population. This school is also an interesting case because it received both Ashkenazi and Sefardi pupils and because the teaching was delivered both in French and in German. The study of the school microcosm reveals the evolution of a traditional Jewish society facing an imported modernity.