Teaching national vs. natural indigeneity: the mission of Hebrew educators in Arab cities in early twentieth-century Palestine

This study examines the intersection of indigeneity, Zionism, and education in Palestine, focusing on the gap between “natural” and “national” indigeneity. It explores how the pre-state Hebrew education system sought to foster a sense of national indigeneity among native-born, Arabic-speaking Jewish populations, primarily of Sephardic and Middle Eastern descent, living in peripheral Arab cities. While these communities shared daily cultural and social practices with their Arab neighbours, efforts to create a new Jewish national identity sought to distance native Jews from the local Arab context. Using archival research and memoirs of teacher-emissaries, the study investigates tensions between Jewish immigrants, particularly Ashkenazi Europeans, and native Jews. Zionist ideals of indigeneity, rooted in ancestral ties to the land, and the European modernity embraced by many migrants meant that terms such as “sons of the land” were paradoxically applied both to Arabic-speaking Jews and to young European Jewish immigrants arriving in the late 1800s, reflecting broader identity struggles. The study analyses how the entangled histories of the land’s inhabitants shaped evolving notions of “nativeness” that transcended ethnic and linguistic boundaries. It highlights the complexities of Zionism and the cultural and political compromises required to unify a linguistically and socially diverse Jewish population.