Anne Edith Landau (1873-1945) was described in a 1903 London Jewish Chronicle article as the first Jewish woman ever to be arrested in Palestine, and the only Jewess on whose behalf the Sultan had issued a firman (edict). But what actually made her a legend in Jerusalem was her extraordinary role as the principal of the Evelina de Rothschild School for more than four decades.
In 1899, as a twenty-five year old strictly orthodox young woman living in London, Miss Anne Edith Landau was recruited by a great nephew of Moses Montefiore to join the faculty of the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem. The school established in 1854 was the first girls school in Palestine. It was renamed Evelina de Rothschild in 1866 after Baron Lionel Rothschild’s daughter who passed away while giving birth to a stillborn son a year and a half after her wedding to her Austrian second cousin, Ferdinand von Rothschild. Sadly Evelina’s widower, aged 27 at the time, never remarried.
Miss Landau was one of eighteen children (nine boys and nine girls) raised by her parents Markus and Chaya Kohn Landau. She was the oldest of thirteen children born to her father and Chaya from his second marriage. [Her father had five children with his first wife Chana who passed away in childbirh]
Anne Edith’s father originally called Mordechai Fredkin came from Mogilev Russia.. He assumed the Landau name after acquiring a forged passport in his attempt to escape being conscripted in the Czarist army. Anne Edith’s mother Chaya Kohn came from Kleine Erlingen, Bavaria where her father Max Michael had served as rabbi. Chaya’s maternal grandfather, David Seligmann Weiskopf was a Rabbi in Wallerstein. a town near Nordlingen, Germany. Her maternal grandmother Faygie Rosenbaum was a niece of the famous Shtadlan Mendel Rosenbaum of Zell.The new couple moved to London to raise the five orphans and establish their own family.
Mordechai Landau was a Talmid Chochom who engaged in several different trades. He was a boot and shoe manufacturer, a shochet (a kosher slaughterer), and later a grocer who produced kosher for Pesach products with his picture on the package designating his hashgacha. Not satisfied with the Hashkofos of the London Jewish Chronicle he published a newspaper called the Jewish Standard from his basement from 1888-1891.
He writes: “Our contemporaries contend that Judaism has been formed in a plastic mould, and requires to be re-modelled according to the shifting needs of every age. We believe on the other hand that the written and oral law, as revealed on Sinai, is fixed and unchangeable,..”
Mordechai Landau lamented the fact that the Jewish schools in London did not provide enough Torah and Yiddishkeit in the curriculum.
“The Torah is surely at least as efficient an instrument as the Latin and Greek Classics which absorb so much time in an ordinary school.” Landau’s paper advocated establishing new Jewish schools which would offer more Torah studies and replace Latin and Greek.
It was these values that shaped the worldview of his daughter Anne Edith.
Anne’s father was also a creative inventor. His patented inventions included carriage lamps, street lamps and safety lamps for mines, He was interested in aeronautics and corresponded with the Wright Brothers who visited him in the early 1900s when they came to London. He did not find the sciences incompatible with Torah values. He founded the society for providing Shabbos meals as well as the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter, which his wife Chaya helped run.
Years later, in Jerusalem Miss Landau would inculcate values of chesed to her students which she learned from her mother.
Anne Edith was educated in Frankfurt at the Rabbi Samson Rephael Hirsch High school where one of her teachers was Rabbi Mendel Hirsch, a son of Rabbi Shamson Rephael Hirsch. It was her mother’s uncle, Rabbi Moshe Weiskopf a prominent rabbi in Paris who recommended to his niece, that she send her daughter there. Anne Edith boarded in Frankfurt with her mother’s family.
Anne then returned to London in 1892 to complete her education at the Graystoke Teachers Training College. She learned there the latest teaching methods as well as lessons in hygiene, home economics, sports and the importance for girls to volunteer. All these lessons were duplicated by her in the Evelina school.
Two years later when she wanted to obtain her teacher’s certificate, Anne Edith discovered that several of her exams were scheduled for a late Friday afternoon which would entail Chilul Shabbos.
Anne protested to the school, to the London Jewish Chronicle, to the Chief Rabbi of England and to the Vice President of the Educational Council asking them to do what they could to enable her to take the exams on another day.
Her protests helped as the London Jewish Chronicle reported at a later date when she was hired as a teacher at the Westminsters Jews’ Free School that ” Miss Annie Landau was permitted to be tested “by the Education Department on January 15th instead of the original date which was timed for Friday afternoon after Sabbath had commenced.”
Throughout her life, Anne Edith always strictly observed Shabbos and the Chagim and demonstrated that one didn’t have to compromise with one’s religion to excel. After teaching in London for several years she traveled to Palestine to accept her position as a teacher.
When she arrived at Jaffa, the main port in Palestine, however, she learned that in order to disembark, she would have to provide an agent with the customary Baksheesh (bribe), which out of principle she refused to do. The agent warned her that she was taking a risk by insisting to embark without it. She was ferried to the shore where she was informed, that the official edict of the Muslim ruler was to forbid the entrance of Jews to Palestine. She should deposit her passport and half a pound to guarantee that she would leave within 30 days.
Anne Edith refused to comply and was marched off to a prison cell where smugglers were usually locked up. She remained there for several hours until the British Consul arrived from Jerusalem. He arranged for her release explaining to her that the official Ottoman firman (edict) entitling her to live in Palestine had not yet arrived. She should not have been sent by the Anglo-Jewish Association until the firman had been received.
The firman was actually brought to her by a Turkish official several days later in Jerusalem. If being arrested shocked her a bit, it was nothing compared to the situation of the girls she was to encounter.
The following excerpt is from an interview Anne Edith gave to the London Jewish Chronicle:
“The Moroccan Jews,” she said, “especially, are in a state of shocking poverty. You can see them living in holes made in the wall– without light, air, or furniture… I have come across Jewish families where the father has no work, the mother is blind and there are eight or nine children to support. Perhaps all are herded in a single room; and diphtheria is raging among them.. In my school there are 190 children of deserted or widowed mothers who receive a free dinner every day. It is a touching sight to see these little girls save half the bread they get, in order to take it home to their people.”
Many Jewish parents would send their daughters to the London Jews’ Society School or Soers de Sion which provided their students with much needed free food, clothing and boots. The parents did not believe their daughters would be affected by their missionary teachings. However, students at these schools would have to sing Christian hymns and were expected to join Christian worship. Landau tried to attract the girls to the Evelina school by matching the social benefits of the missions. She would solicit money and gifts from visitors to the school and would arrange for annual bazaars and other activities that would bring in extra income to the school.
Miss Landau moved into a building serving as the residence of the foreign teachers of the school. It was across the street from Frutiger House located on Jerusalem’s St. Paul Street, now known as Rechov Shivtei Yisroel. The Frutiger House was the building that housed the Evelina de Rotschild school. Today, Israel’s Education Ministry is located in the Frutiger House, a mansion built in 1885, the magnificent private homes of a Swiss Prostestant banker, Johannes Frutiger, one of the wealthiest people in Eretz Yisrael. Frutiger helped finance Machane Yehudah, Meah Shearim and the railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem,
The mansion, one of the most beautiful buildings in the entire city had 40 rooms, two wells and a garden and gatekeeper’s home. When Frutiger went bankrupt in March of 1896, the purchase of it for the school was approved by the Anglo Association which provided the rest of the money after an initial deposit of 2500 pounds donated by the Rothschild family. The purchase was arranged by Fortunee Behar who was hired in 1899 to serve as the first professionally trained headmistress of the school. She had been working as a teacher for the French Alliance israelite Universelle in Constantinople (Istanbul) and came from a prominent Sephardi Jerusalem family.
The school did not have a headmistress when it was originally located adjacent to the Rothschild hospital in the old city of Jerusalem. Dr. Yitzchak Schwartz who headed the hospital also supervised the school. In 1888, when the hospital suffered overcrowding, the school moved to Rechov Haneviim and could not be supervised anymore by the head of the hospital. At the time cooking, gardening and gymnastics were added to the curriculums of Torah and other subjects. The older girls learned to make dresses and underclothing, to wash, iron and mend and to produce fancy items of lace.. Some of the latter was sold to a shop in Paris, while the rest was sold to foreign women in Jerusalem. The school established a savings bank for the girls so that they were able to take modest sums with them when they left.
Anne Edith Landau served as a teacher for only one year until she was chosen to replace Fortunee Behar as principal. Behar had initially been called away to take care of her ailing mother and then resigned. The pupils at the time were of various nationalities, Russian, Persian and Palestinian and Behar had instituted French as the common language. Anne Landau had to deal with overcrowding, crushing poverty and periodic outbreaks of various diseases.
Anne added a millinery class to the after school program, and the students would make hats to be sold in Paris. The items they embroidered and their hand made lace was featured and sold at an exhibition in Vienna. Anne Landau, the European, who was initially viewed as a Foreign outsider by the mothers of Jerusalem slowly became accepted when they saw that Landau was very Torah minded and did not desecrate the Shabbos. They were pleased that their daughters were learning ways to provide for themselves while at the same time remaining Torah observant.
There was a tremendous demand to register girls in the school; by April 1902, Anne had to turn down 400 girls and made urgent pleas for funds to enlarge the school because of lack of space.
In 1903 a doctor at the Rothschild hospital would regularly visit the school treating eighty pupils a week for Malaria and eye disease. When Scarlet fever broke out in the school, it was closed for a month (January 1904). A good friend and benefactor of the school was Dr. Moshe Wallach who lived on the same block as Anne landau and headed the Shaare Tzedek hospital which was the only hospital capable of treating infectious diseases.
Anne Landau became ill that year from a respiratory ailment, and after being hospitalized at Shaaret Tzedke Hospital returned to London to recuperate. While in London, she gave interviews to the London Jewish Chronicle reporting on the situation in Eretz Yisrael and the school.
By 1905 the girls were able to read, write and speak in both Hebrew and English. Every day was begun with davening together and Torah classes.The girls were taught Tanach, Jewish history, Hebrew literature and Jewish law and customs. The highlight of the week was Thursday afternoon when the entire school participated in a Shabbos assembly. One of the older students would recite part of the weekly Parshah in Hebrew and then Landau would comment on the Parshah in English.
A former student Tova (Rosenbaum) Meirav is quoted as recalling in 1964 “Every word that came out of her (Anne Landau’s) mouth still rings in my ears. In her book “The Best School in Jerusalem” recently published by Brandeis University, its author Lauro S. Schor interviewed many graduates of the school some of whom supplied her with copies of report cards and other school memorabilia. Schor quotes a letter written to Miss Landau from a student who went to Paris for additional teacher training describing her adherence to Yiddishkeit:
“… I thank you very much for your advice; but I can assure you, dear Miss Landau that I keep my religion just as I used to in Jerusalem. What you said to me before I went away came true: some girls did laugh at me, but it is not that which will prevent me to do what is right. I can also tell you that your kind words which you used to employ, when encouraging us to be good Jewesses, are too much engraved in my heart to be forgotten so quickly,”
In addition to being able to produce clothing, the students made beautiful linens for which the school became known. In 1906 a firm in Constantinople gave a very large order and in order to accommodate it, Anne Landau had not only the school’s students working on it but she hired her married students to work from their cramped homes as well. She had the patterns distributed at the school and made sure they were inspected. The profit earned was small and she gave all of it to the married students to help support them. At that time the school consisted of Russians, Romanians, Galicians, Yemenites, Moroccans and Persians.
A Berlin department stores ordered lace trimmed handkerchiefs and dress trimmings from the school, while Amsterdam shops requested clothing made of more comfortable material. The school’s embroidery workroom was commissioned to make epaulets for the officers of the Turkish garrison in Jerusalem. The workshops of the Evelina school produced curtains for the aron of a shul in Perth Australia, embroidered Torah mantles for a community in Hungary as well as embroidery for wealthy people in St Gall, Switzerland, Baltimore and New York. Many of the people who bought items would visit the school and make donations to it. Some of the donations included 200 pairs of boots, eggs for each girl three times a week for six months and clothing for the children in the kindergarten.
Other donations to the school included special gifts from the philanthropic Kaddurie family of Hong Kong and the Schiffs from New York. Dr. Wallach donated to the school as well as Anne’s own sisters.
Anne who became known as the Queen of Sheba would make connections with the educated and professional elite of Jerusalem and entertain them in the Abyssinian Palace which was located across the Street from the Frutiger House. The school had expanded to that building as well, and Anne lived on the top floor.
The advantage of the Abyssinian Palace which was built for the Abyssinian queen in 1902 but never used as her residence, was that it contained bathing facilities. Landau would make sure that the students many of whom came to school filthy (as the road were unpaved and muddy) would be washed and scrubbed before entering class. In order to provide an incentive for the students to come to school clean, Landau announced that any student who would come to school with clean hair and body every day for three months in a row would be provided with free clothing. This incentive was very successful.
By 1913 there were 150,000 Jews in Palestine, with 80,000 in Jerusalem. The Hebrew language was becoming a unifying factor for the immigrants who spoke different languages. Anne Landau hired Chemda ben yehudah, the wife of Eliezer Ben yehudah the author of the first Hebrew dictionary to teach in the school Despite being pressured by group of Zionists to stop teaching English at the school and change the school from having a bilingual education, Anne Landau insisted that English remain and the school stay bilingual. She did not consider herself a Zionist and was friendly with Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld.
When Anne Landau discovered that there was a demand for Jewish governesses in French and German speaking countries, she created a new class for girls who completed the regular program. She offered a special class called the Selectra where lessons were offered in Hebrew, English, German French, history, geography, domestic science , typewriting, shorthand and bookkeeping. When the girls finished the program they were hired abroad and became ambassadors to the homes of potential donors to the school.
One graduate became the first female dentist in Jerusalem.
On October 30,1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary and a week later the Ottomans declared that the war was a Jihad, a Muslim Holy war.
With Britain and Turkey at war, Landau faced serious problems in keeping her school open. In recognition of the important work done by the Evelina School to combat the rampant cholera and persistent hunger faced by the city’s children, the Turkish authorities allowed the school to remain open after all other British schools closed. As a member of the Red Cross Anne Landau collaborated with Dr. Moshe Wallach, the head of the Sha’arei Zedek Hospital, in organizing a hospital for victims of cholera in a mission building in the Kerem Avraham quarter, and helped run it..
In May 1914, after all British nationals had evacuated, Landau was informed that if she wanted to remain in Palestine, she would have to become an Ottoman citizen. Landau left Palestine, and placed the school in the care of another headmistress Ella Schwartzstein, with the Ottoman minister of education officially having taken over the administration of the school which at the time boasted 650 students.
Anne relocated to Alexandria Egypt to organize a school there for the hundreds of refugees from Palestine and Syria.
Eventually the Turkish authorities closed the Evelina school and confiscated the Abyssinian Palace and Frutiger House. The buildings were used to treat wounded Ottoman soldiers.
General Edmud Allenby marched into Jerusalem on Dec. 9, 1917 and received permission to return and to restore order and cleanliness to the holy city. Landau became the first woman permitted to return to Jerusalem. She arrived in February 1918 and brought with her four tons of food and clothing supplied by her supporters Jack Mosseri of Cairo and Sir Elly Kadoorie of Shanghai. British authorities agreed to ship the good free of charge on a military train from Cairo at Anne Landau’s request.
When she arrived in Jerusalem she distributed food and clothing to the needy. She then met with Governor Storrs and implored him to return the Frutiger House to the school. Three months later the building was ready to open for 500 former pupils. Landau invited the Governor to a tea and then escorted him to a class taught by the aforementioned Tova Rosenbaum whose older brother had carried her as a small child to the school thirteen years earlier. The governor was pleasantly surprised that a former Jerusalemite student had such an impeccable command of English.
Storrs who needed people proficient in English began to staff the offices of the military government with graduates of the school whose English was exemplary.
Landau soon established close ties with the British administration
With regard to Tznius issue, Landau forbade her students to have any contact with males. and she admonished them to stay tzniusdig even after graduation.
Anne was one of the first member of the Yeshurun synagogue founded by Rabbi Kook in 1923. She later had a central seat next to Rabbanit Sarah Herzog, the wife of the next chief Ashekenazi rabbi of British Mandate Palestine, Issac Herzog.
Malarai, Trachoma and ringworm were decreased as a result of the city’s public health department sending a nurse to the school
After the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933, the school welcomed German Jewish refugee girls from an orphanage in Frankfurt of which her friend Ella Schwartztein was then headmistressf. Together with Henrietta Szold she helped provide them with transportation to Eretz Yisrael, lodging, food and clothing. She also provided seats for the orphaned girls for Shabbos and Yom Tov at the Yeshurun Shul where she was a founding member. Since they didn’t have their own families anymore, she wanted them davening with her. She worked until her passing in January 1945 and is buried on Har Hazeisim.
Several years ago a street was named after her in the new neighborhood of Givat Massua on the outskirts of Jerusalem.