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AIU School at Izmir, Turkey
The Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) school in Izmir was located near the heart of the old Jewish Quarter, La Judiera, in the Karatas neighborhood of Izmir. The first Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) school for boys was founded in 1873, and a second vocational school for girls with 34 students was opened in 1884.1 By 1895 there were in Izmir four Jewish schools for boys with about 2,500 students and two Jewish schools for girls with some 500 students.2
Description
The Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU): The Alliance, founded in Paris on 17 May 1860, by several idealistic French Jews two years after the Mortara Case in the name of religious freedom, with three main goals, the first of which was legal and had two parts: 1) to defend individual "oppressed" Jews and protect against general attacks against Judaism,and 2) to work toward civil and political rights equal to those of non-Jews, for those Jews who did not yet enjoy this legal entitlement.3 The second goal was the moral betterment of Jews around the world. Between 1860 and 1920, the AIU established schools in Jewish communities throughout the Ottoman empire.4 This movement was initially resisted by Jewish traditionalists, but succeeded in opening many schools throughout the Ottoman empire.5 With the entry of Ottoman Jews into state and Alliance schools, a Jewish bourgeoisie gradually emerged. The AIU schools ensured that modernist discourse would be the dominant discourse of the Ottoman/Turkish Jews and created and/or enhanced class divisions within Jewish communities, which were expressed in linguistic form as the newly-educated bourgeoisie spoke in French and Turkish while the lower-class, impoverished, uneducated Jews spoke in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish).6
The AIU in Izmir: The first Alliance school for boys in Izmir was inaugurated in August 1873, and the occasion was marked by fanfare and a sermon given by Chief Rabbi Abraham Pallacci, on the need for education and the acquisition of foreign languages for the improvement of Izmir Jewry.7 In the same year, David Cazes became the first Alliance director in Izmir.8 He remained the director for the AIU in Izmir for five years, establishing cordial relations between the school and the community. Cazes worked closely with leading Jewish notables, such as the Sidis and the Placos, and laid the necessary groundwork for the establishment of the girls' school, which opened immediately after his departure from Izmir. In the 25 years after the Alliance first came to the city in 1873, the organization had established "one school for boys, one school for girls, one kindergarten, one coeducational school in the suburb of Karatas, two "popular" schools resulting from the merger of several small meldars, two apprenticeship programs, one dressmaking workshop for girls, one alumni association with 300 members, one reading club, and one mutual aid society for artisans. One of the teachers sent by the school directed the Talmud Torah. The Alliance schools were deeply involved in philanthropic activities, providing thirty to forty thousand free meals a year to the poor students and they were directly involved with the administration of the Rothschild hospital."9
Suggested Further Reading:
- Levy, Agidor, "Jews, Turks, Ottomans: a shared history, fifteenth through the twentieth century"
- Rodrigue, Aron, "French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925"
- The Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) Archives in Paris (http://www.aiu.org)
- Weiker, Walter F., "Ottomans, Turks, and the Jewish polity : a history of the Jews of Turkey"
Sources
Notes
[1] Rodrigue, Aron, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Laskier, Michael M. Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, s.v. 2nd ed. Vol. 1 "Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU)" New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004, 151-152, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3424600173&v=2.1&u=mlin_m_wellcol&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=960ec337f12b9cbac2e8d2f9050e2967 (accessed July 7, 2014).
[4] Ibid.
[5] Nahum, Henri, "The Jews in Smyrna of confinement at the opening to the world," Journal of Muslim worlds and the Mediterranean, September 2005, posted May 4, 2005, 107-110, http://remmm.revues.org/2799 (accessed July 7, 2014).
[6] Neyzi, Leyla. "Strong as Steel, Fragile as a Rose: A Turkish Jewish Witness to the Twentieth Century." Jewish Social Studies 12, no. 1 (Fall, 2005): 167-190, http://search.proquest.com/docview/195522760?accountid=14953 (accessed July 7, 2014).
[7] Laskier, Michael M. Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, s.v. 2nd ed. Vol. 1 "Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU)" New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004, 151-152, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3424600173&v=2.1&u=mlin_m_wellcol&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=960ec337f12b9cbac2e8d2f9050e2967 (accessed July 7, 2014).
[8] Rodrigue, Aron, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 121-124.
[9] Ibid.
Works Cited
Laskier, Michael M. Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, s.v. 2nd ed. Vol. 1 "Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU)" New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004, 151-152, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3424600173&v=2.1&u=mlin_m_wellcol&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=960ec337f12b9cbac2e8d2f9050e2967 (accessed July 7, 2014).
Levy, Agidor. Jews, Turks, Ottomans: a shared history, fifteenth through the twentieth century. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002.
Nahum, Henri. "The Jews in Smyrna of confinement at the opening to the world." Journal of Muslim worlds and the Mediterranean. September 2005. posted May 4, 2005. 107-110. http://remmm.revues.org/2799 (accessed July 7, 2014).
Neyzi, Leyla. "Strong as Steel, Fragile as a Rose: A Turkish Jewish Witness to the Twentieth Century." Jewish Social Studies 12, no. 1 (Fall, 2005): 167-190. http://search.proquest.com/docview/195522760?accountid=14953 (accessed July 7, 2014).
Rodrigue, Aron. French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey. 1860-1925. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Weiker, Walter F. "Review of French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925 by Aron Rodrigue." International Journal of Middle East Studies 24. No. 1 (Feb., 1992): pp. 133-135. http://0-www.jstor.org.luna.wellesley.edu/stable/163768 (accessed July 7, 2014).