KKL-JNF Unveils Archival Photos of Israeli Classrooms for New School Year

One of the newly released photographs shows children studying beneath a tree in Kfar Hasidim in August 1925, nearly two decades before the founding of Israel. There was no traditional classroom. The students gathered in the shade and listened to their teacher.

The Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund Photo Archive unveiled five images to mark the start of Israel’s new school year on September 1. Together, they trace how children learned from 1925 through 1963, long before smartphones, whiteboards and other modern classroom technology.

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These photographs allow us to step for a moment into the classrooms of the past and see not only how children learned, but also what the society being built here looked like.

A 1940 photograph shows girls reading together in the library of the Spitzer Girls School in Jerusalem. Another, taken in Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek in 1944, shows young boys apparently practicing their handwriting. The final images capture a student solving a mathematics problem on a chalkboard in Tzur Hadassah in 1961 and children in a Jerusalem classroom opening and reading letters in 1963.

“These photographs allow us to step for a moment into the classrooms of the past and see not only how children learned, but also what the society being built here looked like,” said Efrat Sinai, KKL-JNF’s director. She said the books, desks, blackboards and outdoor lesson reveal a connection between education, community and a love of the land.

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Through the blackboard, the books, the desks, and even the lesson held beneath a tree, they reveal the deep connection between education, community, and a love of the land.