Introduction

The present study uses the research category of transnational history to explain the formation of modern schools in a territory that lacks modern education. The emergence of modern Jewish and Hebrew education in Ottoman Palestine was a distinct product of European actors and networks’ infiltration of educational concepts. Three interwoven issues surface throughout this study, which addresses them using the methodological tools of different research fields. One point centers on how pedagogical theories were transferred from Europe to Ottoman Palestine by the actors who adopted them and the formal and informal networks that formed around them. This topic is examined using the research tools of international interactions and networks of educators. Our study also relates to “rank and file” teachers, not only to prominent ones Also of note is the wide range of active networks at the time, as Jewish life was by nature transnational. The second issue is the entanglement of various educational viewpoints and the meetings between the different actors, the Hebrew-speaking teachers and European Jewish networks, who seek to spread the civilizing mission of European bourgeois values. The third issue entails adopting and adapting pedagogical theories to the local realities of Jewish education institutions in Ottoman Palestine.