Alliance Schools in Iraq

Alliance Schools in Iraq

The Alliance Israelite Universelle (Kol Yisrael Haverim), is a Paris-based international Jewish organization founded  in 1860 to promote the idea of Jewish self-defense and self-sufficiency through education and professional development. The motto of the organization is the Jewish Rabbinic injunction: “All Jews bear responsibility for one another”. Its first Alliance elementary school for boys that opened in Baghdad toward the end of 1864, did not pass totally without opposition. The religious hierarchy opposed the move bitterly, and the  traditional  teachers  of Torah in the various Istadhs, partly no doubt, out of fear for the sources of their livelihood, called the school teachers “heretics".

The school for boys was reopened in 1872 and was latter known as the “Albert

Sassoon” (*). The language of instruction was French and the curriculum included biblical Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish and English, history, geography, arithmetic, physics and chemistry.

In 1893, the first Alliance elementary school for girls was opened in Baghdad, known as Laura Kadoorie, in a building donated by a former Baghdad Alliance graduate, Sir  Eliezer Kadoorie  (1867-1944), a philanthropist, living in Shanghai and Hong  Kong.

By 1913, the Alliance opened schools in other Jewish centers in Iraq. It was only after the British occupation of Iraq in 1917, that the number of the languages taught at Jewish schools was reduced to four (Arabic, Hebrew, French and English), as there was no need for Turkish.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, the Jewish communities of Baghdad started building their own modern schools for both boys and girls, and the role of Alliance school became less crucial in the education of Iraqi  Jewish children. most of them attended these schools founded and administered by the local Jewish community. In addition to these schools, Jewish boys and girls  enrolled in government  schools, either 

because of their proximity to the place of residence, or because they charged no fee.

(*)  Sir Albert  Sassoon (1818-1896) born in Baghdad and died at Brighton, England, was a British-Indian philanthropist and merchant. He erected  in Baghdad the school of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, presenting  to the Jewish community free of all encumbrances.