Rakefet Anzi is a doctoral fellow at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History (2021–2022). She is a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holds an MA in Jewish history (2021) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her master's thesis focuses on the history of adult education in Israel before independence, and examines the influence of the German and the English pedagogical models and the way they shaped the Hebrew University’s practices in this field. The analysis examines the educational projects of two German-Jewish intellectuals - Martin Buber and Abraham Halevi Fraenkel who promoted adult education in Israel. Both Buber and Frenkel harnessed adult education to establish an educated and Hebrew-speaking nation in Mandatory Palestine and believed in its contribution towards nation-building. 

Doctoral Project

Anzi's doctoral research explores the role of adult education in the process of nation-building in post-independence Israel. Adult education played a key role in the formation of nations and was central to the ideology of national movements. In Germany, for example, the question of the relationship between Volksbildung and Volk-Bildung was discussed extensively. The Zionist movement, since its inception, also debated the issue of adult education and explores various pedagogic models. This study will analyze the educational philosophies of Zionist thinkers from German-speaking spaces such as Martin Buber and Hugo Samuel Bergmann, and of Zionist thinkers from Eastern Europe such as Ahad Ha'am, Berl Katzenelson, Hayim Nahman Bialik among others. Preliminary analysis indicates a duality in the educational approach of these thinkers. On the one hand, they relied on Jewish theological traditions that perceived the Torah study for adults as a way of coming closer to God, and on the other hand they were influenced by political traditions of modern nationalism and its role in nation-building. This study will underscore and explore the tension between these two secular and theological tendencies and how each thinker attempted to resolve this dichotomy.The purpose of the theoretical discussion is to lay the groundwork for the empirical research, which will examine several case studies of adult education activity: education for new immigrants, education in the military, education for the Working Settlement and education done in public libraries.