Abraham Halevi Fraenkel, Martin Buber and Adult Education at the Hebrew University
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Rakefet Cohen-Anzi
Abstract
This article examines the adult education program operated by the Hebrew University since 1940. The article depicts Abraham Halevi Fraenkel at its center. Fraenkel’s name as the founder of adult education at the Hebrew University has been almost completely forgotten. I want to return Fraenkel to center stage, and to attempt to connect his activities in Palestine/The Land of Israel to the ideas he brought with him from Germany in the field of adult education. These ideas can be seen as part of his religious and political convictions. Alongside Fraenkel in the leadership of adult education was Martin Buber, who worked from the 1940s to promote adult education at the Hebrew University. Buber’s endeavors in Germany in the field of adult education have been more extensively described in the literature than his role in this field in Israel. New archival material has made it possible to shed additional light both on Fraenkel’s character and on Buber’s undertakings in the 1940s on behalf of adult education in the Yishuv. A comparison between the two personalities reveals some insight into the establishment of adult education from an overall perspective.
Acknowledgements
This article is based partly on my thesis, and I extend my thanks to Yfaat Weiss for her invaluable guidance throughout this process. The research presented herein heavily relies on materials from the Central Archive of the Hebrew University, which were recently catalogued in a project spearheaded by her. I am grateful to Ofer Tzemach, the director of the archive, for his support and assistance. Special thanks are due to Michael Volkmann and Martha Friedenthal-Haase for generously sharing their expertise, which greatly enriched the depth and breadth of this work.
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Special Section: Theological-Political Predicaments. Representations of Religion and Politics in the German-Jewish Context
- Märchenhafter Materialismus. Zur Konkretion der profanen „Theologie“ Siegfried Kracauers in seinen Figurationen des Jüdischen
- Leo Strauss and Edith Stein in the Grip of the Theopolitical
- Between a Dream and Its Realization: Locating Utopia and Zionism in Kafka’s American Story
- Scholem’s Kafka: Not a Nihilistic, but Rather a Secular, Kabbalist
- Abraham Halevi Fraenkel, Martin Buber and Adult Education at the Hebrew University
- Scripture, Sovereignty and National Self-Determination in Martin Buber’s Bein Am Le’Artzo (1944)
- Other Contributions
- The Jewish Risk: Philip Roth in Sixties West Germany
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Special Section: Theological-Political Predicaments. Representations of Religion and Politics in the German-Jewish Context
- Märchenhafter Materialismus. Zur Konkretion der profanen „Theologie“ Siegfried Kracauers in seinen Figurationen des Jüdischen
- Leo Strauss and Edith Stein in the Grip of the Theopolitical
- Between a Dream and Its Realization: Locating Utopia and Zionism in Kafka’s American Story
- Scholem’s Kafka: Not a Nihilistic, but Rather a Secular, Kabbalist
- Abraham Halevi Fraenkel, Martin Buber and Adult Education at the Hebrew University
- Scripture, Sovereignty and National Self-Determination in Martin Buber’s Bein Am Le’Artzo (1944)
- Other Contributions
- The Jewish Risk: Philip Roth in Sixties West Germany
