This book aims to be a collective biography of Joseph Niego and Lea Mitrani, two Ottoman Jews, whose lives spanned a sixty-year period of profound changes for Ottoman Jewry. Born in Edirne, Joseph and Lea were educated in the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Subsequently, they were sent to Paris in order to be trained as teachers and be sent back to help "regenerate" Ottoman Jews through a Western-style education. After their marriage, Joseph was appointed director of the agricultural school "Mikveh Israel," established by the Alliance in the outskirts of Jaffa, where the family would reside for twelve years.

Their time in an agricultural school and contact with Zionism and the Jewish pioneers in late nineteenth-century Palestine would define their lives as a married couple and as Jews in the vortex of modernization and nationalism. While Joseph would thrive professionally, Lea would gradually lose control of her life.

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Abbreviations

Chapter 1: Introduction

In Search of Home: The Lives of Joseph Niego and Lea Mitrani

In Search of Truth: A Synthesis of Sorts

Chapter 2: Edirne

Section 1: A Balkan "Alma Mater": Edirne and its Jewish community

Section 2: "Molded and Shaped" by the Alliance Israélite Universelle

Section 3: "Assiduity and Perseverance": Joseph and Lea's Early Schooling

Chapter 3: Paris

Section 1: "Instruments of Regeneration": Becoming an Alliance Teacher

Section 2: At the École Normale Israélite Orientale: Joseph Niego

Section 3: At the École Bischoffsheim: Lea Mitrani

Section 4: "Orientals" in the City of Light

Chapter 4: Tetuan and Edirne

Section 1: "Strange Phases of Life": The Jewish Community of Tetuan

Section 2: Killer Modernity: Lea Mitrani at the Alliance Schools in Tetuan and Edirne

Chapter 5: Palestine

Section 1: Ottoman Palestine

Section 2: A Holy Land

Section 3: Return to the Homeland

Section 4: Mikveh Israel: "The Jewel of the New Palestine"

Subsection 1: The beginnings

Subsection 2: Arriving in Jaffa

Subsection 3: At Mikveh Israel

Section 5: Lea and the Halutzot

Chapter 6: Istanbul

Section 1: Return to the Cradle

Section 2: "Last Soldier of an Elite Army"

Section 3: Epilogue

Appendices

Bibliography

Index

Album