The Reali School Archive
The Real School Archive was established with the aim of collecting, documenting, preserving, and presenting the history of the school to future generations. The history of the school shaped the beginning of Hebrew education in the Land of Israel and is intertwined with the history of the Jewish community in Haifa and the development of urban and national institutions. The school is a key pillar in the development of the Israeli education system, in the development of curricula, in value education, and in shaping the face of Israeli society, its educators, leaders, and pathfinders.
The archives were first established in the collections of protocols and basic documents even before the opening of its gates, which were kept by Dr. Arthur Biram, the school’s founder, and his successor, Yosef Ozerkovsky (Azariahu). In charge of the archive, its management, and the collection of materials during this period.
The archive preserves the educational heritage and extensive public activities of the school’s founders, teachers, and graduates from its inception to the present day. At the same time, the archive presents challenges, which stemmed from the difficulties of the school’s establishment, the development of Hebrew teaching during the British Mandate and the establishment of the state of Israel, the absorption and integration of immigrants, teaching reforms, from the budgetary struggle and from structural changes. In parallel, the archive presents the school’s contribution to the development and the promotion of the teaching professions (including the establishment of the Beit Midrash for teachers), value-driven education – personal commitment, national service, physical fitness education, the foundation of the Scouts, Gadna, and the military boarding school (1953).
The Archive further presents the development of innovative curricula alongside academicization in Teaching and developments in science and technology, ICT teaching, and the development of the school’s external relations with Jewish schools and communities around the world.
THE ARCHIVE’S COLLECTIONS:
The archive contains collections of documents, certificates, photographs, and study materials, starting with Pinchas Cohen’s Avtalia School, the foundation of the Civil Boarding School, the school in Hadar HaCarmel, and its expansion to branches in Ahuza, Beit Biram and the Carmel Center.
It also includes correspondence collections of school principals, Arieh Karuch collection – establishment of the Hebrew Scout movement and the Meshotetim Scouts tribe, as well as collections of protocols from the beginning of the establishment of the school’s institutions: teachers’ council, parents’ committee, student body, preparatory committee, board of trustees, pedagogical complex as well as commemorating the teachers and faculty of the school and its graduates who fell on the defense of the state in the Israeli wars.
The archive contains a variety of types of materials: certificates, posters, trophies and prizes, printed matter published by the school, notebooks and student works, historical textbooks, education and teaching books written by teachers, diaries, albums, and songs. The collection of journals produced by the school since the 1920s includes hundreds of issues of student society newspapers, divisional leaflets from all branches, information for teachers and students, and ‘Be Reali’ magazines.
THE REALI ARCHIVE’S ACTIVITY:
In 2004, the archive building at Beit Biram was inaugurated, and donated by Gail and Michael Klisman (a school graduate). The archive continues with a systematic collection of materials and preservation of the collections, with the transformation of media and formats, while accessing them in a computerized way – ‘touching the past, without physical touch’. The archive is currently digitizing the tens of thousands of student and faculty files and preparing additional collections for digitization.
The archive is a documentary-historical archive and its audiences are diverse: The Reali family – the school’s students, graduates, principals, and school staff for generations (and their relatives), as well as researchers from academia, mainly research in the social sciences: education, history, sociology, the study of the Jewish community and society in Israel.
Next to the archive is a museum-didactic display – “The Green Hut”, which was used in the 1960s as a classroom and is now designed as a “past classroom” that displays items from the archive, actively illustrates the school’s history, and serves as a valuable educational activity.
The archive provides testimony and visual meaning to Dr. Biram’s words, the intentions have certainly turned into deeds; It is also a testimony of the value of the impressive generations of educational staff of the Reali, which comprised of leading figures in spirit and practice, which saw education to be a path of vision and fulfillment.
Please click here to view more items from the archive (from the University of Haifa’s library website).
DONATING MATERIAL TO THE ARCHIVE AND CONTACT DETAILS:
Director of the Archive: Erez Gitai: [email protected]
Address: The Kalisman Archive building, Beit Biram, 15 Aba Hushi Blvd, Haifa 3478620
Phone nr. +972-4-8146600
שיעור חקלאות (שנה לא ידועה)
תלמידות בשיעור תפירה 1932
The teacher Rita Matzini and her students (unknown year)
סיור (שנה לא ידועה)
הנהגת משוטטי בכרמל (תאריך לא ידוע)
