Album containing 25 photographs by the photographer Abraham Soskin of the Hovevei Zion (Yechiely) Girls School in Neve Tzedek (Jaffa), and its activities. [1910s or 1920s].

The photographs in this depict the Hovevei Zion Girls School – the interior and exterior of the building, and the school's activities – and attest to the richness, diversity, and progressiveness of the school's curriculum. Included among the photographs: Façade of the school building, showing the (Hebrew) sign "Municipal School for Girls – the Hovevei Zion Institute"; the schoolyard; classes in sewing and embroidery; art class; nature studies; French class; music class; choir; gym class with juggling clubs; painting class; and the nurse's room and teaching staff room.
The photographs are fastened at the corners to the album pages. A handwritten inscription in Hebrew appears on the first page: "A. Soskin – Photographer, Jaffa, Palestine."
Several of the photographs appearing here are documented in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art exhibition catalogue: Guy Raz, editor and curator, "Abraham Soskin – A Retrospective: Photographs, 1905–1945," 2003, pp. 121-35. One of the photographs in the above catalogue which also appears in the present album was identified by Raz as representing the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium.

Album: approx. 28X21 cm (thick cardboard leaves). Photographs: Size varies, approx. 17X13 cm. Overall good condition. Foxing, mostly to album leaves. Minor blemishes. Several photographs partly detached from album leaves. Remnants of adhesive tape on several leaves. Hardcover binding with leather spine and corners. Stains and blemishes to binding. Minor peeling and abrasions to edges of binding boards and spine.

The Municipal School for Girls was founded in Jaffa, in the 1890s, on the initiative of three prominent members of the Bnei Moshe Zionist association (a chapter of the Hovevei Zion organization), Joshua Barzilai (Eisenstadt), Yehuda Gur (Grozovski), and Dr. Hillel Yaffe. For the purpose of establishing the school, the three men joined forces with the Alliance Israélite Universelle. With the sponsorship and financial support of the AIU, as well as the Diaspora branches of the Hovevei Zion organization and various other donors, they established a school for "Hebrew education in the Hebrew spirit." The language of instruction was Hebrew; at the time this was considered a revolutionary innovation. (For Hannah Ram's characterization of the school's struggle to promote and maintain an agenda that was both Zionistic and progressive, please refer to the Hebrew text.)
The school's founders found themselves waging an ongoing battle against the Alliance Israélite Universelle, with the latter insisting that the language of instruction be French. But thanks to the steadfast determination of the school principal, Rosa (Shoshana) Yaffe, Hebrew remained the primary language of instruction. In 1909, the school moved to its new building in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood on the outskirts of Old Jaffa, and it is this incarnation of the Hovevei Zion Girls School that is documented in Abraham Soskin's photographs. This building is preserved today as part of the complex of the renowned Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance and Theatre.

The photographer Abraham Soskin (1881-1963) was born in Russia and immigrated to Palestine in 1905. He settled in Jaffa's German Colony, where he opened a photographic studio named "Fotografia Progress". In 1914, Soskin took up residence with his family in a new studio in Tel Aviv. This studio, known as "Fotografia A. Soskin, " was in active use for 19 years, finally closing in 1933. Soskin was often referred to as "the Photographer of Tel Aviv". He is considered to be among the most important of the photographers of the era of the early Jewish Yishuv in Palestine, renowned first and foremost for his photographs that document the first two decades in the annals of Tel Aviv, the world's first "Hebrew City."