Meaningful Education
in an Ever-Changing World

In 1925, at the 11th Mizrachi conference in Cleveland, Ohio, a delegation of women, including Bessie (Batya) Gotsfeld, participate for the first time. They declare their intention to establish the Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America.
In 1934, at a Mizrachi conference in Detroit, MI, the women announce that they are leaving the Mizrachi movement and establishing an independent women’s movement.
At that time, the women buy a building on Rashi Street in Jerusalem and establish the first vocational high school for girls in Eretz Israel in order to educate religious girls born in Israel. The demands of the times dictate the need to open the doors of the school to religious girls who immigrated to pre-state Israel from Germany on their own as part of the Youth Aliyah.

In 1938, the “Mizrachi Youth House” is established in Tel Aviv to serve as a home for new immigrants and the unemployed, and as a social center for religious female workers. A year later, it becomes an absorption center for Youth Aliyah students from Germany.

After the Holocaust, there is an urgent need to provide shelter for Holocaust refugees who survived the inferno and came to Israel. As in the past, now too, Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America reaches out to where they are needed.
In 1943, the “Mizrachi Youth House” in Jerusalem receives a group of the “Tehran Children” – Jewish orphans who were rescued from the Holocaust and sent to Israel via Iran. Mizrachi Women establishes the “Children’s Farm” in Motza, near Jersualem, and later the “Tel Raanan” and “Tehiya” children’s homes for these young refugees.
In 1944, Mizrachi Women establish the “Aliyah Institution” on the grounds of Kibbutz Rodges in Petah Tikva, which were vacated by the pioneering members who left the place in favor of establishing Kibbutz Tirat Zvi and Kibbutz Yavneh. The land and vacated buildings are transferred to Mizrachi Women, who open a youth village complex (known today as AMIT Kfar Blatt) that receives the children of Holocaust refugees. Later, the youth village welcomes new immigrant youth smuggled into the country from Middle Eastern and North African countries following the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In recent years, the village is home to many Ethiopian immigrants.
In 1947, another children’s village is established, this time in Ra’anana—Kfar Batya, named after Bessie (Batya) Gotsfeld. Initially a home for children who survived the Holocaust, it later absorbs the children of Ethiopian immigrants who arrived in Israel as part of “Operation Moses.”

During this decade of massive immigration to Israel, Mizrachi Women responds to the pressing challenges of the times: the absorption of new immigrants and their children into the developing country, and their training and preparation for a new life while maintaining a traditional religious lifestyle. The women open the “Mizrachi Girls Youth House” in Beer Sheva, which later becomes a large vocational high school.
In 1962, Bessie Gotsfeld dies at the age of 74 and is buried in the Nachalat Yitzhak cemetery in Tel Aviv. Bessie left no children and to this day, students from the AMIT Youth Villages visit her grave every year.

In 1974, the Ma’alot disaster occurs. One hundred and five high school students from the religious high school in Tzfat, which is now a part of the AMIT Network, are on a field trip. While they are sleeping in a school in the city of Ma’alot in the Western Galilee, a gang of terrorists takes the students and teachers hostage. Twenty-two students, three teachers and an IDF soldier are killed.
Another tragedy strikes AMIT students in 1997. During a field trip to the Galilee, seven junior high students from the AMIT Beit Shemesh girls school are murdered on the “Island of Peace” on the Jordanian border.

In 1977, Dr. Ami Zeevi takes over as the Network’s CEO and leads the small educational organization’s transformation into a large educational network while changing its name to AMIT, the Hebrew acronym of “Organization of Women Volunteers for Israel and Torah.” Dr. Zeevi serves as AMIT’s CEO for 25 years.
In 1978, AMIT Bar Ilan Gush Dan Junior and Senior High School for Boys, the Network’s “flagship” school, is established within Bar Ilan University. The goal is to establish a high-level educational institution that will instill the concept of “Talmud Torah with Derech Eretz” and raise a generation deeply committed to Torah, science and technology at the highest level.
In 1980, a committee of the Ministry of Education designates the AMIT Network as a leading educational network in technological education in the country’s religious education sector.
In 1983, the AMIT Network establishes the Frisch Beit Hayeled Children’s Home in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood and develops its unique model of the “mishpachton,” a family-like framework for residential care of at-risk children. Netzchiya Eldar, previously the principal of the Beit Mizrachi School in Beer Sheva, is appointed director of Beit Hayeled. In Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood, another “Beit Hayeled” with the mishpachton model is opened under the management of Dr. Amnon Eldar.

Dr. Zeevi turns the AMIT institutions into a leading technological education network in the religious education sector, with an emphasis on schools in Israel’s socio-economic and geographic periphery. In 1999, Dr. Zeevi is awarded the Education Award for Lifetime Achievement, as well as the Outstanding Educators Award by the Religious Teachers Organization.

Since 1984, as part of its commitment to Klal Israel, the AMIT Network expands to include various educational institutions in development towns as well as established cities.
In 1985, in collaboration with parents, the AMIT Renanim girls’ school is established in Ra’anana (today the Sutker AMIT Renanim Science and Technology High School for Girls).
In 1991, AMIT Anna Teich Ulpana in Haifa joins the Network.
In 1993, AMIT Karmiel Junior and Senior High School is established and AMIT Acco Kennedy Junior and Senior High School joins the network.

In 2002, Dr. Amnon Eldar is elected CEO of the AMIT Network and leads an organizational change.
Dr. Eldar was born in Beer Sheva. His parents came to the city on an educational mission: his father founded the religious high school in Beer Sheva and his mother was a teacher and principal at the Beit Mizrachi School in Beer Sheva, before becoming the director of AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled in Jerusalem.
In the first stage, Dr. Eldar leads a process of internal inquiry—an examination of AMIT’s educational path between the religious Zionist community that educates for religious and national commitment on the one hand, and openness and choice on the other. One of the first steps is the establishment of AMIT’s spiritual-educational council, comprised of rabbis, principals and staff members who discuss the educational-religious policy issues of the AMIT Network.
Subsequently come a re-formation of the core values of the AMIT Network, from which the Network’s goals for the first five years are derived.
One of the main goals of the AMIT Network is to provide an optimal educational solution for all aspects of religious Zionism. The Network operates among various communities in an expansion strategy that stipulates that 70% of AMIT’s students will be from Israel’s socio-economic and geographic periphery. This choice stems from AMIT’s desire to raise the flag of equal opportunities for all Israeli students.

This period sees the establishment of a new pedagogical realm in the Network: that of the “Educational Home”. The first goal of the Network’s vision is to turn schools into Educational Homes. This means emphasizing values-based education, shaping the students’ identity and deepening religious commitment from an open perspective and via education by choice, by means of ongoing dialogue and setting boundaries. The basic premise is that if the schools function as Educational Homes, then the students’ academic achievements will increase.
Indeed, the percentage of eligibility for a matriculation (bagrut) certificate in AMIT’s schools, especially in the geographical and social periphery, increases significantly and reaches 80%, far above the Ministry of Education’s national average.

Since 2012, groups of principals, together with Dr. Eldar and members of the professional staff, have embarked on a fascinating and meaningful learning journey. It is a journey of pedagogical educational renewal, for the creation of a language that enables leadership, an educational learning community, experiential learning, collaboration and networking, bottom-up growth, a meaningful encounter between the field and the forefront of knowledge (בין השטח לחזית הידע), and learning for the sake of understanding and personal and community development.
As a result of this unique journey, the AMIT Network is undergoing several processes that will make it one of the largest, leading and innovative educational networks in Israel. Moving from Educational Homes to a network of Educational Learning Communities, establishing the Gogya complex and developing the Gogya concept, which combines pedagogical innovation and 21st century skills together with enabling leadership, the implementation of the value of Klal Israel (inclusion) and the opening of the Network’s ranks to secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox institutions.
In 2017, for the first time, the AMIT Network leads in the Ministry of Education’s rankings of Israel’s educational networks, and a year later, the Network is ranked, for the second year in a row, first among the educational networks. This is followed by AMIT’s first-place ranking for educational networks for the third year in a row in 2019.