JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

EDUCATION, JEWISH
you see that [the boy] can study Bible but not Talmud, do not
pressure him to study Talmud.” For Talmud was practically
the exclusive subject in the yeshivot, and talmudic erudition
was the highest educational objective. The starting of a new
tractate of the Talmud was an occasion for a minor celebration
and a feast in which community leaders often participated.
Hours of study were long, even for the young children,
but especially for the talmudic scholars. When the young boys
(baḥurim) arrived at an independent age, some of those who
sought further knowledge wandered off to towns that had renowned
yeshivot. This practice seems to have become fairly
widespread in the 14th and 15th centuries during the decline
of the Jewish communities in Germany that followed the severe
persecutions associated with the *Black Death. Many
schools closed their doors and young men in search of Torah
wandered about the land. Occasional yeshivot arranged accommodations
for these nomadic scholars and communities
helped provide for their maintenance.
Here, as elsewhere, the educational program was aimed
at the male population only. Women were not taught Torah,
although a few of them managed to learn some of it. Sefer
*Ḥasidim states that girls should be taught to pray, and also
those commandments that fall within their realm of activities,
“for if she does not know the regulations of the Sabbath, how
will she observe the Sabbath?” The education of girls was thus
quite limited in France and Germany as elsewhere.
Eastern Europe and Asia
The Jews from Byzantium who settled in southern Russia and
the Crimea around the turn of the millennium at first had
no rabbinic authorities of their own and maintained a correspondence
with scholars in Germany in matters religious.
They also sent there some of their young men who desired
a talmudic education. There is thus a suggestion that some
elementary schooling, or elementary instruction, was available
at home. Hebrew was not unknown in the region. One
Crimean Jew, Khoza Kokos, an influential agent of Ivan III
Vasilievich, grand duke of Muscovy, used to write reports
to the duke in Hebrew, causing the latter some difficulties in
finding an interpreter for them. In Poland and Lithuania Jewish
communities were formed in the 12th and 14th centuries,
mainly by refugees from German persecution. Among these
were some rabbis, teachers, and cantors. The new communities
continued for some time importing these functionaries
from Germany, so that the Jewish educational efforts in these
lands were shaped in the German-Jewish style of the period.
The advanced scholarship of East European Jewry did not begin
to flourish until later times.
In the Asiatic lands the Jewish communities could not,
because of poverty and the extremely primitive conditions of
life in their physical and social environment, develop the type
of educational institutions that evolved in Western Europe.
However, elementary instruction was imparted among the
Jews in *Yemen and occasionally scholarly talmudists were
found among them. In Iran, during the geonic period, elemen-
tary study of the Torah seems still to have been popular. In the
ninth century a deviationist tendency appeared in the work of
*Ḥiwi al-Balkhi, who apparently wrote an abbreviated version
of the Pentateuch, omitting portions that he considered
unsuitable for children, and criticizing many biblical passages
and teachings. His book and opinions gained popularity also
in *Afghanistan, his land of birth, and in other countries, so
that *Saadiah b. Joseph Gaon found it necessary to attack it
severely. Jewish learning in Persia was already then on the decline,
but the Jews, some of whom were active in Persian cultural
life, retained their Hebrew alphabet for the Persian language
in whatever writing they had to resort to. A number of
Persian language manuscripts of the 12th to the 16th centuries
authored by Jews, including poetry and fiction, were written
in Hebrew characters. Most of this literature was not Jewish
in content, but at least one major poet *Shahin wrote on Jewish
themes and authored a poetical version of the Pentateuch.
There were Jewish communities also in other Asiatic lands or
cities that preserved their Jewish identity, but their education
was mostly quite rudimentary.
Community Responsibility
With the demand for education so widespread in the Jewish
population and with the heavy burden borne by parents for
the schooling of their sons, it was only natural that the organized
community too undertook certain responsibilities in
the educational field. As far back as the geonic period teachers
used to be appointed by the communities, paid by them,
and considered community functionaries. Later, community
support of education was best organized in Spain. Various responsa
that deal with this problem refer to community taxes
and to the handling of bequests for education. Meir ha-Levi
*Abulafia (13th century, Spain) ruled that “communities must
engage teachers for young children; and in smaller villages …
it is the duty of the entire community, and not only of the
children’s parents, to pay [the teachers].” A revealing document
on the subject is the set of ordinances of the Valladolid
synod, convened by Abraham *Benveniste in 1432. Part I of
these ordinances dealt with education, including its financing.
It imposed taxes on meat and wine, and imposts on circumcisions,
weddings, and funerals, for education expenditures.
These taxes were not to be used for any other purpose than
education or “support of students who received maintenance
from the aforementioned talmud torah contributions.” Each
community of 15 householders was obligated to maintain
a qualified elementary teacher who had to be paid according
to the number of his dependents. Where the tuition fees
from the pupils’ parents were insufficient for his needs, the
community had to supplement his income. The community
also exercised a measure of supervision as seen from rulings
about school practices, such as a limit on the number of children
to be taught by one teacher (25), and other such administrative
regulations.
Essentially the same type of responsibility obtained also
in North European countries. Rabbenu Tam (12th century,
176 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6