JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

toward the end of the century it came under the influence of
the movement for the revival of the Hebrew language that
was spreading among the Ḥovevei Zion and the intelligentsia.
The revival of Hebrew as a national tongue became a
passionate ideal in numerous nuclei of the large Diaspora of
Russian Jewry. Limited though they were in numbers, these
small groups soon began to exercise considerable influence
in their communities. The search for effective ways to spread
the knowledge of Hebrew led to the evolution at the turn of
the century of a new type of Jewish school known as the ḥeder
metukkan (improved ḥeder) that derived its inspiration from
Jewish nationalism, and which rapidly developed into an educational
movement. Its leadership included active Zionists,
like *Weizmann and *Dizengoff, the poet *Bialik and others
of similar stature and status in the Russian Jewish community.
*Aḥad ha-Am spoke of the “invasion” of the school by Hebrew,
the national language. The early ḥadarim of this “improved”
kind were founded in the south of Russia – in the Kiev area, in
Bessarabia, and in Odessa – and soon spread throughout the
Pale of Settlement as well as in Austrian Galicia and sections
of Romania. The movement proved a powerful intellectual and
administrative stimulus. Men, and women, began studying
educational programming and method and successfully organized
and taught in the new schools. Ḥayyim Aryeh *Zuta authored
a curriculum for this type of school. Isaac Epstein, linguist
and psychologist, pioneered in the method of instruction
which became known as Ivrit be-Ivrit (also referred to as the
“natural method”). Samuel Leib *Gordon, later to gain renown
as a popular biblical commentator, opened a ḥeder metukkan
in Warsaw in 1903, and soon afterwards a similar school was
opened by Ḥayyim Kaplan which continued in existence until
the eve of World War II. Some of the “improved” ḥadarim
were coeducational, but new schools for girls also made their
appearance following the example of Pua Rakovsky’s school
in Warsaw, which gained considerable repute. A pioneer of
the movement, Jehiel *Heilprin, organized a Hebrew kindergarten
in Warsaw (1909), and as this enterprise was soon emulated
in many other communities, Heilprin opened “Froebel
courses” for the training of kindergarten teachers. Efforts
to establish a training institution to provide teachers for the
“improved” schools were made as early as the 1880s. These
failed due to government opposition, but finally, in 1907, the
Society for the Promotion of Culture succeeded in opening
“Pedagogic Courses” in Grodno under the direction of Aaron
Cohenstam in which all subjects were taught, at least partly,
in Hebrew. The students were recruited in large part from the
circles of yeshivah young men caught in the nationalist spirit.
A more limited program of teacher training, including summer
seminars, was later started in Odessa. The teachers themselves
began to organize under the leadership of P. Shifman in
1906 for educational as well as for professional-economic purposes.
A teachers’ association was also formed in Galicia under
the leadership of S. *Schiller, with the aim of strengthening
and guiding the “improved school.” Many new textbooks
appeared during this period as well as Hebrew publications
EDUCATION, JEWISH
for children, youth, and adults. The Hebrew language was being
revived as a modern language, even if in limited circles.
Some Orthodox elements opposed this trend, maintaining
that the sacred tongue (leshon kodesh) must not be turned to
“profane” use. Assimilationist elements were likewise critical,
as they were of the entire nationalist-Zionist movement. The
revival of Hebrew however kept gaining ground. The term
Hebrew School (bet sefer ivri) that crept into use reflected the
new educational trend.
While the old style ḥadarim in Eastern Europe declined
in quality, though not in enrollment, during the 19th century,
some of the yeshivot saw a remarkable development, this in
spite of government interference and of the indifference to
them of the modern, so-called enlightened Jewish groups.
Many of the leaders of Russian Jewry during the period under
discussion were products of these yeshivot, in which high
scholarship and originality raised the repute of talmudic studies
and added dignity to those engaged in them. The community
of the small country of Lithuania pioneered in this
respect when the Volozhin yeshivah was established in 1803
and from the very start introduced innovations in the method
of study, considerable freedom in students’ choice of tractates
to be covered, and later the introduction of some general subjects
as well, such as history and mathematics. Yeshivot were
founded in the following decades in Mir, Telz, Grodno, Radin,
and elsewhere. A number of these were centers of distinctive
Jewish philosophies, like the yeshivah of Slobodka (a suburb
of Kovno), founded by Rabbi Israel *Lipkin, where his views
on ethics (Musar) became a major subject, or the Tomkhei
Temimim yeshivah of the Lubavitch ḥasidim where ḥasidic
ideology was stressed. Modern type yeshivot too made their
appearance, which included general studies as an integral
part of the program, like the yeshivah in Odessa, founded in
1865 and reorganized in 1906 under the directorship of Rabbi
Chaim *Tchernowitz (Rav Tza’ir) into an important institution
of Jewish scholarship. The poet Bialik and the historian
Joseph *Klausner served for brief periods as instructors in this
Odessa yeshivah. Another prominent yeshivah, traditional
but modernized in its program and organization of studies,
was the Torah v’Daas, founded by Rabbi Isaac Jacob *Reines
in Lida in 1905; it included in its program Hebrew grammar,
Bible, Jewish history as well as Russian, and several general
subjects in the humanities. On the eve of World War I the enrollment
in some 30 yeshivot in Russia, which at the time included
the Baltic states, much of Poland and Bessarabia, was
about 10,000 students.
The Balkans and the Lands of Islam
In the Balkans, and in the Muslim lands of the Eastern Mediterranean
and North Africa, an important factor in modernization
of Jewish education appeared in the second half
of the 19th century, that of the *Alliance Israélite Universelle
(AIU). This organization was an expression of the Jewish
group consciousness of French Jews, who, while themselves
strongly assimilationist, yet felt the responsibility incumbent
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 183