JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

As a result of all these factors there were in 1969 over 40
day schools, some in communities where none existed before
the last war, such as Stockholm, Madrid, Zurich, and Basle.
Parallel with the building program went an effort to train
teachers and to prepare textbooks. Individual teachers were
sent for training to Israel or to England and teacher-training
programs were set up in Italy, Holland, and Belgium, the last
one recognized by the Belgian government.
The Claims Conference encouraged the printing of textbooks,
some of which were translated and adapted into various
European languages.
Israel educators provided in-service training for European
Jewish teachers.
Jewish education in 1970 embraced approximately 50%
of all children of school age in Western Europe. Out of every
four children receiving some Jewish education, three attended
supplementary schools and one a Jewish day school. The underlying
approach in all these schools was based on religious
teaching. Only one day school in Western Europe (Brussels)
declared itself to be non-religious. Even this school had to introduce
the teaching of festivals and Jewish practices because
of the demand of parents. Almost all schools taught Hebrew
as a language and were Israel oriented.
The day school system continued to thrive into the 21st
century, but with varying levels of enrollment. In Paris there
were over 20 such schools, including kindergartens, primary
and secondary schools, and religious seminaries, but only 4%
of French Jewish children were enrolled in these frameworks,
despite the influx of tradition-minded North African immigrants
that made France the third largest Jewish community
in the world. There was also a rabbinical seminary ordaining
rabbis. In Antwerp, most of the community’s children were
enrolled in seven Jewish schools, receiving an intensive religious
education, while another four such schools operated
in Brussels.
There were three Jewish primary schools in Germany
in 2005, but with low enrollment, and a Jewish high school
in Berlin (opened in 1993). In Switzerland, nine schools were
operating in five cities. Two Jewish day schools operate in
Amsterdam, one each for the traditional communities (primary
and secondary school) and the ultra-Orthodox community
(primary and secondary school). Furthermore, there
are three institutes of higher learning – a kolel, a seminary,
and the Institute of Jewish Studies in Leiden. In Italy Jewish
schools were to be found in Rome, Milan, Florence, Genoa,
Livorno, and Trieste.
For Education in Israel see *Israel, State of.
Bibliography: Enẓiklopedyah Ḥinnukhit, 1–4 (1964). Websites:
www.fjc.ru; www.worldjewishcongress.org/communities.
[Stanley Abramovitch / Fred Skolnik (2nd ed.)]
yiddish education
In Czarist Russia
Yiddish had been the language of instruction in the ḥeder
and the talmud torah for as long as it had been the vernacu-
EDUCATION, JEWISH
lar. However, in recent centuries the language itself was introduced
into those institutions as a new subject, i.e., the art of
writing. The instructor in this subject bore the designation of
“Shrayber” (scribe). Ordinances of communities and societies
determined his duties and assigned specific periods of time
during which he was to “write” with his boys. This was a new
tendency in Jewish education, a sort of secularism, since the
“Brifnshteler” (as the textbooks were known) introduced new
content into the subject of writing.
In the first quarter of the 19th century several of these
Brifnshteler were stereotyped reprints of older editions. There
is a list of 60 such letter composers. In 1826 there appeared
a Brifnshteler by Abraham Leon Dor which was reprinted in
1843, 1861, 1868, 1870, 1873, 1876, and 1882. In 1850 his son,
Hirsh Leon Dor, issued “letter learning,” a new Brifnshteler,
in which he included various kinds of letters, customs, business
letters, and arithmetic. This work, too, appeared in several
editions. Gradually these works acquired the character
of reading textbooks. They introduced anecdotes and fables,
ideas for entertainment and humor that made reading “enjoyable,”
even some elements of arithmetic and geography.
These scribes gained entry into all types of schools and in
small towns they organized groups and conducted systematic
instruction for girls. The method of instruction of these
groups carried the name Shura Greizel. In this manner the
study of “Yiddish writing” became an attempt at secular education
in Yiddish. At first the Russian school authorities tolerated
this study, but after 1863 they began to oppose it and
finally prohibited it.
A further development in the study of Yiddish was the
establishment of the “Sabbath and Evening Schools” for the
young (1859). In the 1860s such schools existed in Vilna, Berdichev,
Zhitomir, Minsk, and other cities. The official language
in these schools was Russian, but lectures were also given in
Yiddish on nature study, geography, and Yiddish literature.
The Russian government mistrusted these schools, closed
some of them promptly, and authorization of new schools
was obtained with great difficulty. Nevertheless the number of
these Sabbath and evening schools grew and toward the end
of the 19th century such schools were found in Vilna, Homel
(Gomel), Grodno, Kovno (Kaunas), Yekaterinoslav, Kishinev,
Kharkov, Lodz, and elsewhere. Some of these bore a culturalphilanthropic
character; but there were also schools on which
the teachers and leaders bestowed an ideological character,
and they valued the role of the Yiddish language in the program.
In the officially required Russian subjects Yiddish was
used as an aid language. In this fashion did the Sabbath and
evening schools prepare the ground for schools for secular
studies in the mother tongue of the children. Schools in the
Yiddish language were not legalized by the education authority,
and this led to the opening of schools under disguised designations
(as in Mir, Dokshitsy, Warsaw). Under various legal
excuses the study of the Yiddish language was carried on in the
authorized schools. Out of the 53 schools which the Society
for the Diffusion of Enlightenment (Mefiẓei Haskalah) sub-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 187