JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

EDUCATION, JEWISH
sidized in 1909, there were 27 schools that included Yiddish
in their programs, of which 16 were girls’ schools, 3 boys’, and
8 coeducational. In 1910 there was a school in Kremenchug
which conducted instruction of all the subjects in Yiddish. In
1911, in the town of Demievka (a suburb of Kiev) a collective
ḥeder established by several progressive teachers, who obtained
certificates of melammedim, was legalized, and all the
subjects of study were taught in Yiddish. In 1912 teachers and
community leaders converted the Warsaw school Ḥinnukh
Yeladim into one of general studies in the Yiddish language.
Also the modernized talmud torahs in the country gradually
introduced Yiddish into their program.
When World War I broke out, Jewish refugees from Poland
and Lithuania flooded the cities of central Russia and the
Ukraine. The Yiddishist teachers and the Progressive Democratic
organizations began establishing schools for the refugees’
children where instruction was carried on in Yiddish,
under the approval of the new law of 1914. By 1916 there were
several dozens of schools in which Yiddish was the language
of instruction. Teachers adopted new methods of instruction,
and they created suitable textbooks for the pupils and pedagogic
literature for the teachers. The Russian Revolution of
1917–18 brought about great changes in Jewish education.
The Ukraine and Belorussia
During the brief existence of the “Jewish Ministry” and after
its liquidation there were under the leadership of the “Kultur
Lige” 63 active elementary schools, three secondary, and
dozens of kindergartens and evening schools, all conducted
in Yiddish. In 1920 the Ukraine experienced the Bolshevik
upheaval and the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities of
the Soviet regime became the school authority over the Jewish
educational institutions in the Ukraine, Belorussia, and
Russia proper.
The next decade, 1921–31, was very productive in the
Soviet Yiddish schools. In the Ukraine there were in 1931 a
total of 831 schools with 94,000 students; Belorussia had 334
schools with 33,000 students; and there were also a number
of high schools; in all, 160,000 children were given schooling
in Yiddish. In the year 1933–34 the attitude of the authorities
to Yiddish underwent a radical change and a decline set in;
the number of schools diminished annually, reaching a catastrophic
low level on the eve of World War II.
Poland
With liberation and unification of the Polish Republic a strong
school movement developed among the Jews of that country.
In 1920 Warsaw already had 14 all-Yiddish schools with
49 classes and 14 kindergartens, with a total of 2,000 children.
Similar developments took place throughout the provinces.
At a conference in 1921 attended by 376 delegates, the
Central Yiddish School Organization (CYShO) was formed,
which included as its affiliates Yiddish schools of all trends.
In 1921 there were, in 44 Polish cities, 69 Yiddish elementary
schools and 35 kindergartens, having altogether 381 classes
with 13,457 children.
The Polish government took a hostile position to these
new secular Yiddish schools, but nevertheless freed their pupils
from the obligation of attending other schools to meet
the requirements of compulsory education. Various absurd
police accusations were leveled against the schools. Schools
were closed and teachers arrested or removed. Nevertheless
the network of these CYShO schools grew. In 1925 their numbers
reached 91 elementary schools with 455 classes and 16,364
pupils; 3 secondary schools with 780 pupils. In 1929 there were
114 elementary schools with 17,380 pupils, 46 kindergartens, 52
evening schools, 3 secondary schools, and 1 teachers’ training
seminary, a grand total of 216 institutions with 24,000 pupils.
The Polish government became ever more reactionary and
antisemitic, which resulted in a quantitative decline in the
schools, but their quality kept improving. The character of the
CYShO school became crystallized; its educational approach
included also the social and national upbringing of the child,
attachment to his people, and an attitude of social responsibility.
The methodology of instruction was in consonance with
these objectives. The pride of the CYShO school movement was
the children’s sanatorium named after V. *Medem. This was a
great creative institution with many pedagogic achievements.
On the eve of World War II it had 250 children, and the institution
was open the entire year. The children and teachers
were all killed by the Nazis.
The Educational and Cultural Union (Shul un Kultur
Farband) of the right-wing Poale Zion and of the nonpartisan
organizations tried to open Yiddish schools with a stress
also on Hebrew and Yiddishkeit. In 1934–35 they had in Poland
seven elementary schools with 818 children. The ideological
and programmatic effect of this movement was minimal. The
number of the religious schools was large, 2,560 schools with
171,000 pupils. These schools too conducted their program in
Yiddish. Thus, over 200,000 children received their schooling
in the Yiddish language.
Borderlands
The 1917–18 upheaval in Russia freed the countries of the borderland
areas: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and, in part, also Romania.
In these countries the Yiddish language schools went
through the same development as in Poland. In 1934 there
were in Lithuania 16 elementary schools with 1,555 pupils and
3 secondary schools with 420 students. In 1933 Latvia had 122
Yiddish schools with 6,000 children (45% of the total Jewish
child population). The Fascist revolution destroyed these
school systems in both lands. In 1934 Estonia had one Yiddish
school with 80 children. For a time the Yiddish schools in
these countries enjoyed the same status as government schools
and were maintained by the state. In Bessarabia (Romania)
there were 62 Yiddish elementary schools with 5,757 pupils.
The decreed Rumanization of education gradually brought
about their liquidation.
United States and Canada
The October 1910 conference of the Poale Zion formulated a
policy for Yiddish National Radical Schools and soon after-
188 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6