JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

EDUCATION, JEWISH
an experience. Special courses were offered also for administrative
personnel.
In addition to opportunities for formal schooling Argentina
offered many informal programs. Thousands of students
attended summer day and sleep-away camps. Evening
courses for adults were offered at the spacious community
center named Hebraica in Buenos Aires. Sports activities were
popular among the recreational facilities which provided a
means of identification with the Jewish group. Widely ramified
communal and Zionist efforts further enhanced such identification.
These positive factors were outweighed by the large
sectors of the unaffiliated, the unschooled, and those bent on
the road to assimilation.
[Isaac Levitats]
The institution of a longer school day in Argentina’s public
educational system in the late 1960s worked a revolution in
Jewish education. With no time left for complementary education
Jewish schools were transformed into day schools offering
both a general and a Jewish curriculum. To keep their students
the general curriculum was upgraded, often at the expense of
Jewish studies, but the strategy succeeded. A survey carried
out in 1997 found that nearly half of all Jewish children aged
13–17 and two-thirds of children aged 6–12 attended Jewish
day schools. A total of 19,248 students attended classes in 56
kindergartens, 52 elementary schools, and 29 high schools.
By 2002, however, the numbers had dropped to just
14,700 students in 40 elementary schools and 22 high schools.
The difference was the natural result of low birthrate, assimilation,
and emigration. The high tuition rates in these private
schools were also a deterrent under Argentina’s grim economic
conditions, even though local Jewish institutions, the Jewish
Agency, and Israel’s Ministry of Education, together with the
Joint Distribution Committee and World Jewish Congress,
established financial aid programs.
To reach Jewish youngsters not in day schools, the community,
in cooperation with the Jewish Agency, established a
supplementary program called Lomdim for secondary level
(with about 1,200 students in 2004) with classes two or three
days (6–9 hours) a week. A second supplementary program,
for elementary-school children, called Chalomot, with 4–12
hours a week had approximately 600 children. Chabad developed
a similar strategy, offering children attending public
school an enriched after-school program in computers, English,
and other subjects, together with Jewish studies.
There were also no teacher training institutions in Argentina
after Michlelet Shazar was closed in the late 1990s.
The only institutions of higher Jewish studies were Orthodox
yeshivot and the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano of
Conservative orientation, in which there was also a section
for non-rabbinic studies.
[Efraim Zadoff (2nd ed.)]
Bibliography: I. Janasowicz (ed.), Pinkas fun der Kehilla
in Buenos Aires 1963–68 (1969); U.Z. Engelman, Jewish Education in
the Diaspora (1962), 64–71; Z. Sohar, Ha-Ḥinnukh ba-Tefuẓot (1953),
155–67.
brazil
On the assumption that the children of elementary and secondary
school age constitutes 20 percent of the Jewish population
in most countries, there should have been a Jewish
school enrollment in Brazil of 28,000. Actually only a little
more than 10,000 pupils attended the Jewish schools of Brazil
in the late 1960s. The number of schools supervised by the central
office for education consisted of kindergartens, elementary
and secondary schools, a yeshivah, a college, a seminar,
and a teacher training institute. Altogether 10,409 students
attended these 33 schools.
The Jewish educational system combined both Jewish
and general studies in the same school. The Jewish program
included the study of both Hebrew and Yiddish. In schools
where Jewish studies were taught two or three hours a day,
there was still the possibility of teaching both languages;
many of the schools, however, allowed only 40–50 minutes
a day for Jewish studies, making the study of two languages
in those schools to all intents and purposes impossible. The
20 Jewish day schools in the country had small enrollments,
and thus had difficulties in grading the children adequately,
in providing an adequate staff, and in financing. Among the
Jewish teachers in Brazil there still were a number of teachers
who came from abroad equipped with pedagogic skill, Jewish
knowledge, experience, and deep commitment to Jewish
education. But the number of those teachers was gradually
diminishing. To meet in some manner the pressing need for
classroom teachers, the community organized seminars for
teachers in Rio and Sao Paulo, which in reality were secondary
schools, applicants entering upon completion of the primary
school. The Sao Paulo seminar, founded in 1950, had
an enrollment of 84 students in 1968. A considerable number
of the teachers were Israelis. In addition to maintaining the
teacher training school, the Council of Education and Culture
conducted periodically, especially during the summer, in-service
teacher training programs for kindergarten and grade
teachers. During the winter, the Council also conducted special
courses for teachers in Bible, Jewish history, Hebrew literature,
and educational psychology. In the early 21st century
the Sao Paulo community had four Orthodox and four traditional
schools, with 3,000 students at the Educacio Hebraico
Brasileiro Renscenca. There were several Jewish schools in Rio
de Janeiro, including the 500-student Bar-Ilan School, which
also had a kosher dining room and a synagogue.
uruguay
The enrollment in Montevideo’s 11 Jewish schools (seven
of them day schools) was about 3,000 in 1968. Most of the
schools offered elementary Jewish education, beginning with
kindergarten. With the exception of the Sholem Aleichem
school, Hebrew had replaced Yiddish in all schools. Many
of the teachers and principals were Israelis or had studied in
Israel. All the schools were affiliated with the Board of Education
of the Montevideo kehillah, which acts as a central coordinating
supervisory community agency for Jewish educa-
212 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6