CHAPTER I
EDUCATION
Jewish education originally religious in character and purpose - Transition to secular education in eighteenth century - Attendance at Jewish and non-Jewish schools - Abnormal percentage at Western universities - Anomalous conditions in Galicia - The Cheder in Russia - Legal restrictions in Russia - Education in the East - Education a stepping-stone to assimilation 
The pursuit of knowledge has always formed a cardinal ideal in Jewish life, but the conception of its nature and purpose has undergone a change in the process of time. Until the middle of the eighteenth century the sole object of study was to produce a good Jew, that is, a religious Jew, and hence the scheme of education in all the Jewries of Europe was designed to impart an intimate and comprehensive knowledge of religious lore. It consisted of systematic instruction in the Torah and the Talmud and their manifold commentaries, a course that was difficult and voluminous enough to occupy the mind of the Jew from infancy to manhood, and indeed a sage of the Talmud devised a quaint programme to cover this important period of development.1 The work of education was conducted mostly in a private school styled a Cheder, which literally means "room," and which generally consisted of the sole living-room of the teacher, in which his wife, with her children about her, plied her domestic duties whilst the lessons went on the whole day. The number of pupils at each Cheder was limited by, its seating capacity, which was none too large, though there were generally two or three classes, graded according to age and capacity, which attended at different hours. The curriculum comprised the reading of the Hebrew prayer book, the translation of the Bible and its cantillation according to the traditional system of accents, the study of the numerous commentaries upon the Pentateuch and the rest of the Bible, Hebrew cursive writing, the study of the religious codex, the Shulchan Aruch ("Table Prepared"), and finally that of the monumental thesaurus of Jewish law, doctrine, and tradition - the Talmud. The tuition was imparted through the medium of Yiddish and in anything but a methodical fashion, for the teacher (Melammed) rarely had any other qualification except his unfitness for other callings, relieved by unblemished piety; but every parent considered it a religious duty to send his children to the Cheder, and even to make a self-sacrifice for the purpose. The Cheder was attended, as a rule, only by boys, the importance of the education of the girls being discounted by the inferior position of their sex in the synagogue, but the children of well-to-do parents were taught at home by a private tutor. Besides the Chedarim, of which there were a number in every Jewish town, there was also a communal school for the education of poor and orphan children, styled a Talmud Torah ("Study of the Law"), which was maintained by voluntary contributions and provided the same course of instruction. The pupils of a Talmud Torah were also often supplied with free food and clothing. The ambitious student, or he who wished to adopt the career of a Rabbi, continued his studies in a Talmudical college or Yeshiba, and even went from one Yeshiba to another to gather wisdom from the famous Rabbis who presided over these institutions. The youth who excelled in Talmudical learning and failed to equip himself for a worldly vocation had no cause to fear the future, for he was sure that his accomplishments would be detected and appreciated by the well-to-do father of a marriageable daughter, who would gladly take him as his son-in-law, keep him for the first two years after marriage, and then provide him with the means of a future livelihood. Even after assuming the burden of a family the pious Jew still continued the study of the Torah in his leisure moments, in literal fulfilment of the Biblical injunction: "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night."2 

The whole scheme of education throughout the Middle Ages was thus dedicated to a religious purpose. Secular knowledge was pursued only secondarily and spasmodically, and that too only by adults: the three principal subjects favoured being medicine, philosophy, and astronomy, in each of which, particularly the first, the Jews acquired a more than local renown. But about the middle of the eighteenth century, owing to the increasing intercourse of Jews with Christians, the importance of secular education, and especially of being able to speak and write the vernacular, was more and more recognized, and hence a desire arose to supplement the religious with a secular training. This tendency was actively fostered by Moses Mendelssohn, the apostle of enlightenment among the Jews, and by his various disciples, and it was considerably furthered by his German translation of the Pentateuch, which at length provided his generation, who had hitherto spoken only Yiddish, with a key to modern culture. The promoters of this secular movement were animated by mingled motives of humanism and patriotism: they wished to widen the mental horizon of their fellow-Jews by teaching them the vernacular and the most necessary branches of general knowledge in order to make them the social and intellectual equals of their Christian neighbours and thus strengthen their claim to political equality. Laudable as this movement was it encountered the bitterest 6pposition from most of the Rabbis, and the battle which ensued raged with varying intensity in different parts of Europe and has not yet terminated to this day in certain regions of Eastern Europe. The antagonism to secular learning arose from the fear that it would ultimately usurp the place of religious learning and thus estrange the Jew from the faith of his forefathers, a fear that has unfortunately been proved in a great measure to be justified. But the march of progress could not be stayed by Rabbinical bans, and the enthusiasm of modern learning that was kindled by Mendelssohn’s devotees, Hartwig Wessely, David Friedländer, and Daniel Itzig, became infectious. In 1778, the first modern Jewish school was founded in Berlin by David Friedländer, and this served as a model for other institutions that arose soon after in different parts of Germany, Austria, Italy, and England. Since then modern education has spread steadily throughout the Jewish communities of Western Europe and America, and it has also been introduced among the Jewries of the Orient; but in various parts of Russia and Galicia the conditions still resemble those that prevailed a hundred years ago. 

The zeal that had formerly been devoted to religious lore has now been transferred to secular learning, and the mental acumen that had been sharpened by Talmudical dialectics has asserted itself in the rapid acquisition of modern culture. The Jews did not wait for the establishment of free schools by the State but founded their own schools, in which the Hebrew and religious curriculum was preserved side by side with the secular instruction. The name Talmud Torah was also retained for these institutions in various cases, and was only dropped later when the growing claims of the secular subjects caused a reduction in the amount of religious tuition. With the advance of the civil and political emancipation of the Jews in Western Europe and the introduction of compulsory education they soon availed themselves of the boon of the Government schools, though they naturally preferred to send their children to their own communal establishments, where they could receive a religious as well as a secular training, and where, moreover, they could grow up in a Jewish atmosphere. In no country, however, could the resources of the community keep pace with the growing educational requirements of its population, and hence increasing attendance at the State schools was inevitable. To such an extent has this developed that in the Jewish quarters of great cities, such as London,3 New York, and Chicago, there are Government schools that are wholly or almost wholly attended by Jewish pupils. In fact, the great bulk of Jewish children in the Western world receive their education in municipal schools. The proportion of Jewish elementary school children attending non-Jewish schools in Prussia actually amounts to three-fourths,4 and the number of Jewish scholars at higher grade institutions is out of all proportion to their population. In the Prussian middle schools the percentage of Jewish pupils is four times as large as the ratio of all Jewish pupils to the total number of pupils, in the higher girls’ schools it is about ten times as large, and in the higher boys’ schools ("gymnasia," modern schools, etc.) it is about eight times as large.5 A similar disproportion of the Jewish to non-Jewish scholars is found in several public schools in England (London and Manchester) and America.6 This abnormally high share in advanced education is commonly attributed to the fact that the Jews are almost entirely an urban people, largely engaged in commercial pursuits, who have therefore both more opportunity and inclination to attend educational institutions and also more need of the knowledge acquired there. But the cardinal motive consists in the Jewish esteem of knowledge for its own sake, derived from the devotion lavished for centuries upon the study of the Torah and the Talmud: even the poorest family is ready to make a sacrifice in the interests of the education of a promising child. Not only do Jewish children form an abnormal percentage of the scholars at public schools, but they often display an unusual aptitude, particularly in languages, history, and mathematics, and it is a frequent phenomenon at British and American schools that they carry off an undue proportion of the prizes and scholarships. 

The Jewish passion for learning is manifested even more strikingly in the attendance at the universities. Until the end of the eighteenth century Jews were represented only sparsely at the universities, but during the last hundred years, and more especially during the last fifty, they have flocked in ever-increasing numbers to these seats of learning, particularly in Central Europe, and in a proportion far exceeding their ratio to the general population. According to Dr. Ruppin the percentage of Jews at the universities in Germany is seven times as large as the percentage of the Christian population (1905-06).7 In Austria the percentage of Jewish students is four times as large as that of the Christian students, and in Hungary it is six times as large.8 This disproportion is partly to be explained by the Jewish contingent including a certain proportion of students from Russia, who are unable to attend the universities in their native country except in limited numbers; but even allowing for this foreign influx the Jewish proportion of the university students in Germany and Austria-Hungary is still exceedingly high. In the period from 1851 to 1904 the number of Jewish students at the universities of Austria increased sevenfold, whilst that of the Christian students hardly trebled,9 and if a similar disproportionate increase should take place during the next fifty years Jewish students would almost be in an absolute preponderance in certain centres. The percentage of Jews at some American universities (Columbia and New York) is also disproportionately large,10 though not to the same extent as on the Continent; and in England there is likely to be a similar disproportion at Cambridge. Until recently the favourite study of Jewish university men was medicine,11 a predilection partly derived from tradition and partly due to its utility in any part of the world to which the student might emigrate; but this has now been outrivalled by law, to which Jews have devoted themselves in increasing numbers since they have been allowed to practise and plead in the courts. Jewish students, however, are now to be found in all the faculties of a university, and likewise at the various technical colleges. At the technical colleges in Vienna and Prague, for example, they actually form more than one-fourth of the total number of students.12 

Far different is the spectacle presented by Russia and Galicia, the home of more than half of the Jews in the world. Here the conditions in many respects resemble those that were general throughout Europe a century and a half ago, in Russia owing to the opportunities of education being severely restricted by barbarous laws, and in Galicia owing to the dominance of extreme religious orthodoxy as exemplified in the strength of the Chassidic sect and the veneration of the "Wonder Rabbis."13 Although the first modern Jewish school in Galicia was founded at Tarnopol, by Joseph Perl, as early as 1815, and although attendance at the elementary schools is compulsory, the Jews in Galicia still look askance upon modern education as the breeder of heresy and prefer to send their children to the Cheder alone. Even as late as 1900 the percentage of Jewish children at the elementary schools was less than the ratio of the Jews to the general population.14 The hostility to the schools mainly affects the boys, however, whose religious training is considered of paramount importance, whilst far less scruple is shown in letting the girls receive a secular education. Hence Jewish girls until recently outnumbered their brothers at the elementary schools in Galicia and Bukowina,15 a circumstance that produced much unhappiness later in the marriage of girls with modern education, speaking Polish, to men trained only in Talmudical lore and speaking Yiddish.16 But a growing improvement in this respect has been effected since the establishment of the Baron de Hirsch schools, in which an adequate place is given in the curriculum to religious instruction, and the children are able to conform with the requirements of the Jewish faith, such as the hallowing of the Sabbath and festivals. In Rumania there are no religious scruples about school attendance, but the restrictions that prevent the free admission of Jewish children to the State schools necessitate the maintenance of voluntary institutions which are effectively supported by the Jewish Colonization Association and the "Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden." The former body has already contributed to the erection of 29 Jewish schools in twenty-one different centres in Rumania. 

In Russia the Jews are animated by the same passion for education as their brethren in the West, but an oppressive Government has taken effective precautions to prevent this passion being gratified. The State primary schools in the Pale are altogether too few for the needs of the Jewish population, and attendance at the high schools and universities is limited to a low percentage of the total number of pupils. At the end of last century the number of primary schools was estimated to be only 183, and hence the Jews were compelled to establish and maintain schools of their own, the number of which amounted to 637. The funds for these schools are derived from a communal tax on Kosher meat and from voluntary donations, but their inadequacy necessitates the support of a special society - "for the Propagation of Primary Education among the Jews in Russia" - to which the Jewish Colonization Association contributes some £20,000 a year as subventions to 54 schools. But the total number of pupils attending both types of schools did not exceed 60,000, which forms but a tenth of the Jewish children of school age in the country.17 Nevertheless, the Jews at the last Russian census of 1897 showed a literacy nearly twice as high as that of the entire Russian people, 39 as compared with 21 per cent, whilst according to the Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration of the United States (1897) only 28.6 per cent of the Russo-Jewish immigrants above fourteen were illiterate, a percentage that declined to 23.3 in 1904.18 This comparatively high degree of literacy among the Jews of Russia, which is all the more remarkable in view of the limited opportunities for elementary education, is mainly due to the Chedarim in which the children are taught to read and write Yiddish besides the subjects of the religious syllabus. There are about 30,000 of these Chedarim in the Russian Pale,19 with probably an aggregate attendance of not more than 400,000, of which the girls do not form more than 5 per cent. Most of these Hebrew schools are in poor private houses, the surroundings are shabby and insanitary, the medium of instruction is Yiddish, the methods are antiquated, the hours-eight or ten a day-are abnormally long, and there is usually a lack of discipline. There are also about 500-600 Talmud Torah schools in which some instruction is given in equally shabby surroundings - a cracked ceiling, broken windows, grimy walls and floor, foul air, and deficient heating in winter. But during the last ten years, thanks mainly to the influence of the Zionist movement, a number of model Chedarim have been established in large Jewish towns in the west and south-west of Russia, which show a great improvement in scholastic and hygienic respects: Hebrew is taught by the Berlitz method, the secular subjects of the Russian primary schools are also taught, there is a systematic curriculum, and the tone and discipline are better. In addition to attendance at these various institutions a great number of children receive private tuition in Hebrew and Russian subjects. 

The pursuit of higher education in Russia is circumscribed by the law which limits the percentage of Jews among the scholars of middle and high schools in the Pale to 10 per cent, outside the Pale to 5 per cent, and in St. Petersburg and Moscow to 3 per cent. Only in the commercial middle schools, which are communal establishments maintained almost wholly by Jewish funds, are Jews admitted to the extent of 50 per cent of the scholars. These restrictions have an almost paralysing effect upon the efforts of the Jewish youth to acquire an advanced education, but as they press less heavily upon Jewish girls the latter possess on an average a better education than their brothers.20 Similar restrictions bar the entrance to the universities, at which Jews may not form more than 5 per cent of the total students in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 10 per cent of those in Kazan, Kharkoff, Dorpat, and Tomsk, and 15 per cent of those in Warsaw, Kiev, and Odessa. The cramping effect of these regulations is vividly shown by the fact that whilst the proportion of Jews to the total number of students in Russia rose from 6.8 per cent in 1880 to 14.8 per cent in 1886, it fell, in consequence of the Rescript of the Russian Minister of Education in 1887, to 10.9 per cent. The severity of the hardship can be measured by a comparison with the conditions in Hungary, where the Jews send ten times as many of their sons to the universities as their coreligionists in Russia.21 Finding the gates of knowledge closed to them in their native land the Jewish subjects of the Tsar are compelled to migrate to other countries to realize their academic ambition. The task is no light one, for apart from the question of fees and support during the years of study, they must also battle with the difficulties of the foreign language and with an anti-alien prejudice,22 but they are spurred on by the desire for a professional career. The universities most favoured (thanks to the affinity of Yiddish with German) are those in German-speaking countries, that is, in Austria and German Switzerland as well as in Germany itself, whilst those in French Switzerland, France, and Belgium attract a smaller number. In all over 4000 Russo-Jewish students are found at the universities in these five countries, half of them in Germany alone, but there are also a good many at the various technical colleges, commercial high schools, and polytechnics, whose numbers cannot be exactly ascertained. 

One of the most striking examples of Jewish solidarity is the systematic effort of the Jews of the West to spread the benefits of education among their brethren in the East. The first organized endeavour in this direction was made by the "Alliance Israelite Universelle," of Paris, which established its first school in Tetuan in 1862, and which has since founded a host of other schools in Morocco, Tunis, Egypt, European and Asiatic Turkey, and Persia. The total number of primary schools which it now maintains is 183 (28 in Morocco alone), comprising 1472 teachers and nearly 50,000 pupils, and involving an annual expenditure of £92,000, half of which is contributed by the local communities. A small fee is charged for the children of well-to-do parents, but poor children are given not only free education but occasionally also books and clothing. The "Alliance" also maintains farm schools in Palestine and Tunis, a teachers’ training college in Paris to supply its schools with qualified teachers born in the East, and a Rabbinical Seminary in Constantinople to provide the communities of the Orient with spiritual guides equipped with a modern education.23 The civilizing work effected by this educational activity in regions that might otherwise have been left to languish in stagnation deserves full recognition, but unfortunately the directors of the "Alliance" have imposed upon the schools a modern French character, without regard to the special conditions of the East, they have failed to provide continuation schools for the pupils who are apt to sink back into Oriental lassitude, and they do not exercise any personal supervision of the work. The activity of the "Alliance" has thus a negative as well as a positive side. Its efforts have been supplemented since 1871 by the Anglo-Jewish Association, which supports schools at Bombay, Jerusalem, and Mogador, and likewise, since 1902, by the "Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden," which, besides promoting elementary and advanced education in European and Asiatic Turkey, also subventions general and technical schools in Galicia, Rumania, and Bulgaria. The "Hilfsverein" has acted as a pioneer of the kindergarten system in the East, it conducts a teachers’ training college in Jerusalem, and has provided the initiative and active cooperation in the founding of a technical college at Haifa at a cost of more than £50,000, which will not only form the coping-stone of Jewish education in Palestine but also give a powerful impetus to the study of applied science in the Near East. It maintains 44 institutions in all, 28 of which are in Palestine, with a total register of 7000 pupils, and it expended £14,700 upon its educational work in 1913 alone. 

Thus, both in the East and West, modern education has been espoused by Jewry with an ardour unequalled by any other nation. Not content with the various types of Jewish and non-Jewish schools and colleges already enumerated, they have also established private boarding-schools in England and on the Continent, which generally comprise pupils from a variety of countries sent by their parents to acquire a higher-grade education in a Jewish atmosphere; and apart from the facilities provided by public scholarships for the prosecution of advanced studies there is a special committee or society in several communities for assisting youths of exceptional talent to complete their training and obtain a footing in the professional world. The success with which modern Jews have adopted secular learning is shown by their abnormally high participation in the liberal professions, one of the most striking testimonies consisting in the unusually large number of Jewish professors at the German Universities. Although the Jews in Germany form only one per cent of the total population, and although the social antipathy to them is so strong, they provided in the session 1909-10 six per cent of the professors and Privatdozenten both in the faculties of law and philosophy and ten per cent of those in the faculty of medicine,24 a percentage that would even be larger if we included Jewish professors who had adopted Christianity. The effects of modern education are not less striking among the masses of the Jewish population, not so much because of any scholastic distinction as on account of the complete revolution wrought in every sphere of Jewish life. The specifically Jewish language, such as Yiddish and Ladino, is gradually discarded in favour of the vernacular; Hebrew education is relegated to an insignificant place beside the secular curriculum; the religious bases of the home are being rudely shaken by the inroads of rationalism; and the widening of economic opportunity that comes of a better education is transforming the industrial aspect of Jewry and bringing it into close and constant contact with its non-Jewish surroundings. All the distinctive features of Jewish life, material and spiritual, economic and intellectual, are being slowly assimilated to its environment. More than half of the Jews in the world still speak Yiddish, read books and newspapers in this language and conduct all their affairs in this medium; but the rapidity with which the Russian Jew picks up English on his settling in England or America, aided by evening classes and Toynbee Halls, and the uninterrupted flow of migration from Eastern Europe to the Western countries, point to the declining importance of the Judeo-German tongue. In Turkey and its former dependencies, Bulgaria and Servia, the great bulk of the Jews likewise still use Ladino as their principal medium of intercourse; but the constitutional era opened up in the Sultan’s dominions and the political changes in the Balkans, supplemented by the systematic work of the Jewish educational agencies, will inevitably cause the restriction of the Judeo-Spanish tongue to an ever-diminishing circle. The benefits of modern learning have not been won without many a domestic tragedy, for the children of Russo-Jewish families settled in England and America, puffed up by a sense of their superiority derived from a higher education, often turn with contempt upon the Yiddish of their parents and spurn religious customs and traditions which they associate with it. Hence arise estrangements between children and parents whose effects are not confined to the home, for when once the children are emancipated from the religious control of the parents their absorption in the alien environment is often but a question of time. 

1 Mishnah, Aboth, chap. v.: "At five years the age is reached for the study of the Scripture, at ten for the study of the Mishnah, at thirteen for the fulfilment of the commandments, at fifteen for the study of the Talmud, at eighteen for marriage, at twenty for seeking a livelihood." 

2 Josh. i. 8. 

3 According to the latest statistics less than one-fifth of the Jewish school children in greater London attend Jewish elementary schools, namely, 7184 out of a total of 37,236 (Jewish Year Book, 1912, p.49). 

4 Ruppin, Die Juden der Gegenwart, p.123. 

5 Ibid., p.121. 

6 The Immigrant Jew in America, p.190, edited by Dr. Edmund J. James (New York, 1907). 

7 Die Juden der Gegenwart, p.126.  

8 Ibid., p. 126. 

9 Die Juden in Oesterreich, by Dr. J. Thon, p.98 (Berlin, 1908). 

10 The Immigrant Jew in America. 

11 According to an investigation by the late Professor Morris Loeb (1904-05), Jews formed 39 per cent of the 1871 medical students in New York City, in which the Jews constitute 20 per cent of the population (Dr. M. Fishberg, The Jews, p.377). 

12 Die Juden in Oesterreich, p.102. 

13 See p. 284. 

14 Die Juden in Oesterreich, p. 81. 

15 Ibid., p.81. 

16 Dr. Siegmund Fleischer, in Jüdische Statistik, p.230. 

17 Economic Conditions of the Jews in Russia, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labour, p.580 (Washington, 1907). 

18 Immigration, by Prescott F. Hall (New York, 1907), p. 81. 

19 Educaton in Russia, Board of Education Special Report, p.193 (London, 1909). The Jewish colonization Association estimated the number of Chedarim at 24,620 (Die sozialen Verhältnisse der Juden in Russland, p.47, Berlin, 1906). 

20 Die sozialen Verhältnisse der Juden in Russland, pp.52-53 (Berlin, 1996). 

21 Ibid., p.55. 

22 In the early months of 1913 a serious agitation broke out among German students against the presence of Russian Jews at the universities, the result of which is a restriction of their admission to the universities of Berlin, Koenigsberg, Munich, Leipzig, Halle, and several other seats of learning. A similar agitation followed in Paris (see Jewish Chronicle, 11th April 1913), though without any practical effect, and also at several Austrian universities (Vienna, Prague, Grata, etc.), where a restriction similar to that in Germany was infroduced. The consequence has been that many Jewish students have migrated to Italy. 

23 This Seminary was closed in June 1913. Cf. p.213. 

24 Dr. J. Segall, Die beruflichen und sozialen Verhältnisse der Juden in Deutschland, p. 57 (Berlin, 1912). 

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