Jewish Life Digital Edition June 2015 | Page 42

38 JEWISH LIFE n ISSUE 85

placed on girls’ formal education. Before
this, particularly in Eastern Europe, girls
received their Jewish and Hebrew education at home, and were often illiterate. In
the 19th century, public education was
made compulsory in most of Europe and
in order to maintain educational control
over the subjects being taught to Jewish
children, Jewish schools became a reality.
It wasn’t until approximately 191720 that
a Jewish woman named Sarah Schenirer
started the first religious Jewish school
for girls in Poland – which would eventually grow into the Beis Yaakov movement,
leaving behind, at the time of her death in
1935, more than 200 such schools and
forever changing the way Jewish daughters would be educated.
Shlomo HaMelech (King Solomon) himself taught21 that one size does not fit all
when it comes to our children’s education:
Chanoch lana’ar al-pi darko (“Teach a child
according to his way”). We are blessed to
have a wide range of quality Jewish
schools from which to choose for our children and which can meet their unique and
individual needs. But, although we hand
off our obligation to educate our children
to others, we still need to remain actively
involved in their education, showing regular interest in their studies and making
sure they are staying focused and interested in their lessons, as well as retaining
what they’ve been taught. Attention and
interest shown on our part will ultimately
serve as part of the fuel that feeds our children’s effort in their studies. We must also

Devarim 6:6-7
Devarim 5:1, 31:12, and 11:19
See Rabbi Azriel C. Goldfein, z”l, shiur
1984 PH106, titled: Parshas Va’eschanan:
The Mitzvah of “You shall teach your
children”
Tehillim 111:10
Kiddushin 29b
See Sefer HaChinuch 2
See Id. 419, quoting Devarim 4:9
See Kiddushin 29a
See Kiddushin 82a
See Erchin 16b quoting Rabbi Yochanon
Succah 42a
Devarim 33:4
Devarim 6:4
4:25
Talmud Yerushalmi, Yevamos 1:6
Kiddushin 30a
Sefer HaChinuch 419, citing Bava Basra
21a
Shabbos 119b
See Bava Basra 21a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_
Schenirer
Mishlei (Proverbs) 22:6

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ARTWORK: © Permission kindly granted by the artist, Alex Levin, Art Levin Studio, NY - www.artlevin.com [phone]

home from birth (or even before, as we
see from Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya
above), our Sages19 did not believe in
sending children for formal schooling –
ie, where children would be disciplined by
their teachers – at a very young age, considering age six or seven, depending on
the child’s constitution, to be the proper
time to start schooling outside the home.
But, once a child goes to school, they
taught that “we must teach him Torah
like you stuff an ox”. In other words, our
Sages understood that children have a
phenomenal capacity to retain information – and so they must be “fattened”
with Torah so as to take advantage of this
while they’re young.
In the modern era, the first Jewish day
schools developed in Germany, largely in
response to the higher emphasis in general on secular studies. Prior to that, those
who could afford it would hire private tutors to handle the education of their children, with the masses remaining woefully
ignorant and illiterate. An apprenticeship
was generally sufficient to learn a profession. The privileged few could spend several years in a gymnasium, which served
as adequate preparation for university
study. Rabbis who pioneered Jewish day
schools included Rabbi Shimson Raphael
Hirsch, whose Realschule in Frankfurt am
Main served as a model for numerous
similar institutions.
It was also in the 19th and early 20th
century, with the advent of public education for all, that an emphasis was first

take care to show high regard for both
teacher and subject matter, so that our
children will as well.
This point cannot be stressed enough,
as I once heard a story about how the famous Jewish physicist, Albert Einstein,
and Israel’s national poet, Chaim Bialik,
were exposed to religious Judaism which,
true or not, illustrates the importance of
taking into account the nature of a person when it comes to education. Einstein,
the scientist, was brought to a Chasidic
enclave. Bialik, the artist, was taken to a
Lithuanian yeshiva. Neither of them felt
moved by their interactions in these places. Perhaps, had they each been taken to
the other place, something inside them
might have been stirred and a flame kindled. Einstein would likely have enjoyed
the intellectual discussions and battling
over fine points in law that he would have
found in the yeshiva. Bialik, on the other
hand, might have found his place, along
with a new source of inspiration, in the
Chasidic world, thereafter connecting to
the sublime with newfound feeling and
uncovering a hidden understanding.
So, too, every single child needs to be given the chance to connect to the Torah in his
own way. May