Jewish school

“ You probably won all your college honors through standing aside. And now you have the audacity to ask me to do the same, lest you be made uncomfortable by the number of other Jewish boys at your college. You want me to stand aside, do you? Well, I wish I had a thousand Jewish boys to enter into your college's next year's class!"
He glared at me. "If you want to know the truth, I can't get a single boy in my school to go to your college, now. I wish I could. Because I'm training them to fight like men. They aren't the sort who win honors by allowing themselves to be classed as exceptions...." ”

“ There were no castes among the Hebrews, and the same kind of training was given to the children of rich and poor, high and low, alike. No other race of people has given such careful home training to its children, from earliest times to the present.
The Jewish School.—There were no elementary Jewish schools until after the destruction of the nation and the loss of their civil liberty. After the defeat at Jena the Prussians turned to education as the sole means of retrieving their national greatness ”

“ No other readers are so ready to tackle the heavy-weights in economics and sociology.
From many school principals comes the observation that their Jewish pupils are either very bright or distinctly dull. Among the Russo-Jewish children many fall behind but some distinguish themselves in their studies. The proportion of backward pupils is about the average for school children of non-English-speaking parentage; but the brilliant pupils indicate the presence in Hebrew immigration of a gifted element which scarcely shows itself in other streams of immigration. ”

“ The Western328 Jews, after a training of eighteen hundred years in the best of schools—the school of adversity—came forth fully equipped with endowments, moral and intellectual, which enabled them, as soon as the chance offered, to conquer a foremost place among the foremost peoples of the world. Science and art, literature, statesmanship, philosophy, law, medicine, and music, all owe to the Jewish intellect a debt impossible to exaggerate. In Germany there is hardly a university not boasting a professor Hebrew in origin, if not always in religion. ”

“ In the towns of the Pale where the Jews form from thirty to eighty per cent of the total population, the admission, of Jewish pupils to the gymnazia and "Real schools" was limited to ten per cent, so that the majority of Jewish children were deprived of a secondary education.
The position of the gymnazium and "Real school" graduates who were unable to continue their studies in the institutions of higher learning was particularly tragic. ”

“ The large majority of the Jewish boys in the freshman class had prepared for college at one school—a large private preparatory school in New York City. Perhaps it would be as well, suggested the dean, for me to go to the principal of this school and talk things over with him. ”

“ If the Hebrews of this great metropolis, in spite of the adverse hereditary tendency among their people, do succeed in educating among themselves a class of efficient and prosperous artizans, no fair-minded man will find any fault with them for having made this school a Jewish institution. ”

“ In the realms of education some of the best private schools during the first half of the nineteenth century were conducted by Jewish women, like Miss Harby and Miss Moise. Since the establishment of the public school system, hundreds of Jewish women have won the admiration of the communities throughout the country for their work as teachers, while in this city the first female assistant superintendent appointed by the Board of Education is a Jewess well known to all, not only as an educator, but as a devoted worker in every department for the betterment of the Jewish community. ”

“ The most efficient factor of cultural regeneration was the secular school, both the general Russian and the Jewish Crown school. A flood of young men, lured by the rosy prospects of a free human existence in the midst of a free Russian people, rushed from the farthermost nooks and corners of the Pale into the gymnazia and universities whose doors were kept wide open for the Jews. ”

“ Thereafter one professional school after another adopted a percentage provision, and some excluded Jews altogether. Finally, "seeing that many Jewish young men, eager to benefit by a higher classical, technical, or professional education," presented themselves every year for admission to the universities, that they passed their examination and continued their studies at the various schools of the empire, the Government deemed it "desirable to put a stop to a state of affairs which is so unsatisfactory." ”

“ The self-volition of the movement checked the assimilative thought and revived the Jewish brotherhood idea; the "bent back" of the Jew grew straight in the presence of the Jewish flag; a new poetry and a new prosody, deep with the feelings that stir a people, have arisen; a school of young artists have given themselves over to the creation of a Jewish art; others have planned an international Jewish university; a cultural movement—combated for the time being by the more orthodox—has spread so strongly as sometimes to shake the main movement from its true centre ”

“ Men with queer skull-caps, venerable beard, and the outlandish long-skirted kaftan of the Russian Jew, elbow the ugliest and the handsomest women in the land. The contrast is startling. The old women are hags; the young, houris. Wives and mothers at sixteen, at thirty they are old. So thoroughly has the chosen people crowded out the Gentiles in the Tenth Ward that, when the great Jewish holidays come around every year, the public schools in the district have practically to close up. Of their thousands of pupils scarce a handful come to school. ”

“ Realizing this, the Government decided to combat the traditional school as the rival of the new. Immediately upon his accession to the throne, Alexander confirmed the following resolution adopted by the Jewish Committee on May 3, 1855: "After the lapse of twenty years no one shall be appointed rabbi or teacher of Jewish subjects, except graduates of the rabbinical schools [1] or of the general educational establishments of a higher or secondary grade." ”

“ There was no difficulty in finding proper teachers for that, and there were no attempts on the part of parents to interfere with religious instruction or to demand separate teaching for each sect. It is true that religious sects are not so numerous in Germany as they are in England. Some, though by no means all, children of Roman Catholic and Jewish parents were allowed to be absent from religious lessons. But most parents knew [64] that the history of the Jewish religion would be taught at school in so impartial and truly historical a spirit as never to offend Jewish children. ”

“ The students in our several normal schools, and especially the large army of teachers, scattered throughout the country, who have not had the advantage of a normal school training, are often obliged to resort to works by Christian authors for information and guidance. While these may supply them with the facts and with the most approved method of presentation, they cannot give them the Jewish point of view which is so essential to the Jewish teacher. ”

“ Evening courses are provided for the teaching of the Hebrew lan- guage and commercial training, and as continuation schools for youths engaged in some trade during the day. The non-Zionist schools are those of the " Alliance Israelite," the Evelina de Rothschild school for Girls under the Anglo- Jewish Association, one Training College and one Technical School, a number of Orthodox institutions mainly very elementary, and a few independent private schools chiefly of technical character. ”

“ Teachers report that their Jewish pupils [159] "seem to have hungry minds." They "grasp information as they do everything else, recognizing it as the requisite for success." Says a principal: "Their progress in studies is simply another manifestation of the acquisitiveness of the race." Another thinks their school successes are won more by intense application than by natural superiority, and judges his Irish pupils would do still better if only they would work as many hours. ”

“ For the first year of my life with Aunt Selina I went to a nearby public school. There were a good many Jewish boys in my class—many more than there had been in the whole Brooklyn school—but I kept away from them as a matter of course. I made a few friends among the Gentiles—not many, because they were hard to make, and I could always feel, in my supersensitive fashion, that they were fashioning a sort of favor out of conferring their friendship upon me. ”

“ There is one other carpet school for girls in another city. We spent perhaps two hours in this inspection and walked leisurely back to town, where I parted with Hassan Bey with sincere admiration.
In the afternoon I went with Absalom to visit a school I had heard of in the Jewish quarter, a pious foundation, the bequest of a wealthy Jew, for the education of poor boys. There were about five hundred of them there, bright-eyed, intelligent, intent, as Jewish boys in their condition usually are. ”

“ Often they even organize a school that their children may learn the language, religion and other essentials of their earlier group life. So the children often attend two schools, an American one to assimilate them to the group mind of America, a Polish or Russian or Jewish one to keep them in touch with the group mind of their parents’ allegiance. ”

“ Only—well, it seems that this school caters almost entirely to the sons of wealthy Jewish men—and that this principal is very fond of our college ... and so he grievously sends us all the boys that he can. You know, so many boys don't know where to go to college—and the principal often has a chance to suggest one, don't you see! ”

“ Under the auspices of the committee, a reply to Bishop Colenso was published.
The children are educated in a way of which Christians have no idea. The Jewish free school in Brick Lane, with its three thousand children, is a sight to see. There is, besides, an infant school equally flourishing, and no poor Jew is relieved unless he sends his children to school. In the visiting of the sick, in the care of the poor, all take their share. ”

“ Thus out of 275,000 Jewish children in the public schools 23.5 per cent. receive week-day instruction in religion. Energetic efforts are made to reach the remaining 210,000. The pupils have from one to four periods each week, after school hours, each period lasting from one to two hours. ”

“ The Jew is the only immigrant group whose poor boys attend institutions of higher learning in any large numbers. Other groups usually wait at least a generation until they have acquired both prosperity and some American culture before their children attend college. Besides, there are a number of Catholic universities which are attended by many Irish and Italian youths, while there is no such school to divert the Jewish youth. ”

“ The principal's mouth quivered with the smile he could hardly suppress:
"Episcopalian? The boy is a Jew, is he not?"
Mrs. Haberman sat up very straight. "His parents had Jewish affiliations, I believe. They are both dead."
"I see." And I am sure he really did see! For a moment later he put a deft end to the interview.
"Madam," he said, "this boy must take his chances like any other boy in the school. He must make his own friends from among his own sort. He must fight his own adversaries among those who are unlike him. That is the law of life as well as of every school. ”

“ Special classes have been opened at the gymnasium for the religious instruction of Jewish pupils. The parents of the latter resent the innovation; almost every Jewish child receives religious training at home or in cheidar. But the school authorities have ordered the gymnasiasts of Jewish faith to attend classes in religion. ”

“ In 1884, it closed [35] the Technical Institute of Zhitomir (founded in 1862) , on the ground that, in the southwestern Pale provinces, the Jews contributed a majority of the artisans, and a special Jewish technical school would increase this disproportion. In 1885 it closed the Teachers’ Institute (a noted center of Jewish learning) because “there was no further need for it.”
As a consequence of these limitations and restrictions there has been a scramble among Jews to gain admission to these institutions. Parents have employed every expedient to have their children enrolled. ”

“ The Jews of Jerusalem are especially careful not to allow their children to associate with Christians or Moslems; and they will not suffer them to stray away from home, or play in the streets, for fear they should learn bad habits, or be constrained or induced to be baptized into a Christian Church. Consequently, the little ones were confined nearly all day in the close, ill-ventilated, small rooms of the Jewish quarter, till this school was established. Here they assembled early in the morning, and, taking proper hours for rest, recreation, and for meals, returned home at sunset. ”

“ A kindergarten school is maintained which is in a very flourishing condition. And all sorts of children may go to it. While the school is made up mostly of foreign Jewish children, there are a few non-Jewish children, including a couple of little Chinese. ”