11. Religious schools

Gallery 6: On the Jewish Street, 1918–1939

“I was sent to a ḥederḤeder(Yiddish: kheyder, lit.: room) – traditional school where young boys learn to read Hebrew and study the Torah. Their teacher is called a melamed.  at the age of 3,” a young man recalled. Open the last school desk to see films from the 1930s about the religious school system, from ḥeder, a primary school for boys, to yeshivaYeshivareligious academy where young Jewish men study the Talmud and other religious texts. , an academy for young men. Under pressure from the Polish state, the religious schools agreed to introduce a few secular subjects. The Beys Yankev schools, founded by Sara Schenirer, provided girls with a modern religious and secular education. There were also Jewish secular schools, but most Jewish children attended Polish public schools.

Learning the Yiddish alphabet