Estadísticos descriptivos, correlación tablas de las variables de estudio y gráficos de

147. Alef-R. Tsu der frage vegen der yudisher folks-shul [On the Question of the

Jewish Primary School]. Di velt, Vilna, Aug. 1910. 97 pages. (Yiddish) Copy from LOC.

This fairly short book was ultimately printed in three editions, and extracts were re- published for the An entfer di gegners fun yidish series in Czernowitz in 1922.475

References to the first edition tend to date it after the two articles entitled

‘Glaykhberekhtigung fun shprakhen’, published in August and September 1910, but the later article indicates that the book was already published.476

This work made ‘the biggest splash on the socialist scene’, was ‘the crown of the Bund’s school-related literature at that time’, ‘the highlight of Esther’s scholarship on the problem of Jewish education at that time’, ‘Esther’s most influential work’ and, incorrectly, ‘her longest published work’.477

In summing up its content, Joshua Zimmerman (248) emphasises the connection it establishes between the demand for the Jewish primary school and socialist theory, and cites a passage expressing the demand for a Jewish primary school that uses Yiddish (29), whereas Aryeh Gelbard (70-71), echoing Khaim Kazdan (284- 85), cites a passage concerning new demands and points out the important influence that writings of this sort by Esther and other Bundists had on the development of Jewish education ‘already in the first decade of the century’.478

Khaim Kazdan cites an additional substantial passage, about the mutual importance of the proletariat and the Jewish primary school, commenting ‘This is how Esther, in her book, also laid the foundation for an independent proletarian policy on the school question and for the ideology of a socialist education for Jewish children’.479

Naomi Shepherd cites a passage describing the completely Yiddish cultural environment of the Pale which, she adds, lacked Yiddish schools.480

Jeffrey Shandler observes that the book allies political and linguistic consciousness, citing a relevant passage from the introduction.481

Elias Schulman makes the most comprehensive examination of the book and quotes several passages.482

He ultimately comments, ‘She laid the basis for the new Jewish school – Yiddish, secular, democratic and socialist – thus formulating the Bundist program of Jewish education’.483

Conversely, Nathan Cohen observes that Esther’s views on

education follow the Bund’s programme.484

The book, in which the author maintains a constant presence by means of regular autoreferences, comprises four named and numbered sections which are divided into fairly short numbered sub-sections. The

Preface (1-2) gives some information about the circumstances and context of the

476 _{‘Glaykhberekhtigung fun shprakhen,’ 143 and 145. The preface, which is dated August 1910, notes that the}

writing of the book had been completed in October 1909.

477 _{‘the biggest splash’ (Zimmerman 248); ‘the crown’ (Kazdan 284); ‘the highlight’ (Gelbard 70); ‘Esther’s most}

influential work’ (Shepherd 162); ‘her longest published work’ (Kay, Encyclopedia of Modern Jewish Culture).

478 _{The cited passage is from pages 94-95.}

479 _{Kazdan 285-86. The cited passage is from pages 96-97. Part of the same passage is cited in Nathan Cohen, ‘The}

Bund’s Contribution to Yiddish Culture in Poland between the Two World Wars,’ Jacobs, Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe, 113-14; Ruthchild, ‘Bringing the Revolution,’ 186-87.

480 _{Shepherd 156-57; Ruthchild, ‘Bringing the Revolution,’ 176. On comparison with the original text (36), the cited}

passage is in fact a paraphrase.

481 _{Shandler 67-68. The same passage is cited by Schulman (7-8).} 482 _{Schulman 7-11.}

483 _{Schulman 11.} 484 _{Cohen 113.}

book’s publication, explaining that its content is topical and that there are signs of progress towards the distant goal of recognition for Yiddish.485

A short introductory section (3-5) relates growing awareness of the need for national primary schools using their national language to the awakening of oppressed nations. The Jewish masses are not conscious of this need, since they, like the intelligentsia, perceive the education issue as ‘how to infiltrate the foreign schools’ and they consider Yiddish valueless.486

Their ignorance is natural since they are ‘the oppressed of the oppressed’.487

Even where it is accepted that Yiddish is a language and that there is such as thing as a Jewish culture, the opinion prevails that Jewish primary schools ‘must be Russian (Polish)’. This book provides material to help answer questions about the Jewish primary school. It does not cover the entire issue, just the part ‘that is of particular interest to us’. Part 1

(9-11) of Section I, The Mother Tongue and the Jewish Primary School, notes that

the primary school question is particularly important for the masses, because it will be their only opportunity for formal education. There is a connection between education and willingness to struggle for a better life, since education is crucial in that struggle. A proper education develops the intellectual, moral and cognitive powers and leads the child to ‘the treasures of culture’. This must be the goal of the national primary school,

according to modern pedagogy.488

Also, limited access to development and education can harm economic interests. Part 2 (11-14) examines whether attending a foreign- language school causes only temporary inconvenience. A child does not start school empty of knowledge, schooling builds on the foundations of learning established in the home and the community, but if this learning is not in the school’s language, there is no solid foundation on which schooling can build and its teaching is therefore a muddle. According to Ludo Hartmann, children in this situation need special classes, like those for ‘abnormal, undeveloped, thick children’, which set them back a year or more in their education, wasting time, effort and money.489

Hartmann makes the ‘utopian assumption’ that attending a foreign-language school leads to assimilation, but he is correct in that a child in such a situation becomes ‘like an idiot’, ‘deaf and dumb’, as he can neither understand nor speak at school, and this handicaps the entire nation. A legend about the biblical Sodom, where visitors were adjusted to fit a certain bed, illustrates the effect of assimilatory efforts on a child attending a foreign-language school. Part 3 (14-19) describes the first lessons at school, in which pictures are used to help learn Russian

485 _{Elias Schulman cites the last 8 lines of the preface (7).} 486 _{‘Foreign’ here means Russian or Polish.}

letters. These are merely confusing for Jewish children. Even for a Russian child, learning to read is a ‘mechanical, dead’ process. There are various ideas about teaching methods. The learning material is already familiar from home, for example songs and stories, and this helps the child to learn to read. But for a Jewish child, Russian stories about ‘Brother Ivanushka’ and ‘Sister Alyonushka’, which are full of vernacular expressions, are foreign and incomprehensible. Doing arithmetic exercises requires clear understanding, otherwise the work is done ‘half mechanically’, and much time is lost in explaining the Russian instructions to Jewish pupils. These language difficulties create such an obstacle to education that ‘simple Jewish fathers’ can do mental

arithmetic more easily than schoolchildren. New methods of teaching grammar rely on literary texts. But a ‘very weak’ translation into Yiddish of part of Nekrasov’s poem ‘Zelënyy shum’ shows that in translation some concepts must be expressed using different parts of speech than those in the original text.490

The new method does create awareness of the functions of the various parts of speech, but it allows a Jewish child no opportunity for development of cognitive and communication skills. Part 4 (19-23) depicts a poorly trained teacher of the existing paltry Jewish primary school who ‘turns in an enchanted circle’, unable to be rid of inadequate old teaching methods and unable

to bring in new ones such as the Anschauung method.491

With this method, pupils devote time to observation (of nature, production, etc) and to activities including verbal and written expression. With the old methods, knowledge dissipates after children leave school. The ivrit be-ivrit method has many opponents, as does a similar method used in schools in the Caucasus, and those opponents are ‘carriers of the Russian state-idea’

who believe that everyone throughout the empire must know Russian.492

There are examples of poor performance by students from minority groups in Hungarian schools. The educational value of writing and speaking is high. Part 5 (23-29) explains that works of literature offer more than one level of meaning, since there is more to a language than just words and grammar: a language has ‘a soul, a spirit’ and this is especially noticeable in the act of translation. Each nation has its own individual

conceptions which a word cannot adequately express. It is impossible to rewrite a poem by a great master at the standard of the original, certainly not without stifling ‘the music, the poetry of the verse’. To appreciate poetry completely, a child’s soul must be ‘open to the finest hues’ and if the poetry is in a foreign language only the ‘simplest and

489 _{Ludo Hartmann, Austrian historian, SD politician and advocate of ‘popular education’ (1865-1924).} 490 _{Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov, realist poet and publisher (1821-78). ‘Zelënyy shum [Green Noise],’ 1863.} 491 _{The Anschauung method was developed by the educational theorist Johann Pestalozzi in the nineteenth century. It}

most primitive colours’ can be perceived. Imagining the potential experience of a Russian child in a Jewish school elucidates the effect on a Jewish child who ‘enters the great temple of poetry through the Russian door’. Although a Jewish child may know words that take yat ‘as well as the Shema’, a Russian school has not led him to Russian culture.493

But nor does a Jewish child have access to Jewish culture, because domestic use of his mother tongue does not provide the sort of vocabulary needed to engage with books and serious newspapers. The state of the Jewish primary school, under the current capitalist order, is deplorable. The situation is worse in foreign-language schools.

Parents must demand a Jewish primary school that uses their children’s mother tongue; teachers must protest against being used as a tool for tormenting children; and the proletariat must, ‘in the name of the class struggle’, demand a Jewish primary school that uses the mother tongue of its pupils.494