Assignment 6

Foundations of Learning | Uri Kestenbaum

1.

Based on Fishman and Shulman, explain why

the heder:melammed system of Jewish education has been called
entrepreneurial. Compare the advantages/disadvantages of the heder vis
a vis the talmud torah.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jewish schools were either private or
communal. In the cheder system, a teacher would open a private school, usually in his own
home, where the student could come learn, and sometimes even lodge. In contrast to the nonJewish world at the time, the cheder system was designed so that everyone could receive an
education: those of means could hire a tutor, while the indigent could enrol in a communityfunded Talmud Torah school. This multi-tiered system was considered entrepreneurial because
it covered all-the-bases, so to speak; in that no one was left behind. Also, the level of
individualized teaching allowed for maximum growth opportunities for students with private
tutors or low student to teacher ratios.
Much criticism is leveled against the cheder system, where much of the focus was on a
melammed maintaining good favor among his employers rather than the growth of his charges.
Fishman1 (1944, pp. 22-24) describes a common scene of unqualified melammeds teaching in
less-than favorable learning conditions who were wont to dropping students in favor of more
lucrative positions. Ironically, Shulman2 (1986, p. 86) points out that the level of education in the
communal Talmud Torah, meant for poor students, was frequently far superior than that of the
cheder system. The Talmud Torah was supervised by a committee that oversaw the hiring of
qualified teachers, the size of classes and the content in the curriculum. In this fashion, the
committee could govern the Talmud Torah in a way that the chadorim could not. Another
advantage of the Talmud Torah was in its class structure. Some saw the group structure of many
students studying together as an ideal environment for learning.

2.

Based on Stampfer, how did heder education maintain "social

stratification"?

1 Fishman, I. (1944). The History of Jewish Education in Central Europe. London,

England: Edwrd Goldston.
2 Shulman, N. E. (1986). Authority and Community. New York, NY: Ktav Publishing
House.

Social status among Eastern European Jewry was largely dependent on an

individuals knowledge of Torah and related sacred texts. While other societies
transmit membership of their elite status to their offspring through inheritance
of wealth, land or royal blood, these European Jews maintained no such
security of status; elite membership had to be earned individually. Stampfer 3
(1988, p. 274) maintains that cheder education served as a means to stabilize
and maintain the structure of this social stratification that placed well-learned
individuals at the top of the social ladder, and the unlearned at the bottom.
Every boy was sent to cheder, where they were taught to read, pray and study
Chumash. The utility and significance of such study was readily apparent, and a
child palpably benefited by his attendance in cheder. The next step, study of
Talmud, served a dual purpose. Students who excelled at their studies were
identified and chosen to continue their efforts in advanced Yeshivot. Such
students were supported by the community and given the opportunities
necessary to advance and ultimately be promoted to authority status. The
majority of students, however, failed in their Talmudic studies. This failure served
as an important lesson. An appreciation of the difficulty that Talmudic study
evinced proved useful in maintaining the respect toward Rabbinic authority.
Effectively, cheder education played an important role in not only in education,
but in maintaining social distinctions.
If I may voice my own opinion on this, Stampfer makes it sound like the Rabbis
got together and schemed to create an elaborate system that would maintain
their authority among their brethren. The purported secret agenda of the
chadarim gives rise to an assumption that, even if funds were made available,
the Rabbinic authorities would still not encourage failed students to continue
their Talmudic pursuits. A quick look at the Jewish educational model today
clearly discredits such thinking. A less conspiratorial understanding of the
cheder system is that, practically speaking, it makes sense to invest in students
that are more likely to succeed. That all boys went to cheder until thirteen
demonstrates the value parents had in educating their children in basic religious
life - not a sinister plot of maintaining Rabbinic authority.

3 Stampfer, S. (1988). Heder Study, Knowledge of Torah, and the Maintenance of

Social Stratification in Traditional East European Jewish Society, Studies in Jewish
Education, 3.