Jewish Life in the Middle Ages

CHAPTER XX. THE SCOPE OF EDUCATION

CHAPTER XX THE SCOPE OF EDUCATION UP to the thirteenth year the education of Jewish boys all the world over was practically identical. Religion was the foundation of the school curriculum, and the training that the child received was designed to form his character as well as his mind. Herein lay the advantage of the medieval method, for the Bible was at once food for the mind and the heart. The Hebrew Scriptures were taught to children as language and as ethics concurrently.l Hence resulted the hallowing of knowledge- produced by the joint action of synagogue and school. It was customary in the middle ages for all Jews to spend a good deal of time in synagogue on festivals and Sabbaths for the purpose of studying the Bible and Rabbinical literature.2 There was no learned caste in Judaism, for every Israelite studied the Law. Boys about thirteen years old were often competent to read the prayers for the congregation ,S but by no means all Jews were able to read Hebrew I D'.,.,D" "tDD, § 304. 2 Natronai Gaon (R~SPqnS4 of Geonim. ed. Lyck, 87). cr. Muller, Masse-eluth So/wim, p. 257. 8 Maharil. cr. Respon.fa of Solomon ben Adret (Venice. 1546). § 450, whence it is clear that many Jews were capable of acting as readers, and tbat tbe appointment of an official precentor was partly intended to end the competition for the right to read the prayers. 357 The Scope of Education - as it appears in the Scrolls used in synagogue - without vowel-signs or punctuation. Right through the middle ages, indeed, the never obsolete note, 'Ah, the good old times!' is sounded by Jewish authorities,! but the point is less important historically than practically. It is a warning to modem critics of the present that their lament for the loss of the good old times is no more reasonable than were similar regrets in the middle ages. But though this same principle, viz. the combination of moral with intellectual training, ruled Jewish life everywhere , it was modified in some countries by rival tendencies . The study of Hebrew grammar is a typical case. In Spain and Italy, grammar was taught as a special subject in and for itself. Scientific Hebrew philology had been founded in the tenth century by Saadya, not, as has been commonly assumed, by the Karaites.:& On the other hand, when the great German Talmudist, Asheri, went to Toledo in the fourteenth century, he confessed that his Hebrew grammar was so weak that he could not teach the Bible to the Spanish Jews. Hebrew grammar, however, was not entirely neglected in the Jewish schools of Germany and northern France, it simply had no independent place in the school curriculum.s It was learnt as a means 1 For charges of' ignorance see Responsa of Geonim, Majletult, p. 25: Maharil, Rilchotk Pesadl, ;"In:lW;"I ;"Il'\J"\ 1'1;'110 ResjltmSa, r"JII:>1\ ii.39. wherc he says •all bridegrooms are ignorant, and cannot read the weekly portion from the Scroll'; Ella Mizrachi, P'i'lt'J7 P't', 13; and S. Morpurgo, ;"Ii''1l lI't'w, p. 102 C. II cr. W. Bacher, Die Anfonge aer Ht!Jr. Grammatik (LeipZig, 1895, p. 2) : • Bisher ist durch Nicbts erwiesen, das schon vor ibm (= Saadya) der eine oder andere Kariiisclte Lehrer unter der Einwirkung der arabischen Sprachwissenschaft zu lihnlicben Anflingen clec bebfli.ischen Grammatik gelangt ware wie Saadya.' 8 On the French and German Hebrew Grammarians of the middle ages, see Zunz, Zur Glscl£ichie, pp. 107 seq. Jewislt '.Jargons' 359 to an end. that end being the true exposition of the Scriptures. That grammar-in the practical sense-was not over4 looked in these countries may be seen from this fact. In no part of the world did the medieval Jews speak a jargon. They spoke Arabic, Spanish, Italian, German, or French with accuracy, and wrote it with precision, though they pro~ ably employed Hebrew characters. Jewish jargons arose in the middle of the fifteenth century, and the phenomenon was due less to ignorance than to too much knowledge. The Jews were always bilingual, but in the fifteenth century there was hardly a congregation in which a large foreign element had not been forced to settle by continued expUlsions from their native land. A jargon was inevitable, for as the only linguistic element common to all the Jews was...