In Her Hands: The Education of Jewish Girls in Tsarist Russia

Introduction: Education and Transformation

Introduction Education and Transformation 1 In the speech delivered at the opening of his private school for Jewish girls in Kherson in 1866, Abram Iakov Bruk-Brezovskii began with a paean to the history of Jewish education. “No one can rightly accuse our tribesmen of indifference to learning.”1 He then contrasted the supreme dedication of Jews toward educating their sons to the situation for girls: “Unfortunately, this concern about education, until recent times, extended only to boys; almost no attention was paid to the education of the female sex. True, in the Bible and the Talmud several educated women are mentioned, but they were outside of the norm of our people. The history of the Jews does not show even one communal educational institution for the female sex.”2 Bruk-Brezovskii conceded that some might oppose education for girls: “There are people who think that education for the female sex, especially of the lower classes, is excessive and can even sometimes be harmful, because it cultivates a taste,” but he saw no merit in their opinions. On the contrary, Bruk-Brezovskii viewed educating Jewish girls as a means of transforming the entire community: “And thus, in the education of women is included the source of education for the whole people; in their hands rests the fate of the next generation. For our Jews, the education of women holds yet another importance: only through them can we, little by little, supplant our jargon and imperceptibly acquire for ourselves the national language—an exceedingly important step toward internally and externally merging with the Russian people.”3 2 I N T RO d U c T I O N Although Bruk-Brezovskii was not alone in placing the responsibility for proper instruction of children on women, he was one of a relatively small number of individuals who followed up on this belief by opening a modern school for Jewish girls. These schools, over one hundred of which thrived between 1831 and 1881, not only trained thousands of Jewish girls in secular and Judaic subjects, but also paved the way for the modern schools that followed them. Nonetheless, their story has largely disappeared from the historical scholarship. This work seeks to restore it to its proper place. Shevel’ Perel’ opened the first modern private school for Jewish girls in Russia in 1831. His school, located in Vilna, the center of rabbinic Judaism in Eastern Europe, offered lessons in European languages, Russian, Yiddish, and the Jewish religion. Girls as young as eight years old could enroll for a two-year course of study. Fifty years later, in 1881, Perel’s school remained open, although under the leadership of his son-in-law, Vul’f Kagan. It had expanded to include four years of study, over one hundred students, and a broader and deeper curriculum. Thousands of girls passed through Perel’s school. Some, like his daughter Flora, stayed on as teachers; others taught elsewhere or went on to pursue further educational opportunities. All of Perel’s students brought their knowledge of Russian language and culture, and their new approach to the Jewish religion, back with them into their homes. These girls’ influence spread from their homes and school to the Jewish community of Vilna and beyond. In telling the story of Perel’s and Bruk-Brezovskii’s schools, and the many others that followed, this book examines curricula, teachers, financing , students, public opinion, educational innovation, and how each of these changed over time. The private schools for Jewish girls that opened in the second half of the nineteenth century both reflected developments within Russian Jewish society and drove further developments. It is precisely in their capacity as both a marker of and a catalyst to change that these schools prove most useful in illuminating the Russian Jewish community at a time of profound transformation. Indeed, change was a constant for Jews in nineteenth-century Russia. To speak in broad generalizations, at the beginning of the century the Jews were locally autonomous, Yiddish speaking, religiously traditional, and socially isolated. By the turn of the twentieth century, communal autonomy had given way to political activism on the world stage, the Jewish community had broken down into a variety of orthodox and secularizing groups, many Russian Jews were socially and linguistically integrating into the surrounding society, and millions of others were leaving their homes and families in an attempt to build new lives abroad. 3...