The Story of Jewish Education

 

From biblical origins and medieval traditions of strict, sometimes harsh, discipline in Torah study to today’s evolving landscape split between modern, state-accredited Jewish day schools and traditional ultra-Orthodox heders, the story of Jewish education reveals shifting methods, values, and community integration.

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By Penina Adler | Copyright: Meni Philip​​

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For permission to use this article or any portion of it, please contact info@nochildspared.com

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In the Bible

The earliest source for educating children in Biblical literature is found in the first book of the Torah, in Genesis 21:9-14, where Abraham sends his older son, Ishmael, out of the house so he will not negatively influence his younger son, Isaac. Medieval rabbinic commentators explained that being careful to surround our children with only positive influences is an important part of education.

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When Isaac grew up, Abraham sent his servant Eliezer to go to his relatives to find him a wife. Rabbis explained that Abraham wanted to make sure that Isaac would train his children and future generations to follow in the ways of God. According to Rabbi Solomon Isaaki, (known by his initials as Rashi) who is one of the most respected and prolific medieval biblical commentators, Abraham was so concerned with this matter that God cut Abraham’s life short by five years so he wouldn’t live to see his grandson Esau begin to display evil behaviors.

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On the other hand, Esau’s twin brother Jacob did seem to live up to Abraham’s hopes for following in his footsteps. Jacob was described in Genesis as being a simple man who dwelled in tents. Rashi explained that this refers to the yeshiva, an institute of adult learning, where Jaacob spent most of his time learning Torah, which comprises the stories of the Bible and the laws from God that are derived from it.

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Later in the book of Genesis, as Jacob was on his way to Egypt to be reunited with his long-lost son Josef, he sent his fourth son Judah ahead of the family to the city of Goshen. Rashi wrote that Judah was charged with setting up a house of study where Jacob could establish the kind of learning he wanted to pass down to his descendents while they would be living in Egypt.

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Through the Temple Periods 

In the centuries that followed, the Jewish people eventually left Egypt and settled in the land of Israel. Once there, it became the custom for fathers to teach their sons Torah. If a child had no father or their father was not capable of teaching them, that child would not learn. The Talmud - a large collection of rabbinic writing compiled between the 3rd-5th centuries - relates that Rabbi Simon ben Shetach, a prominent judge at the head of the Jewish courts in the first century BCE, realized that Bible study was declining. His solution was to set up mandatory yeshivot - plural of yeshiva, schools of higher learning for men - in order to teach everyone regardless of their previous learning experience. First established in Jerusalem and then in the rest of Israel, students came to these yeshivot at the age of 16.

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The Talmud goes on to explain that students who came to these yeshivot without any learning experience were strong-willed and would rebel against sitting and studying Torah, as they hadn’t had a foundation for the type of study that was taking place. Very often, these students would leave the yeshiva and never return. When Joshua ben Gamla, a high priest at the end of the Second Temple era c. 65 CE, saw what was happening, he instituted the establishment of teachers for young children of six or seven years old. In doing so, he was credited with saving Torah study from being forgotten.

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Ben Gamla set up this system of ‘elementary schools’ in order to stop the flow of students that were leaving the yeshivot en masse. His schools provided training for children so they would be able to stay and comply with the learning system in the higher yeshivot. The methods of education are described as “stuffing an ox” and are coupled with discussions in the Talmud about how to hit students.

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This theme is repeated in many, many more places in the extended books of the Torah, the Talmud, and throughout the rabbinic commentaries over the last fifteen hundred years.

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For example, the book of Proverbs, assumed to have been written by King Solomon around the year 975 BCE, contains the most well-known directives on how to conduct this method of education - training a child so he will obey and follow the Torah. The following is an incomplete list of sources describing punishing ones’ child:

• “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him early.” 

  • (Prov. 13:24)

• “Do not withhold discipline from a child, if you beat him with a rod he will not die.” 

  • (Prov. 23:13)

• “Discipline your son and he will give you peace; he will gratify you with dainties.” 

  • (Prov. 29:17) 

• “Discipline your son while there is still hope, and do not set your heart on his destruction.“ 

  • (Prov. 19:18)

• “If folly settles in the heart of a lad, the rod of discipline will distance it from him.” 

  • (Prov. 22:15)

• “For the commandment is a lamp, the teaching is a light, and the way to life is the rebuke that disciplines.” 

  • (Prov. 6:23)

• “A fool spurns the discipline of his father, but one who heeds reproof becomes clever.” 

  • (Prov. 15:5)

 

Immediately following the story of Ben Gamla in the Talmud, there is a passage describing the opinions of two rabbis regarding how to teach such young students. According to Rav, one should not accept a child before age six. Once he is six years old, though, one should stuff him full of Torah as one might force feed an animal. Rav continues that when you hit the child, it should be with the strap of a sandal. Rashi agrees with him and adds that you should force the child just as you force a work animal to eat, drink, and bear a yoke on his neck - with violence.

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Other passages from the Talmud include:

• Rav [...] said to Rav Shmuel bar Sheilat: When you strike a child for educational purposes, hit him only with the strap of a sandal, which is small and does not cause pain.”

  • (Talmud Bava Basra 21a)

• “Abba Shaul says, “A father who strikes his son, and a teacher who beats his student [...] are not liable for unintentionally murdering [the child] if the death was caused by the act of performing the commandment [i.e. education].”

  • (Talmud Makkot 8a)

 

Late Roman Period to 1900

From the time of Ben Gamla, schools had been set up in towns to teach children Torah and other Jewish texts. Over the next 2,000, Ben Gamla’s system, along with the abuse sanctioned by the Bible and the Talmud, became the school system Jewish communities are still using today. The cost to send a child to school was historically prohibitive for many families and only the ones who could afford it would send their children long term. Poor families would often have to pull their children out after a certain age when they needed that child to learn a trade to contribute to the family income. 

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Most schools were set up to teach boys only, though occasionally girls learning groups would be arranged as well, separated from the boys. The girls would learn to pray and the practical rules and laws for running a Jewish home. Once the girls mastered those basic skills, they would leave school to help their mothers at home, usually around age 10 or 11.

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In the late medieval times, between the years 1200-1500, some religious communities in Europe set up a program called Talmud Torah, literally meaning “the study of Torah”, in the synagogue to provide a basic Jewish education to poorer families or orphans in the towns. Funds collected from members of the community and the synagogue went to covering the cost. The melamed (teacher) was simply someone who knew the subjects he had to teach; he was rarely qualified to teach children. It was common for the melamed to abuse and beat the boys if they did not behave. 

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In other areas of Europe and in Israel, similar types of schools called heders were set up to provide a religious Jewish education for children from ages four or five through age 13, approximately preschool through grade seven. The heder, literally meaning “room”, was usually hosted in a small room where the rebbe (teacher) lived, and the rebbe himself was no more qualified than the melamed in the Talmud Torah to be teaching. The families of the students tended to be better off financially than those who sent their children to the Talmud Torah, and they paid the heder rebbe directly. The days were long, from morning to night, with meal breaks for the boys to go home and eat before returning for more learning. The curriculum consisted only of the Torah and other Jewish texts. Corporal punishment at heders was common.

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Jewish communities in Spain, Portugal, and North Africa had their own school systems. Due to the strong Muslim influence on these regions in the early medieval period, these Sephardic (literally “Spanish” or “Hispanic”) Jews valued a strong secular education along with their Jewish studies. Maimonides, one of the most famous Sephardic rabbis from the 12th century, was not just a learned rabbi and philosopher but was also trained in medicine and the science of the times. Jewish schools established in these regions - and places Jews from these regions fled to after the 1492 expulsion from the Iberian peninsula - were known for rigorous learning in a variety of disciplines.

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Likewise, Mizrahi (“Eastern”) Jews living in the Arabic countries of North Africa and east of Europe shared a similar passion for learning, students often mastering Arabic at the same time as they learned Hebrew. The study of sciences and medicine was encouraged along with Torah study. While the structure of the schools were similar to European schools - with a room from the local synagogue dedicated to the school and funding coming from either the parents directly or from community contributions - the quality and breadth of the education in Mizrahi and Sephardic communities was vastly different through the end of the Renaissance period.

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At the end of the 1700’s, Haskalah (Jewish “enlightenment”) supporters in Germany were harsh critics of the heder rebbes and melameds throughout European religious communities, claiming that the children were not taught by qualified teachers, leading to large gaps in their knowledge despite the money they were being paid to teach the full range of Jewish topics. These supporters also criticized the system as a whole, saying that the insular nature of the chedarim led to linguistic and social isolation for students and prevented them from integrating into and contributing to the wider society in a meaningful way.

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In Germany and other parts of Western Europe, Reform schools, or Freischulen (“free schools”), were set up by followers of the Haskalah (“Enlightenment”) movement to teach children the local language along with basic arithmetic and other general knowledge topics. The heder system in these communities largely dissolved in favor of these new style schools. In Eastern Europe, however, heders remained an important method of education and communities refused to modernize their curriculum to add secular subjects or teacher qualifications.

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In America at the end of the 19th century, secular school was mandatory and most children were forced to attend public schools during the day. Heder options were arranged as an after-school learning program for these boys. In the early 1900s, the cost for heder was around $1/month, a cost that was too high for many European immigrants to pay. An early century study of Jewish education in New York showed that these heders lacked equipment, discipline, and the boys did not attend regularly. The teachers were not qualified and records were almost non-existent. About half of the students dropped out each year.

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In the 20th Century

After the Holocaust, the European religious - now also referred to as “ultra-Orthodox” - communities in America and Israel broke into two major streams, divided mainly by the focus that was placed on secular and religious education. One stream took a more modern approach. These schools - called Beit Sefer (“school”), Talmud Torah, or simply referred to as “day schools” - openly encouraged secular subjects in their schools. The teachers at these schools are usually trained educators who taught based on established educational principles. These schools still put their primary emphasis on Judaic subjects, but the secular subjects are taught at a level often similar to fully secular schools. These schools often had government oversight and funding and thus generally adhered to the legal or cultural norms against corporal punishment in schools.

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The other branch of this division maintained their focus on Jewish education and put little or no emphasis on secular subjects. These schools continued to call themselves heders and follow the laws of education as described in the Torah and Talmud, as practiced in pre-World War versions of heder schools. Students educated in these schools often learn only basic arithmetic and simple language skills and even these meager subjects are generally not offered in middle or high school grades at all.

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Regions in America and around the world with a smaller ultra-Orthodox Jewish population compared to the secular population tend to operate Jewish day schools for their communities. The children enrolled here receive an education in both Judaism and the full range of general studies subjects and are usually accredited by the local government. In communities with a larger ultra-Orthodox Jewish percentage of the population, however, it is more common to find a wide spectrum of both Jewish day schools and heders, including even more extreme versions of heder schools that deny even a basic secular education.

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Current Numbers

Currently, there are well over 2 million ultra-Orthodox Jews in the world, the majority living in Israel (1,200,000) and the USA (700,000). Out of the worldwide population of more than 15,000,000 Jews, Jews following ultra-Orthodox practices make up about 14% of the total Jewish population. 17% of Jews in Israel identify as ultra-Orthodox. 

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While it is impossible to know the exact number of ultra-Orthodox students that face abuse and restrictions from learning secular subjects, it is possible to get an idea of where to look for these issues. The Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel does a yearly breakdown of school accreditation and student population. The statistics from 2023 are below:

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In Israel today, ultra-Orthodox schools make up about 20% of all schools in the Israeli education system. From the ultra-Orthodox schools currently in operation, only 4% follow the government’s educational requirements, which include learning math, science, geography, and some English. The rest of these schools are divided between having government recognition (73.5%) and being completely exempt from education requirements and by extension, government oversight (22.5%). 

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While corporal punishment in school is illegal under Israeli law, it is in many of these uncredited ultra-Orthodox schools where stories of abuse from teachers originate. The strict adherence to following the Jewish laws of education combined with the lack of requirements for qualified teachers and the exemption from state supervision creates the perfect environment for brutal violence against students.

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Latest Development – Landmark Ruling Against a Belz heder (April 2025)

To conclude, it is worth noting a precedent-setting verdict handed down on 22 April 2025 by the Lod District Court, Israel. The Belz Hasidic movement and its Heder in Tel Aviv were ordered to pay 24 million Israeli shekels (approx. US $6.4 million) in damages to nine former pupils who, over the course of years, endured beatings, humiliation, and even sexual abuse. The court found that school administrators and senior community leaders were aware of the misconduct yet failed to intervene.

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Strikingly, the plaintiffs opened their closing arguments with excerpts from the documentary No Child Spared—released only shortly before the briefs were filed—to illustrate for the court the culture of violent discipline that still prevails in many Heder schools. The ruling, issued about a month later, sets a new standard of accountability for ultra-Orthodox educational institutions and underscores the growing impact of public and documentary scrutiny in exposing child abuse.

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