The Denver Jewish news., 1919-01-29
THE JEWISH SCHOOLS OF PAL
ESTINE.

About thirty-fiye years ago an I'M
known young man visited the famous
Zionist leader, the Rabbi Mohilever III
Bilaystok, Lithuania, and addressed
him in language the Rabbi could not
understand nor even recognize at iils'.
1t only gradually dawned on him that
the funny sounds his visitor omitted
were Hebrew pronounced after the
Sephardic manner. Mohilever was an
ardent Zionist, IA man of modern ana
liberal ideas and a learned scholar
who spent all his life amidst Hebrew
books, but he had never heard ne
hrew used Us y prpfanc and worldly
tongue, nor had he ever thought OF
tine possibility of such u trick. Ana
so interrupting this guest he said
yourself; speak like "A decent man.
Fortunately The youth did not obey. lie
was Ben Iehuda, the first man who
introduced Hebrew in his own home
as IL family tongue, and eventually
earned "A well deserved reputation as
the modernizer of Hebrew, and the
author of one of the best and com
pletest dictionaries of this language.
How this TEACHER managed to sue
ceed in his task is one of the SECRETS
or perhaps miracles of pedagogy which
will no doubt constitute an object of
study and invcStigatiO in future days.
Thirty-five years ago when this work
began the young teacher. himself n
newcomer in Palestine. found there
children who spoke only IiddlSh.
Spaniolish or Arabic. There were no
school books, 10 proper terminology.
for secular science, no trace of He
brew speaking milieu in or outside
the schools, and in addition his own
Hebrew sounded as yet timid. poor and
suffering. Devotion and perseverance,
helped him through all drawbacks. To
day Palestine possesses n strong and
natural Hebrew speaking milieu. so
that babies talk and sing in the Bible
tongue before they come TO school. The
Modern Hebrew Library. scholastic
and literary. grows steadily. ranging
already from illustrated botany to
Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer"
At present the school work in Pal
cStinc territory looks Of course some
what dilnpidated. lis two main fca-
lures. the symnasia Of ,Iatfa AND Jc-
lusalem. are still closed because the
Turks took the minutcst care to cN
pei or dcport all the teachers and
NEST of the male public. For the
SANG reason. of the Teachers Training
| Institutes only the Jerusalem one is
! open, but :: considerable humber OF
It's pupils have joined the Jewish reg
imcnt as volunteers. The two sep
| aratc schools for Boys and girls in
.Iaffa had to he mtrgrd into one con-
| taining about fifteen hundred children
| of both sexes. The Hebrew College
of Progressive Orthodoxy in Jaffa.
called Tachkcmoni, rcGpencd with some
hundred boys and three kindcrgartcnS
containing some two hundred.
| The School of the Pctach Tikrah
| Colony is now also temporarily in
Iaffa In the other colonies Of the
Jaffa district all Hebrew schools and
iindcrgartcns carry on very much Oh
| The saline lines as before the crisis.
Jerusalem has now ten Hebrew
/ kindcrgartcis with about eight hun
drcd babies. The boys school con
| tains some four hundred and fifty. and
the girls school over six hundred ana
fifty children. \ SECOND school for
girls WAS RECENTLY opened in the old
city where no Hebrew Instruction had
brrn tolerated before. and contains
about one hundred and sixty pupils.
Tho Tcarh"rs' Training College con
,aiuS sixty. and the school for Kinder
gartcn Teachers. some tW"nty. There
are further few orthuilnX SchQolS
with somewhat modGrnizcd prOgram"S.
and Hebrew as the language of i'll
structiun. namrly. Il Talmud Torah
for girls. with one hundrGd and eighty
pupils: TWO Talmud TorahS for Sep
hardin and Bokhara Jews. with three
hundred, and two little mOdrrnizcd
Irshihot with twenty-five.
All these establishments in JcruSa-
lem Jaffa and the Jewish colonies arc
under the united guidance and super
vision Of the sq-callrd Educational
! Committee. II joint organization of
teachers and social workers.
The Zionist Administrative Commis-
sion, sent to Palestine by the British
Government Immediately after the lib
Grafton Of Jerusalem by Gen. Allen
by's army, has SllccGclrd in co-ordinat-
ing all of the existing schools, which
! nrn NOW Indrr lhr SmnrrNiSinn of q