Photograph: Teacher

European Jews

Poltava Guberniya, Lubensky Uyezd

1890s

Collodion print

9,1 x 6,4

РЭМ 135-136

Traditional Jewish education included “cheder” (elementary religious school) with a teacher, “melamed,” and “yeshiva” (higher religious school). Yeshiva graduates became rabbis in Jewish communities. From the mid-19th century, state-controlled Jewish schools began to open in cities of the Russian Empire, where both Jewish and general education subjects were taught. Jews having graduated from rabbinical colleges in Wilno and Zhitomir were permitted to teach Jewish subjects there. State-controlled and rabbinical schools were not popular with the Jews who saw in them a tool for tempting them to change their religious identity. Getting a secular education in grammar schools and universities was restricted for the Jews, not only due to lack of money, but also by the established acceptance rates for secondary and higher educational institutions: 10 percent within and 5 percent outside the Pale of Settlement, and 3 percent for Moscow and St. Petersburg.