There was during all those years
in Zambrów one single Yeshiva, founded and consequently patronized
by the Yeshiva of higher learning in Lomzha. The Zambrów Yeshiva was
the preparatory school for youngsters in their first plunge into the
depths of Talmud learning. With a definite degree of advance in
their studies, they were able, at their choice, to enter the Higher
School of Talmudic studies, the Lomzha Yeshiva which had close
connections with the Zambrów Yeshiva.
The indigent scholars from out of
town, studying in the Zambrów Yeshiva, were generously provided by
board at the family table of the working people in town, each
student dining each day in a diferent home, a way of sustenance
which is known colloquially as "eating days". The Zambrów
Yeshiva was reputed to be one of the outstanding amongst similar
Yeshivat in the neighboring towns.
The preliminary schooling for
boys was provided by the Hadorim, i.e. private schools
conducted by private teachers (Melamdim), which is the
universal form of Jewish education from times immemorial. The
Hadorim attendance was of a most assiduos, vigorous, you might
say, laborious variety: the hours very long, from early morning up
to sunset, carving off a considerable portion
of
the evenings in winter,
and no
vacations all year round. The subjects of study: Humesh, or
Torah (Pentateuch), with the traditional Rashi-commentary,
some further books of the Holy Scriptures,
very rarely in their entirety, and sometimes
also the first tasting of the Talmud.
In later years the form and the
methods of the preliminary education had
undergone very drastic changes. Alongside the time-honored old
schools, there sprung up in later years a new type of schools,
secular schools, so named --
Folks-Shulen, in distinction from the
Hadorim. The method that the new teachers applied was more of
the rational, modern variety, putting the emphasis on teaching the
Hebrew
language as a language, with regular lessons in
grammar, which was nonexistant in the old
school. Acknowledged and encouraged as
progressive pedagogues were: Israel Lewinsky, a graduate, inter
alia, of a teaching course in the Russian language; Faivel
Zukrovich, Jacob Tobiash, Zorach Kagan, etc.
Of late, in the years, when the
new generation, especially of the proletarian part of the
population, became more or less secularized, and as the lively
Zambrów stepped in pace with the new movement, revolutionary in
spirit, then came to life the new type of school, the one that
recognized Yiddish as the dominating language, ofttimes idealized,
even sometimes to the total exclusion of the Hebrew language. The
course of study: the modern Yiddish literature, Jewish history. The
powers that be looked askance at the new too radical trend in the
Jewish education and ever so often put a padlock on them. Such for
example was the eventual fate of the
flourishing Folks-Shule by the name "The Borochov Shule." A
different kind of a school was the Polish-Jewish school, founded by
the Polish authorities with the aim to polonize the Jewish youth.
Not to the liking, naturally, of the Jewish population at large, the
school in Zambrów enjoyed nevertheless a considerable attendance.
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