Talmud Torah

Talmud Torah schools were created in the Jewish world, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic, as a form of parochial primary school for boys of modest backgrounds, where they were given an elementary education in Hebrew, the Scriptures (especially the Pentateuch), and the Talmud (and Halakhah). This was meant to prepare them for Yeshiva or, particularly in the movement's modern form, for Jewish education at a high school level. The Talmud Torah was modelled after the Cheder, a traditional form of schooling whose essential elements it incorporated, with changes appropriate to its public form rather than the heder's "private" financing through less formal or institutionalized mechanisms, including tuition fees and donations.

The father was traditionally the sole teacher of his children in Jewish history (Deut. xi. 19). The institution known as the "be rav" or "bet rabban" (house of the teacher), or as the "be safra" or "bet sefer" (house of the book), is said to have been originated by Ezra' and his Great Assembly, who provided a public school in Jerusalem to secure the education of fatherless boys of the age of sixteen years and upward. But the school system did not develop till Joshua ben Gamla the high priest caused public schools to be opened in every town and hamlet for all children above six or seven years of age (B. B. 21a).

The expense was borne by the community, and strict discipline was observed. Rav, however, ordered Samuel b. Shilat to deal tenderly with the pupils, to refrain from corporal punishment, or at most to use a shoe-strap in correcting pupils for inattention. A stupid pupil was made monitor until able to grasp the art of learning. Raba fixed the number of pupils at twenty-five for one teacher; if the number was between twenty-five and forty an assistant teacher ("resh dukana") was necessary; and for over forty, two teachers were required.

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