Cheder

Cheder ( חֶדֶר, majority חֲדָרִים, Chadarim ) is the Hebrew word for room and the name for the traditional, faith-based schools, as usual in the Western European Jewry by the end of the 18th century, the Eastern European Jewry until the Holocaust were.

Form and curriculum

The lessons in the Cheder took place in the teacher's home, which was financed by the Jewish community or a group of parents. This form of education was generally available only boys, girls learned mostly in the mothers alongside. The lessons took place in small groups of boys in different age groups.

The boys came with about three years into the cheder. They first learned the Hebrew alphabet and the Hebrew language ( colloquial language of European Jewry was from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, Yiddish ). On this basis, then they studied the Torah, starting with the third book of Moses, and then the Talmud, ie Mishna, Gemara and additional comments. Mutual reading and memorization were the predominant forms of learning. At the age of 13 or 14 years as the training was completed in cheder with the bar mitzvah. At the ceremony reads the adolescent boy who is on this occasion also called Bar Mitzvah (literally " son of the commandment " ), in the context of a church service before the congregation of a section from the Torah before.

For the further study as a rabbi or Sofer there were yeshivas, ie Talmudic colleges, such as Worms, Fürth or in Prague, which enjoyed a high reputation for Jewish Studies. After many Jews fled pogroms against the Jews in the Middle Ages before in connection with the Crusades to Eastern Europe, the intellectual center of European Jewry was during many centuries in this region.

Criticism

The cheder system was criticized at the end of the 18th century, both on the part of Jewish orthodoxy as well as by supporters of the Haskalah.

The Orthodox Page criticized the often lack of qualifications of teachers, most of whom were badly paid and beside still worked as a shochet, or prayer leader gravedigger mainly in small villages and thus were able to run into teaching secondary. Also, it was not unusual that teachers could move up too early to the next level of study the children because they got a little more money for advanced than for the elementary classroom.

The followers of the Enlightenment criticized the whole system because it hinders its linguistic and spatial partitioning of the Christian environment integration and emancipation of the Jews. They called for additional instruction in German language and demanded the inclusion of secular and practical professional content. These objectives are realized enlightened German -speaking Jews since the end of the 18th century, called by them Jewish reform schools, also called " free schools ", einrichteten. Example of such a free school was the Jewish Free School in Berlin. The reform schools movement and the introduction of compulsory education in the 19th century led to the dissolution of the cheder system in Germany. In Eastern Europe, the training was continued in the cheder in many places until the Holocaust.

Presence

Even today there are in haredi communities Chadarim, as in Antwerp, London, Zurich, New York and Israel. In contrast to the earlier organization in the rural areas of Eastern Europe, Chadarim are now well organized, the children of a year are summarized in classrooms, most teachers ( rebbes ) are formed.

In the United States children go from non-Orthodox Jewish families in addition to regular classes usually a Hebrew School ( Hebrew school), the Jewish equivalent of Sunday school.