Szkolnictwo żydowskie w Białymstoku w okresie międzywojennym

Abstract

In independent Poland at the beginning of the 1920s, the development of education became one of the basic issues in the Jewish community. According to Polish legislation, children aged 7 to 13 had to attend school. Compulsory schooling could also take place by attending a private school, where the program was recognized by the authorities as meeting the statutory requirements. Cheder gave only elementary religious education and was for the poor, who had difficulty to collect enough money to pay for the melamed. Until the withdrawal of Germans after World War I from Białystok, children were taught German language, accounting, gymnastics, they had 3 hours of singing, and for 5 hours a week students of the Talmud-Torah studied Torah.The Polish language took over the place of German, when the Polish authorities entered the city. The Białystok Talmud-Torah was located at Piękna 11. In the interwar period, two Hebrew elementary schools existed in Białystok. Schools with Yiddish or Hebrew were purely private. Their development was influenced – primarily in the 1920s – by the development of political life and national consciousness of Jews in Poland. CISZO (Central Jewish School Organization) was the largest organization supporting kindergartens, general schools, junior high schools and children's homes with Yiddish as a language of instruction during the entire interwar period. It had a clearly defined ideological character, and it’s schools brought up students in the spirit of national Jewish culture and Zionism.