Page 33 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Cheder

When a Jewish boy begins to go to cheder, it is a great occasion in
the family, a sort of holiday to the immediate relations. When I
reached four and a half years of age, I was wrapped in a tallit and
carried in my mother’s arms to the cheder, which was not far from our
home. She brought raisins, almonds, and candy to distribute to the
class. My mother blessed me and shed a few tears of joy, but to me it
was a calamity to have twenty wide-eyed children looking at me with
surprise, while tears ran down my cheeks and I screeched at the top
of my childish voice. I was shy, and clutched my mother’s apron, so
the teacher came forward, took me away by force, pinched my cheek,
and put me down among the other children. They comforted me; the
bag in my mother’s hand signaled good things to come, and made
them sympathetic towards me. The teacher was a very diplomatic
Jew, with a personality all his own, a long flowing beard and curled
peyos, wearing a long flowing robe with a black silken girdle. He
motioned to my mother to get out, and she left in a hurry. I was
brought home by the teacher every day, but there were scenes of the
same sort every morning for a few days until I became accustomed to
the ordeal.
He began drilling into my head the big aleph-bet which was spread
on the table, making me repeat dozens of times the letter on the
sheet he pointed to with a smooth whittled stick. My voice was never
too loud, and with eyes filled with tears and nose running, I was not
much to look at. Months and months I studied the big letters,
repeating them like a machine until I could find each letter when my
father showed me off to friends and relatives. At six I could recite the
prayers; not all of them, but the few that are said in the morning and
at meals. My teacher never heard of a teacher training school. He was
just a poor Jew who knew how to pray and read the holy book, and
took it upon himself to educate me to be a learned Jew and a good
man.
Teaching in the Jewish cheder was the most unsystematic ever
known: no written method was ever prepared for the teacher to go
by, even though we studied the Talmud, which concerned hygiene,
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