From Tradition to Ideology: The New Meaning of Religious Education in Interwar Poland

• In Event: Religion and Jewish Education in Poland, 1915-1939

Abstract

One of the most remarkable developments of Jewish life in Poland in the wake of the First World War was the proliferation of Jewish alternatives to the ḥeder and Talmud Torah, but perhaps even more startling was the proliferation of Orthodox alternatives to the ḥeder. This development was part of an overarching process by which Jewish education became intertwined with ideology to an unprecedented degree during the interwar period. Thus, while up until 1914 the discourse concerning Jewish primary education very much revolved around the question of whether the ḥeder should be preserved, reformed, or replaced, by 1919 the main question, for both the Orthodox and non-Orthodox, was what should replace it.

Consequently, the gray areas separating “religious” schools from “secular” ones were replaced with far sharper delineations. Even among the Orthodox, there was a parting of ways between institutions that were friendly to Zionism, taught modern Hebrew, and had a more positive attitude toward secular education and those that took the opposite approach. Girls’ education, meanwhile, became an increasingly formal affair and its once loose religious boundaries were soon subjected to the same ideological divisions.

Drawing on a variety of contemporary published and archival sources, my paper will explore these trends as they played out in the city of Vilna/Vilnius/Wilno, focusing on two institutions at opposite ends of the religious educational spectrum. It will first look at the Yehudiyah school for girls, which began in 1916 as a progressive, non-ideological institution combining religious and secular education, but in a few years became the flagship of religious Zionist primary education. Then it will examine the ideological schism among yeshiva students at the same time, and finally address the role of World War I in bringing about these developments.

Author

• Andrew N. Koss, Mosaic