Teaching the Teachers: Preparing Instructors of Jewish Religion for Poland’s Public Schools

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

Abstract

The presence of religion in interwar Poland’s public schools both reflected the values of society and set up a problematic dynamic between the majority Roman Catholic faith and Judaism. Public-school students, which included a majority of Jewish children in Poland, were required to attend two hours of religious instruction weekly. The Jewish community was officially in charge of this instruction, providing the teachers who taught in the schools and taking steps to insure that the instruction transmitted the tenets of Judaism. The system developed to provide religious instruction in the public schools was, to be sure, both complicated and unfair, but it did allow Jewish leaders to present Judaism in a public environment.

The topic of Jewish religious instruction in Poland’s public schools has already received some scholarly attention, but given its importance in the development of a rapidly changing Jewish community, the issue deserves additional attention. Public schools offer a unique opportunity to study the intersection of religion and public life. The schools were essentially a laboratory for the development of Poland’s citizens. Investigating how Jewish community leaders provided religious instruction and interacted with these institutions reveals how they conceived of Judaism and Jewish identity in a changing Poland.

How were teachers instructed to teach about the Jewish religion in the public schools? How did this instruction and their teaching differ from other approaches to Jewish education? What were the motivations of Jewish leaders and educators? A State Seminary for Teachers of the Mosaic Religion was founded in Warsaw in 1918, and Polish-language textbooks and publications for teachers of “the Mosaic religion” appeared both before and after World War I. This paper will examine these publications, textbooks, and the Polish-language Jewish and Yiddish press, especially that written for children, in order to determine how Judaism was presented to Jewish children in the public schools.

Author

• Sean Martin, Western Reserve Historical Society