Publication History of Jewish Schools in Southern Slovakia

This publication aims to present the life of Jewish religious communities with particular focus on Jewish education in southern Slovakia. It is an expanded edition of an existing book that was published in 2001 in Hungarian under the title “A csallóközi és mátyusföldi zsidó iskolák története 1845-1945”. The original publication is supplemented with many new sources, information, and photographic documentation. It provides a concise overview of the educational system, school laws, and the rise of Jewish communities in the municipalities of Dunajská Streda, Galanta, Jelka, Sereď, Sládkovičovo, Šamorín, Trnava, Veľký Meder and Zlaté Klasy.

PREFACE

Without knowledge of pedagogical history, without knowing how education has developed and changed over time, it would be impossible to imagine pedagogical presence, which has its roots there. The chosen topic forms a comprehensive picture of the history of Jewish education and pedagogy, which was inadequately represented within the history of Slovak pedagogy. This publication seeks to partly fill those gaps.

The Jewish nation can be compared to a tree. Christianity was born from it, and pagans became Christian believers. In a figurative sense, Christianity and faith cannot exist without a foundation, and that foundation is the tree. We can thank the Jews for the fact that we turned and began to re-educate children and youth. We took the Ten Commandments of Moses as the basis, that is, the alpha and omega of our faith. In essence, it expresses all morality, which through maximal observance is meant to remove all commands, prohibitions and decrees.

With this publication, I want to bring closer the life of Jewish religious communities with special focus on Jewish education in southern Slovakia, which was inadequately represented in the history of pedagogy. It is an expanded edition of an existing book, published in 2001 in Hungarian under the title “A csallóközi és mátyusföldi zsidó iskolák története 1845-1945”. The original publication is supplemented with a large number of new sources, information, and photo documentation. It provides a concise overview of the educational system, school laws, and the development of Jewish communities in the municipalities of Dunajská Streda, Galanta, Jelka, Sereď, Sládkovičovo, Šamorín, Trnava, Veľký Meder and Zlaté Klasy.

The topic cannot be studied in isolation but in the global context; otherwise it would be only a detached context. I included photographs of schools and other documents in the text itself, which demonstrate the existence of Jewish schooling. In the individual chapters, authentic Hebrew words appear directly in the text and are explained in parentheses.

The preserved sources can serve as a confrontation between pedagogical past and present. I present the history and development of Jewish education in chronological order from the end of the 18th century to the end of the Second World War.

The material for processing this topic of work was obtained from source studies, archives and literature study. I had access to chronicles that were not published in print, yet preserve important information. It was necessary to study encyclopedias, dictionaries, monographs dealing with the chosen topic, and to review bibliographic surveys. In preparing the work, I used multiple methods: study of professional literature, interview, structured interview and research of historical sources. I used statistical and comparative methods, with which I wanted to express numerically the ratio of Jewish population to total population, which factually confirmed the justification and necessity for the creation of Jewish schooling.

The publication was created through a direct method of compiling facts based on the heuristic method. The material I studied I analyzed and sorted into a coherent whole.

Two most significant stimuli influenced the establishment of Jewish schools. One of them was the percentage share of Jews in individual regions, which influenced the establishment and founding of Jewish schools. The second stimulus was the 1788 decree of Joseph II on Instructions for Inspectors of National Schools in Hungary, which caused the development and establishment of Jewish schools. The intention of Jewish religious communities was to save Jewish folk schools from extinction, to harmonize school curricula for Jewish schools on the basis of curricula issued by the state, while keeping intensive religious education in the schools. The content of teaching was oriented so that students in folk schools learned and acquired knowledge about the illustrious past of Jewish ethics and history.

The book is intended for Jews, non-Jews, educators and students, for everyone who realizes that the greatest capital is and will always be education.

CONTENTS

1. Historical overview of the Jewish nation
2. Overview of the history of the Jewish education system
3. Biblical period (1010-926 BCE)
4. The period in the Mishnah (925 BCE – 640 CE)
5. The period in the Middle Ages (640-1492)
6. The period before the modern age (1492-1780)
7. The modern age (1780-1912)
8. Development and overview of school laws 1868-1945
9. Development of schooling and pedagogy after 1918
10. Jewish laws and pedagogy
11. Curriculum of two-year studies for Jewish educators
12. Sources on the organization and administration of Jewish education
13. Jewish school in Dunajská Streda (1848 – 1945)
14. Jewish school in Galanta (1845-1944)
15. Jewish school in Jelka (1781-1944)
16. Jewish folk school in Sereď (1781-1944)
17. Jewish school in Sládkovičovo (1903-1944)
18. Jewish school in Šamorín (1872 – 1940)
19. Jewish school in Trnava (1850 – 1945)
20. Jewish school in Veľký Meder (1848 – 1912)
21. Jewish school in Zlaté Klasy (1860 – 1945)

The town lies in the Danubian Lowland on the right-bank valley of the Váh River. Since 1642 it developed as a manorial town with market and fair rights, expanded in 1714. Its coat of arms depicted fortifications with a tower and gate, and on one side two small towers with two stars.

For completeness, I will present a statistical overview of the ratio of Jews to the population in Sereď from 1728 to 1948 according to the Vlastivedný slovník obcí na Slovensku 1 and Encyklopédia židovských náboženských obcí.

The 1865 data show a high ratio of Jews to total population and justify establishing a Jewish folk school in Sereď.

The expulsion of Jews from western lands to the east, specifically from Bohemia and Moravia, reached a peak in the 18th century. When communities located in the valleys of the Little Carpathians were already overcrowded with Jews, additional immigrants arrived in the Váh valley and settled there. As a result, large Jewish communities were founded in the southern catchment of the Váh. Sereď was among those communities.

We do not know exactly when the religious community was founded in Sereď. The fact that among tombstones moved from the old to the new cemetery we find several from 1700 to 1750 allows us to assume that Jews already lived in this municipality in the 17th century. It is also known that a certain Salamon Beer, a salt supplier, was intensively involved around 1720 in river transport on the Váh. According to Korabinsky, the chronicler, at the end of the 18th century in Sereď there were the “beruhmte Jahrmärkte” famous fairs, which without Jews are hard to imagine at that time.

Around 1781, near the synagogue in the municipality, a private Jewish folk school was established where secular subjects were also taught.

In the years 1840–1874, the chief rabbi was Benjámin Wolf Fuchs, a disciple of Chaim Sofer. After his death, his son Mojžiš Hermann Fuchs became the chief rabbi, founder of the well-known Sereď yeshiva. During his tenure, he financed a public kitchen, an old-age home, and a shelter for the poor.

In 1865, there were 2,443 Jews in Sereď and surrounding municipalities—the largest community on the territory of present-day Slovakia after Bratislava and Dunajská Streda. It is only natural that such a municipality had a synagogue, bet hamidraš, mikveh, school and old-age home. In addition, there was a kosher slaughterhouse and a bakery of maces. Complete archival records fully confirm the existence of these institutions. Sereď had been the seat of the rabbinate since earliest times. One of its first rabbis was David Levy, originally from Holíšov. We also know the names of other rabbis, including strong personalities and important Talmudists. After the 1868 congress, the religious community in Sereď joined the orthodox movement. Jews in Sereď played a significant role in the economy and owned many important enterprises, including a sugar refinery and a coffee processing plant.

In 1877, Jews were members of the Sereď reading circle, whose head was Emil Epstein. In the same year, a commission was formed to establish a trade school at the town council, and its members included Móric Rieger and Dr. Armin Rosenbaum. In the mentioned school year, Jewish students also studied at the trade school—exactly seven pupils.

The names are known of natives of Sereď who completed two-year studies for Jewish educators in Budapest, where they obtained professional qualification for the teaching profession. Adolf Fried completed it and obtained qualification in 1892, Lipót Varsányi in 1895 and Henrik Frommer in 1897. From preserved sources, we do not know where they worked after graduation.

During the First World War, many Jews were soldiers and many of them also fell at the front lines. A memorial monument with their names was erected in the cemetery.

During the First Republic, the prosperity of Sereď Jews increased, but their number declined because many moved to larger cities. This is also shown by preserved material in the State District Archive in Galanta in Šaľa, particularly the Nariadenie ministerstva vnútra o súpise Židov, Prípis Ministerstva vnútra o vylúčení Židov z verejných služieb, Prípis nariadenia Ministerstva vnútra o rozpustení židovských spolkov a organizácií, Povolenie pobytu Židom, zdržujúcim sa na území SR, and other unlisted data.

From the annual report of the boys’ and girls’ civic school for the school year 1917/18, prepared by the school principal Ms. Šarolta Selényi, it is clear that in this period in the Jewish folk school, Jewish religion was taught by Mór Löwy, two hours per week.

In the interwar period, the community renovated a neoclassical synagogue and built several facilities around it. The community had six employees and, among other things, operated a five-grade folk school with Slovak as the language of instruction, a Talmud Tóra school (almost 50 students), and a large yeshiva. The yeshiva had about 100 students from Czechoslovakia and abroad. A girls’ religious school Bet Jakov was also founded. From the 1921 census it follows that 16.8% of Sereď's population was of Jewish nationality. In 1930, this share decreased to 15.3%.

In the school year 1930/1931, Leopold Fischer headed the Jewish folk school. A record of poor pupils has been preserved, where the school administrator asked the municipal board in Sereď for the purchase of teaching aids on behalf of poor students. In the record itself there is a named list of pupils from grades 1–5, with parents’ names and occupations, exact addresses, and necessary teaching aids with cost estimates.

The high standard of the school is also shown by the fact that Mr. Leopold Fischer was elected to the board of the Czechoslovak Union of Jewish Teachers at the founding general assembly held on 26 December 1935 in the Jewish folk school in Žilina.

From the preserved chronicle of the Union of Jewish Teachers in Czechoslovakia, four tasks were derived: 1. Save Jewish folk schools from extinction. 2. Prepare curricula for Jewish schools, based on curricula issued by the state, so that the schools’ education remains intensely religious, Jewish. 3. Ensure that a Jewish child in a folk school already reads about the glorious past of Jewish ethics presented in Slovak-Jewish readers. 4. The association wanted to work on the education of a Jewish cadre of teachers and on the expansion of Jewish schools to eight grades.

The association implemented the third task in 1937 by publishing the magazine Čítanie židovskej mládeže. The author and editor of the magazine was the association chairman Izidor Schwartz. The magazine had 16 pages.

In the same year, the association also published its own textbook titled Cvičebnica dejín izraelských pre židovské ľudové školy, authored by Šimon Fehér and Henrich Brenner, teachers from Nitra.

The textbook is written in a Jewish spirit. In individual articles, attention was paid to morality and obedience. Great emphasis was also placed on education in hygiene. The rebuses are also interesting, as they forced students toward creativity and logical thinking. Even after several decades, the textbook did not lose its relevance.

In the years 1940–1941, Jewish students were expelled from secondary schools. The religious community decided to expand the folk school to eight grades. In this period, more than 100 students attended it. Approximately 40 young students were assigned by the Hlinka Guard to labor groups.

The Central Jewish Office organized the first Jewish labor center of 781 Jews in spring 1941. The history of the Sereď Jewish labor camp is closely connected with the city and is far from uninteresting. Preserved archival material is proof of the existence of a Jewish folk school in the labor camp.

In the labor camp in 1942, they established a school for children, taught by Jolana Schwartzová. Younger grades attended a kindergarten. In 1942, almost all Jews were deported, including the last rabbi, Mózes Eckstein, who led the rabbinical school. In Encyklopédia of Reg. Zi. Vol. l, published in Jerusalem in 1958, a biography with photograph is published on page 181. He perished in Lublin in 1942. In October, after deportations were suspended, about 70 Jews remained in Sereď, who were temporarily protected by exemptions. A cantor and teacher, Waller Bernát, also received such an exemption. Despite the decimation of the Jewish congregation, the activity of the religious community, thanks to Áron Schwartz, did not cease. Because of the low number of children, the Jewish school was closed. From a report to the Trnava School Supervision Office on 3.11.1944, we learn that in the school year 1944/1945 no teaching already took place in the school because “the teachers are not in the camp.”

The Jewish folk school functioned for the last time in the school year 1943/44, because in the school year 1944/45 the headquarters of the Hlinka Guard was located in that school.

CONCLUSION

By processing the history of Jewish schools in Southern Slovakia, I wanted to contribute partly to filling the blank spots in the history of pedagogy.

From the studied materials I concluded that the Bible forms the basis of the entire Jewish educational system. It also follows from the examined sources that Jews intentionally taught their children from a very early age. As soon as a child could speak, several passages from the Law were taught to them. This indicates that the basic instructional method was memorization. Education was not limited to reading and writing, but an important subject they taught was history. Historical realities were taught from generation to generation. The family circle provided an excellent opportunity to teach children, especially through annual commemorative celebrations.

In conclusion, I still need to recapitulate the Israeli educational system and point out, by contrast, how it differs from the educational system of other nations. It differs fundamentally mainly in principle. In education they followed one goal, namely, education. Rabbis expressed it with a wise saying: “HE WHO DOES NOT TEACH HIS SON SOME USEFUL CRAFT RAISES A THIEF FROM HIM.”

In our overextended world, they can serve us as an example, because with the increase in delinquency the contemporary family in general does not fulfill its social function. We truly need to realize and, with appropriate methods and means, instill in our children that the best invested capital is and will remain education. It is the path to searching for and acquiring knowledge, understanding and comprehension of the logical functioning of the world and the meaning of life.

Title: History of Jewish Schools in Southern Slovakia Author: PhDr. Lívia Katona PhD. Number of pages: 71 Year of publication: 2017 Language: Slovak Publisher: OZ Ponvagli ISBN 9788097212933