Children’S Education In Ottoman Jewish Society (Sixteenth To Eighteenth Centuries)

The Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire were autonomous with respect to education. This chapter deals with basic education in Jewish-Ottoman society and refers to the stages in educating and schooling young children. It goes through mother’s instructions on how to instil good ethics and religious values to their infants at a very young age, and fathers’ educational methods to bring the child to the Torah study stage, which begins at age five or six, at a usually communal institution called: Torah School for the Young (Talmud Torah le-Ketanim). The public Talmud Torah – where children were learning prayers, minimal Hebrew reading and the weekly Biblical portion with commentary or translation - was intended only for boys. Familiarity with the precepts of rabbinic laws and of reading the Torah was necessary for the continued existence of Jewish congregations and for the socialisation and cohesiveness of their members. However, many boys, especially orphans, were required to help support their family, and only a small number continued to a higher educational institute, called Yeshiva. Girls’ education was not formal, and varied according to the family’s economic, social, and schooling status.