Grossman: 'The Old Teacher': a Jewish professional school?

[Robert Chandler]

Dear all,

This is from a story set in 1943.

Все это  отшумело, осталось позади. Конечно, он прожил неудачную жизнь.

Он много думал, но он мало сделал. Пятьдесят лет  он был школьным учителем в

маленьком,   скучном   городке. Когда-то   он   учил   детей в   еврейской

профессиональной  школе, потом, после  революции,  он преподавал алгебру  и

геометрию  в десятилетке.


All this now lay far in the past.  Of course, he had lived an unsuccessful
life.  He had thought a lot, but he had achieved little. For fifty years he
had worked as a schoolteacher in a small, boring town.  Once he had taught
children in a Jewish professional school; after the Revolution he had taught
geometry and algebra in a Soviet school.

Тhe words that bother me seem simple enough.  But I find it hard to
understand what kind of school this really was.  Was this really a school
the aim of which was to prepare Jews to be members of the professional
classes?  In a small town in the Pale of Settlement in Tsarist Russia??  Or
was it just something like ‘a trade school?

Best Wishes,

Robert Chandler

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