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

[David Goldfarb]

Dear Robert,

There may be something on that in Benjamin Nathans, _Beyond the Pale:
The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia_.  I heard him give an
excellent paper several years ago on Jewish education in the Pale of
Settlement, which I believe was a draft of a chapter in this book.
You could also e-mail him directly in the History Department at Penn.

David A. Goldfarb
http://www.echonyc.com/~goldfarb


2009/4/21 Robert Chandler <kcf19 at dial.pipex.com>:
> 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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