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

[Alina Orlov]

Dear Robert,
I came upon against this question in my work on the origins of Jewish art in pre-revolutionary Russia. Certainly, provincial technical/craft/vocational institutions allowed Jews access where others didn't, but I do not have the statistics on the prevalence of such schools. The idea of Jewish craft schools seems to be well established by WWI, when Jewish communities helped raise money for them. The Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Art (1915-1919), based in St. Petersburg, had plans to establish a technical school with an emphasis on artisan work in Ekaterinoslav. It also supported young men attending technical schools to help them professionalize in an artistic craft. The use of 'professional' here should be considered in exactly the context that you mention--as a step up from shtetl streets into the kind of mastery that would allow an existence outside the Pale. 
If you'd like I can send along my article that touches on this: Orlov, A. (2005). Beyond ‘Jewish Luck’: The Institutional Context of Early Russian-Jewish Art.  Studies in Jewish Civilization, 16, 61-78.
Yours, Alina Orlov
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