[Pages 521-522]

In 1898 I came from Warsaw to my shtetl Mir, near Novogrudok, Minsk province. According to my convictions, I was then a Jewish nationalist and at the same time a socialist. Although all my friends and acquaintances thought it was illogical and wild. I hated the Russian government for decrees against my people, according to which Jews were not allowed to live in large parts of the Russian Empire, and for generally unequal rights laws directed against Jews.

Zionism and the Bund first appeared on the Jewish street, but their influence was not felt in our shtetl. There were some Zionists whose entire activity was limited to agitation. At that time we had a very good intelligentsia from students of the Mir Yeshiva^[2] and from students of gymnasiums and even high schools. Yeshiva boys read books and newspapers in Hebrew, schoolchildren read Russian classics or magazines. The state of Yiddish was deplorable. Our language didn't even have a name; it was called “jargon”. An intellectual was considered the one who read Hebrew or Russian, but God forbid the one who read Yiddish. But everyone spoke Yiddish, and at the same time, intellectuals treated it as if it were an inferior language that was not a language at all.

I also did not have a definite opinion about our language, but I understood that the majority of our people spoke this language, that the language was popular among our masses, that it was easier to teach and enlighten our poor brothers in Yiddish. And when the issue of our youth was discussed in the city, it was personally clear to me that education should be in Yiddish.

Then, at my father's desk (he was a lawyer), I began teaching Russian to Jewish children. I gave free lessons to children of poor parents. Then the idea came to me to create a modern Jewish school with classes for poor children and attract more qualified teachers. I decided that the school should be Jewish: all subjects, such as arithmetic, Jewish history, geography, should be taught in the language of our Jews – in local Yiddish, in Russian they should be able to write an address.

My fellow teachers saw it very differently. My sister Shifra was taught modern Russian culture. High school student Levin^[3] and high school student Anyuta Yaselevskaya^[4] could not imagine raising the young Jewish generation without using the Russian language. All we had to do was teach both Yiddish and Russian. I was supposed to become a Yiddish teacher, and she was supposed to become a Russian teacher. As for the spirit of our school, we understood that it should be secular, not religious. We didn't have any well-thought-out program. We decided to go with the children through the Russian daily course of

[Pages 523-524]

primary school (city school).

Textbooks were the most difficult problem. They, teachers of the Russian language, had their own textbooks, introductory books on the Russian language and even anthologies. However, we did not have a single book in Yiddish available to children, not to mention textbooks. I decided to use the old method: teach the kids the alphabet, show them how to read Yiddish, and then move on to stories. We already had some literary collections in Yiddish, classic works of Jewish writers, poems by Y. L. Peretz^[5], Frug^[6] and others. To learn how to write, write dictations and do homework, we had to resort to the old manual of letter-writing. I learned arithmetic in Yiddish according to Yevtushevsky^[7], geography according to Smirnov^[8], and Jewish history according to Dubnov^[9]. All books were in Russian. Every day I had to work hard to prepare lessons in according to Yiddish, and I taught all this to the children. We took in children from very poor families, and each child we took in received a slate board and slate pencil, manual of letter-writing, and also a Russian book (apparently “Russian Speech” of Wolper^[10]).

When we four teachers finished all the preparations, we began practical work. We rented a large room from a sand carrier on Zhukhovichskaya Street, hung notices in the synagogue and at the entrance to the Beit Midrash that we were opening a school for poor children, in which Yiddish and Russian would be taught, and on the appointed day, we began to register the children. As I already said, we had poor children whose parents had gone to America or somewhere else, orphans or children of very poor parents who could not pay even ten kopecks a week for education, and we had a lot of such children. We got to work. The room, in which fifteen children were supposed to study at the same time, was completely unsuitable for a school premises. It served as a bedroom, for “Azalea”, a dining room, and what not. The whole house consisted of this room with a curtain, and what better could we get for two gold pieces a week? The room contained a large table, a couple of long benches, a couple of stools and a couple of beds.

We never even dreamed of school furniture. Of course, there were no tuition fees, teachers maintained the school, paid rent, bought necessary things and even – just between you and me – often bought clothes and shoes for children who needed it most and could not attend school without it. Teacher Anyuta Yaselevskaya was especially successful in this. The children were divided into groups, and we taught them from morning until three o'clock in the afternoon.

During my nine months at the school, the children achieved incomparably greater success in all areas that I taught in Yiddish than with the three other teachers who taught in Russian. My children learned to read well, write in Yiddish, understood a little Jewish history, geography, arithmetic and fractions, and could sing 10-15 folk songs. At the same time, they did not read and write Russian well.

Every Saturday after the chants, I had conversations with the children about the globe, rivers, lakes, fields, about the lives of people and animals, peoples, fire, water... It was Saturday, the children sat on benches, stools, beds and mostly on the floor. Many parents often came to listen to wonderful stories.

[Pages 525-526]

I don't remember how many children attended the school, there were probably about fifty of them.

After nine months of teaching and running the school, I left town and never returned. The remaining three teachers also disappeared: the school was handed over to a group of young girls: as far as I remember, the teachers were Hinde Smerkovic, Tsipka Rakova, Sara Slonimskaya and Alte Asnes.

Then, about sixty years ago, I did not think about the significance of the founding of the first modern Yiddish school in the world. I could hardly have foreseen that fifteen to twenty years later the Jewish school system would become such a prominent, important and vital factor in cultural Jewish life in Poland, Russia and America. I could not have foreseen that so many school organizations with textbooks and children's magazines would spring up in the Jewish world.

Of those four teachers, Aaron Levin is no longer with us. He studied medicine, became a military doctor in the Russian army and died a martyr. This happened in Astrakhan^[11] in Russia during the first period of the Russian Revolution. The counter-revolutionaries attacked the Jews and carried out a pogrom. He entered their ranks and made a speech. So he was simply torn to pieces. Only the next day, his wife Anyuta Yaselevskaya went to look for his corpse, collected the remains of his body and buried them.

My sister Shifra Myszkowska, today Mrs. Shrier, has spent the last twenty-five years in Los Angeles.

Original footnote:

1. “Forverts”, September 12, 1942, New York. back

Translator's footnotes:

1. Noah (Nevakh) Markovich (Mordekhaevich) Mishchkowsky (July 8, 1978, Kopyl, Minsk province, Russian Empire - January 11, 1950, New York, New York, USA) – journalist, writer and public figure, Zionist territorialist back
2. In 1815, Talmudist and major merchant Shmuel Chaimovich Tiktinsky (died April 8, 1835 in Hungary) founded a famous yeshiva in Mir. back
3. Aron Izrailevich-Khaimovich Levin (December 18 [30], 1882, Mir, Novogrudok district of the Minsk province of the Russian Empire - 1919, Kerch (?), Russian Empire) – doctor. In 1908 he graduated from Kharkov University. He worked as a zemstvo doctor in the Kharkov and then Astrakhan provinces. In 1914 he was called up from the reserves for military service. In December of the same year he received the Order of St. Stanislaus, 3rd degree with swords. My great-grandfather. back
4. Anna Efimovna (Chaimovna) Levina, nee Ioselevskaya (August 14, 1881, Novogrudok, Minsk province – October 27, 1962, Moscow, USSR) – wife of Aron Levin. She worked as the director of an orphanage and as a teacher in a kindergarten. My great-grandmother Anya. back
5. Yitzchok-Leibush Peretz (May 18 (30), 1852, Zamosc, Lublin province, Kingdom of Poland (now Lublin Voivodeship, Poland) – March 21 (April 3), 1915, Warsaw) – Jewish writer, classic of Jewish literature in Yiddish, public figure, lawyer and a lawyer. back
6. Semyon Grigorievich Frug (Shimen Frug; 1860, Bobrovy Kut colony, Kherson province – 1916, Odessa) – Russian and Jewish poet, publicist, translator. He wrote mainly in Russian and Yiddish, and also made attempts to write in Hebrew. back
7. Vasily Adrianovich Evtushevsky (1836, September 11, 1888) – Russian teacher, editor and public figure. Evtushevsky published the books “Methods of Arithmetic” (1872) and “Collection of Arithmetic Problems”, which went through many editions (Problem book – over 30) and sold over a million copies. back
8. Kapiton Ivanovich Smirnov (March 1, 1825 in the village of Dubrovo – Smolensk province, 1902) – Russian teacher, privy councilor. K.I. Smirnov owns, which has gone through many editions: “A textbook of geography, in relation to the course of secondary educational institutions of the Ministry of Public Education, in 3 parts” (the 39th edition was published in 1914). back
9. Semyon Markovich (Shimen Meerovich) Dubnov (also Simon Dubnov; 1860, Mstislavl, Mogilev province – 1941, Riga, Reichskommissariat Ostland) – Russian historian , publicist and public figure, one of the classics and creators of the scientific history of the Jewish people. He wrote in Russian and Yiddish. back
10. Apparently, the author's mistake. The article was published in 1942, that is, 44 years after the creation of the school. back
11. The author is probably wrong. In our family it is believed that the events described took place in Kerch. back

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