The Jewish Child: Their Education and Social Life, from the Bible to the Holocaust and the Present
Overview
Procreating children was a religious obligation, a commandments given to Adam (Gen 1:28) and Noah (Gen 9:1-7). Having children was considered one of the greatest blessing in the life of an individual (see Abraham in Gen 22:16-18). Feeding, clothing and educating children was also an obligation.
The parents are the children's masters. They may reprove them, beat them, imprison them, even put them to death. (Deut 21:18). The parents have obligations, but the children have no rights.
Refusal of sacrificing children. (Abraham and Isaac). Thi s was a common practice in antiquity. In Judaism. children sacrifice of the first born was replaced by an offering,
Children's life was marked by rituals. The first rituals were circumcision (for boys only) and naming. Additional rites are initiation to schooling , and in modern times the bar mitzvah.
"You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." (Dt 11:19)
"Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him." (Pr 13:24)
"Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him." (Pr 22:15)
"The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother." (Pr 29:15)
Proverbs (23:13-14)
- Do not withhold discipline from a child;
- if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
- If you strike him with the rod,
- you will save his soul from Sheol.
Children had obligations too. It was taken for granted that children had to obey their parents. They must study. They must work. The commandment (They must honor their parents; Ex 20:12; Lev 19:1-3) was interpreted more in the sense that children, when they have become adults, must continue to honer their parents and support them when they are old. The honor to the parents is second only to the honor to God.
The Hebrew Bible
Jewish scripture rarely discuss children or childhood as an abstraction. Childhood is described as a Happy time (Ps 110:3, Qoh 11-9-10)
Children in the Bible, adolescents, youngsters (Samuel, David, Joseph, ) They are almost all boys, no girls.
Heroic children (Daniel & his companions, The "Maccabean" Children)
Hellenistic-Roman times
Refusal of exposing children and pederasty.
Emphasis on children in the teaching of Jesus. "Unless you change and you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of God". Healing of children: Mt 17:14-18; Mk 5:22-24,35-43 [Jairus's daughter]
Jesus and Josephus (the learned children)
Rabbinic Times
Not having children is a disgrace: "anyone who does not have a son is regarded as dead, as a ruined person".
Husbands may divorce if their wives are barren. (Mishnah Yevamot 6:6).
The Talmud say that the Father, the mother and God all concur in generating a child.(BT Niddah 30h-31a)
The soul is given in the wombs, the evil inclination is given at 10 years (when a child is responsible)
The birth of a son is most wanted. Daughters are welcome but the birth of a son is the most desirable goal.
In childbirth, the mother's life takes precedence over that of her unborn child.
Death was very common and was seen as a punishment of atonement for their parents's sins.
It is God who give and God who takes away (Job 1:21)
In case of divorce children under the age of 6 were given to the mother. Older children
Orphans should be given to relatives or friends.
Education was divided for gender: it was central for boys (at the synagogue) and girls (at home).
Boys and girls were expected to follow the norms of the Law when they were adults (13 and 12 respectively) but the obedience to the norm was recommended since a much earlier age, as soon as they could.
At they could start to read, 13 was the age of the commandments, and 15 the age for studying Talmud.
Children have an active role in the ritual of Passover.
Post-Rabbinic Times
Children began having a much public role. Their rituals are now publicly performed in front of the community (circumcision, bar mitvah
In the Middle Ages circumcision became a more public event, to be performed at the synagogue.
A ritual of naming both males and females also developed.
There was also some rituals marking the beginning of schooling.
The major ritual that developed fro medieval times was bar mitzavah (13 year old boys) and bat mitzvah (12 year old girls).
This usually marked also the age in which parents were no longer obliged to support their children.Boys were expected to work at a very small age, and girl to be married.
A girl is under the authority of her father until he is married, Then her husband's authority superseded her father's.
Pre-Modern Times
From the 17th cent. we have the first manuals of how to raise your children.
Brantspiegel (Basel 1602), First manual on how to raise your children, written by R. Moses ben Henoch
Children should not remained naked, nor perform their bodily functions before people. They should be threatened with the rod and occasionally struck lightly with it so that they know what the rod serves for.
They should not be given new clothes but old and inexpensive clothes. As soon as the child can speak, he should be instructed to recite prayers.
In the book we also have the earliest evidence of the practice of blessing child on Shabbat's eve. ""After the service [on Sabbath eve in the synagogue] is finished, they seek their home; in parting from one another they wish each other not good-day nor good-night, but a happy Sabbath: the parents bless their children, the teachers their pupils."
Another mention of it, at a much later date, occurs in the prayer-book of Rabbi Jacob Emden, printed first in Altona, 1748. A long passage in this book begins with the words: "It is the custom in Israel to bless the children on Sabbath eve after service or upon entering the house."
This blessing as pronounced upon the boys is, "May God make thee like Ephraim and Manasseh" (Gen. xlviii. 20), and upon the girls, "May God make thee like Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah" (compare Ruth iv. 12); and, in addition to this regular formula, any special blessing may be added according to the desire of the one bestowing the benediction.
Jewish children's literature (by Linda R. Silver)
Modern Jewish children’s literature first emerged in America less than 100 years ago, when The Adventures of K’tonton, by Sadie Rose Weilerstein, was published in 1935. Relative to the classics of mainstream children’s literature, Jewish children’s literature is much younger, having stood the test of decades, not centuries. Despite this newness, there is a robust selection of Jewish children’s books that have become classics to several generations of readers.
From the Smallest
Weilerstein’s unruly, thumb-sized K’tonton was modeled physically after an S. Y. Agnon character, the tiny Rabbi Gadiel Hatinok. But unlike Agnon’s character, who bravely battled anti-Semitism, Weilerstein’s is a mischievous Jewish child who leads his loving parents and readers on a merry chase through the Jewish holidays.
K’tonton takes a ride on the chopping knife his mother is using to make gefilte fish for Shabbat dinner; sneaks off to the synagogue at Sukkot and gets swung about on a lulav; goes for a ride on a runaway dreidel during Hanukkah ; falls into a bowl of hamentaschen batter on Purim; barely escapes being locked up in the basement with the everyday dishes during Passover; and takes flight on an arrow at a Lag Ba’Omer picnic.
Fantasy abounds in the K’tonton stories, distinguishing them from the stoic bible stories that previously dominated Jewish children’s literature. The viewpoint is proudly and affirmatively Jewish. As an old woman in a synagogue says while watching K’tonton, "A wonder child…Even when he runs away, where does he run to? The synagogue!" Today’s audience can experience the whimsy of these original stories in The Best of K’tonton (1980).
Holiday Reading
Since K’tonton, a whole host of other books about the holidays have been written for Jewish children. Author Barbara Cohen wrote two beloved classics for young readers, The Carp in the Bathtub (1972), a Passover story, and Molly’s Pilgrim (1983), which touches on the similarities between Thanksgiving and Sukkot.
"Could you eat a friend?" is the question that drives The Carp in the Bathtub, when a sister and brother decide that they can’t let a carp that they love like a pet become the family’s Passover gefilte fish. Set during the Depression, the tongue-in-cheek humor, animated characterization, and compelling story still win the affection of readers.
Molly’s Pilgrim has a sadder tone as its main character is a Jewish immigrant child who is picked on at school for being different. Two strong women in the story, an understanding teacher and a loving mother, are pivotal characters who, each in her own way, convince Molly’s classmates that Jewish immigrants are not so different from the American Pilgrims they study and admire.
All-of-a-Kind Reading
Yet, the best known and most widely read of Jewish children’s classics focus on family–Sydney Taylor’s five All-of-a-Kind Family books (1951-1978). The author based them on her own experiences growing up in a large Jewish family in the early 20th century. In the series, Mama and Papa are hard working immigrants and parents to six lively children.
As newcomers, the kids and their parents work to adjust to American society while remaining faithful to their Jewish heritage. In All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown, for example, the sisters reach out to Guido, a poor Italian boy struggling to care for his sick mother, by inviting him to join in decorating their Sukkah on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Throughout the five books, the family grows and changes while retaining the strong bonds that love and shared traditions create. The All-of-a-Kind Family books were the first Jewish children’s books to cross over into mainstream literature. Taylor legacy’s has been honored with the creation of the Association of Jewish Libraries’ Sydney Taylor Book Award, which recognizes outstanding Jewish children’s literature annually.
Holocaust Literature
Just as the Holocaust shaped modern Jewish history, its impact runs deep in the literary world. Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl (1952) marked the beginning of an outpouring of Holocaust memoirs, fiction, biographies, and non-fiction accounts–many of which were written for children and young adults.
A classic of that genre is Esther Hautzig’s memoir of her childhood in Siberia, The Endless Steppe (1968), as well as Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars (1989), a novel about the rescue of Danish Jews. Both books achieve a balance between depicting the horror of the Holocaust and portraying the hope that gives humans the power to endure.
Holocaust stories also have been written specifically for the youngest of readers. Terrible Things (1980), an allegory for young children by Eve Bunting, is often used as a child’s first introduction to the Holocaust. Using animal characters and softly colored illustrations, Bunting tells the story of the "Terrible Things" that come to the forest, first hunting every creature with feathers on its back. Everyone except the birds remark that they don’t have feathers; maybe the forest is better without the birds. But then the Terrible Things begin singling out all of the other groups of animals, until none is left. Bunting takes her text from the famous words of Pastor Martin Niemöller:
"When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out."
Jewish Folklore
Beginning in the middle of the 20th century, Jewish authors turned to traditional folklore for inspiration. The Wise Men of Helm and Their Merry Tales (1942) and its sequel, More Tales of the Wise Men of Helm (1965) by Solomon Simon were among the first modern collections of Jewish folklore published for children. Their dead-pan style and inexorably developed the fictional city Chelm–where is everything is backwards and humorously illogical–set the standard for other retellings of Chelm tales, of which there are many.
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s masterwork for children, Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1976), also brought to life tales from the Eastern European folk tradition, alongside a sprinkling of Chelm tales and stories teeming with the demons and devils that often inspired Singer’s literary imagination. The black and white illustrations by award-winning artist Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) help to capture the soul of shtetl Jewry.
Classic Picture Books
The art of the picture book is one of the greatest achievements of modern children’s literature and is exemplified in many of the classic Jewish tales. In Something from Nothing (1993), written and illustrated by Phoebe Gilman, three different scenes unfold simultaneously through remarkable illustrations: the outsider view of shtetl life, the domestic life of a boy and his extended family, and the community of mice that lives cozily under the floor boards.
Eric Kimmel’s Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins (1985), with haunting illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman, is based on the legendary character of Hershele Ostropoyler, known in Ashkenazi lore as a prankster who lived in poverty and targeted the rich and powerful. In Kimmel’s version, the resourceful vagabond matches wits with a scary and dark array of goblins determined to undermine Hannukah on each of the eight nights of the holiday.
In author-illustrator Margot Zemach’s It Could Always Be Worse (1976), an unhappy man, living in a house crowded with noisy children, heeds his rabbi’s strange advice and agrees to bring farm animals inside to join the crowd. Zemach’s illustrations of chaos spill across the pages, and the detail and movement capture to perfection the tumult and eventual peace.
The classics of Jewish children’s literature represent a broad spectrum of subject, style, point of view, and artistic technique. But they all point back to the stories and traditions that have been so integral to Judaism for centuries. Although intended for children, as classics, they have something to say to readers of all ages.
The American (integrated) Jewish child in the movies
Children in America now emerges as protagonists, as individuals having his-her own life. There is a generational gap. Contrary to their fathers, they enthusiastically embrace the new world, find new ways of relating with non-Jews and reconciling modernity and tradition
The Jazz Singer.
The problem arose: how Jewish children should keep their identity in a modern world. New stories now "replace" the traditional biblical stories.
Book: Elma Ehrlich Levinger (1887-1958)
Book: Sadie Rose Weilerstein (1894-1993), Adventures of K’tonton (1935), the tale of a thumb-size boy and his doting observant parents,
Book: Mamie Gamoran (1900-1984), Hillel’s Happy Holidays (1939), also a family-based holiday guide.
Sinatra.
The Holocaust child.
A Jewish Girl in Shanghai (2010)
Jewish and non-Jewish children
Children organizations
The Sunday Schools (open to boys and girls). Teaching in English. The Sunday schools offered a new model of Jewish education, no longer tied to Talmud and Torah, taught by men and generally reserved for males only. The curriculum presented Judaism as a religion with a catechism to master, Bible stories to mine for moral lessons, and religious practices compatible with American life. Women served as teachers.
Public schools transformed the children of immigrants into true Americans.
Many Jewish children (boys and girls) worked outside the family and were unionized.
Many Jewish children were enrolled in after-school programs and association (like the Jewish boy-scouts).
Diaries of the Holocaust (Holocaust Encyclopedia)
The Jewish child in the Holocaust is separated by his/her parents, forced to make decision of his/her own.
- (a) Refugees
- (b) In hiding
- (c) in the ghettoes
- (d) in the concentration and death camps.
- (e) among the partisans
- (f) witnesses and survivors
Introduction
At least 1.1 million Jewish children were murdered during the Holocaust.
Of the millions of children who suffered persecution at the hands of the Nazis and their Axis partners, only a small number wrote diaries and journals that have survived. In these accounts, the young writers documented their experiences, confided their feelings, and reflected on the trauma they endured during these nightmare years.
The Diary of Miriam Wattenberg
The diary of Miriam Wattenberg (“Mary Berg”) was one of the first children's journals which revealed to a wider public the horrors of the Holocaust.
Wattenberg was born in Lódz on October 10, 1924. She began a wartime diary in October 1939, shortly after Poland surrendered to German forces. The Wattenberg family fled to Warsaw, where in November 1940, Miriam, with her parents and younger sister, had to live in the Warsaw ghetto. The Wattenbergs held a privileged position within this confined community because Miriam's mother was a US citizen.
Shortly before the first large deportation of Warsaw Jews to Treblinka in the summer of 1942, German officials detained Miriam, her family, and other Jews bearing foreign passports in the infamous Pawiak Prison. German authorities eventually transferred the family to the Vittel internment camp in France, and allowed them to emigrate to the United States in 1944. Published under the penname “Mary Berg” in February 1945, Miriam Wattenberg's diary was one of the very few eyewitness accounts of the Warsaw ghetto available to readers in the English-speaking world before the end of World War II.
The Diary of Anne Frank
Anne Frank, who wrote her diary in hiding with her family and a handful of acquaintances in an attic warehouse in Amsterdam, is the most famous child diarist of the Holocaust era.
Born Annelies Frank in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, on June 12, 1929, she was the second daughter of businessman Otto Frank and his wife Edith. When the Nazis seized power in January 1933, the Franks fled to Amsterdam in order to evade the anti-Jewish measures of the new regime. Anne had received an autograph book for her twelfth birthday and began to use the volume as her diary, keeping a detailed account of events that took place in the “secret annex.” Acting on an anonymous tip, the German Security Police discovered the Franks' hiding place on August 4, 1944, and deported the inhabitants of the annex via Westerbork to Auschwitz.
In late October or early November 1944, Anne and her sister Margot arrived with a transport from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where both succumbed to typhus in late February or early March 1945. Following the war, Anne's father, Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the group, returned to Amsterdam in the summer of 1945, where former employee Miep Gies gave him Anne's diary and some further papers which she had found in the annex after the arrests. The diary first appeared in the Netherlands in 1947. Published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, the wartime journal of Anne Frank has become one of the world's most widely read books, transforming its author into a symbol of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust.
Categories of Diaries and Journals
The prominence of Anne Frank's diary served for a time to eclipse other in situ works written by children during the Holocaust. Nevertheless, as interest in the Holocaust has increased, so has the publication of many more diaries, shedding light on the wartime lives of young people under Nazi oppression.
Young journal writers of this period came from all walks of life. Some child diarists came from poor or peasant families. Others were born to middle-class professionals. Some grew up in wealth and privilege. A handful came from deeply religious families, while others grew up in an assimilated and secular community. A majority of child diarists, however, identified with Jewish tradition and culture regardless of their degree of personal faith.
Child diaries and journals from the Holocaust era can be grouped into three broad categories:
- Those written by children who escaped German-controlled territory and became refugees or partisans;
- Those written by children living in hiding; and
- Those maintained by young people as ghetto residents, as persons living under other restrictions imposed by German authorities, or, more rarely, as concentration camp prisoners.
Refugee Diaries
Refugee diaries were often composed in the late 1930s or early 1940s by children of assimilated Jewish parents from Germany, Austria, or the Czech lands. Many of these diaries address the issue of displacement, as all of these child writers had sacrificed the familiarity of home in order to seek refuge among strangers in distant countries.
Some writers, like Jutta Salzberg (b. 1926 in Hamburg, Germany), Lilly Cohn (b. 1928 in Halberstadt, Germany), Susi Hilsenrath (b. 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany), and Elisabeth Kaufmann (b. 1926 in Vienna, Austria; d. 2003), fled with siblings or parents. Others, such as Klaus Langer (b. 1924 in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia), Peter Feigl (b. 1929 in Berlin), Werner Angress (b.1920 in Berlin, Germany; d. 2010), and Leja Jedwab (b. 1924 in Bialystok, Poland), arrived alone in a strange land.
Child diarists who emigrated by legal means often described the tremendous bureaucratic difficulties involved in securing a safe haven and in obtaining the necessary visas and papers required for emigration. Diarists who fled illegally portray the harrowing journey through dangerous terrain and the constant fear of being apprehended.
Regardless of their means of escape, however, refugee diaries reflect the painful and confusing loss of home, language and culture; the devastating separation from family and friends; and the challenge of adapting to life in an unfamiliar and sometimes alienating world.
Diaries Written in Hiding
Like Anne Frank, some young people lived in hiding to evade the German authorities: in attics, bunkers, and cellars throughout eastern and western Europe. These writers—among them Otto Wolf (b. 1927 in Mohelnice, Czechoslovakia) in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Mina Glucksman, Clara Kramer (b. 1927 in Zolkiew), and Leo Silberman (b. 1928 in Przemysl) in Poland; and Bertje Bloch-van Rhijn, Edith van Hessen (b. 1925 in The Hague), and Anita Meyer (b. 1929 in The Hague) in the Netherlands—reflect the difficulties and dangers of their concealment.
Otto Wolf (1927-1945) was a Czech Jewish teenager who chronicled his family's experience living in hiding in rural Moravia during World War II. Otto Wolf (1927-1945) was a Czech Jewish teenager who chronicled his family's experience living in hiding in rural Moravia during World War II. - US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Felicitas Wolf Garda
These children remained physically concealed for a significant portion, or for the entirety, of their time in hiding. Youngsters often had to remain silent or even motionless in their hiding places for hours at a time. Both children and their protectors lived in constant fear lest a raised voice or a footfall should rouse the suspicion of their neighbors.
Other young people in concealment, like child diarists Moshe Flinker (b. 1926, The Hague; d. 1944, Auschwitz) in Belgium and Peter Feigl in France, hid in plain sight, passing as non-Jews through the dubious protection of false papers and an assumed identity. These children had to adapt swiftly and completely to their new identities and environments. Young people learned to answer to their fictive name, and to avoid language or mannerisms that might betray their origins.
As most Jewish children were hidden by individuals or by religious institutions who embraced faiths different from their own, youngsters learned to recite the prayers and catechism of their “adopted” religion in order to avert the suspicions of both adults and their peers. One false word or gesture was sufficient to endanger both the child and his or her rescuers.
Diaries written in ghettos, camps, or occupied areas
Children and young people residing in ghettos in German-occupied Europe wrote the majority of diaries that have surfaced from the era of the Holocaust. Ghetto diaries often reflect the segregation, isolation, and vulnerability of their authors. They capture the extreme physical suffering and deprivation experienced by their authors and present the complex hardships and adversities that Jews faced in their struggle to survive. In ghetto diaries, the reader finds a firsthand account of the terror and violence of Nazi persecution, but also reads about young people who attempted to transcend their circumstances through study, creativity, and play.
The former sites of many ghettos in German-controlled eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and the former Soviet Union, have yielded many diaries and journals written by children. Renowned among them are the diaries of Dawid Sierakowiak (b. 1924 in Lódz; d. 1943, Lódz ghetto) and two anonymous teenagers from Lódz. Few complete diaries have been found from the Warsaw ghetto, but the fragmentary notes of Janina Lewinson (b. 1926, Warsaw; d. 2010) survived and were later incorporated in her latter-day memoir. Irena Gluck (b.1926- d. c. 1942), Renia Knoll (b. 1927), and Halina Nelken (b. 1924 in Kraków) wrote diaries in the Kraków ghetto, while Dawid Rubinowicz (b. 1927 in Kielce; d. 1942 at Treblinka), Elsa Binder, and Ruthka Leiblich (b.1926; d. c. 1942 in Auschwitz) wrote diaries recording persecution in their communities.
A number of wartime diaries came from ghettos in the Baltic countries: Yitskhok Rudashevski (b. 1927 in Vilnius; d. 1943, Ponary Woods) and Gabik Heller from the Vilne ghetto in Vilnius, Lithuania; Ilya Gerber (b. 1924; d. c. 1943) and Tamara Lazerson (b.1929 in Kaunas) from the Kovno (Kovne) ghetto, in Kaunas, Lithuania; and Gertrude Schneider (b. 1923 in Vienna), a German-Jewish girl incarcerated in the Riga ghetto.
Quite a large number of diaries survived from Theresienstadt in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), among them the writings of siblings Petr Ginz (b. 1928 in Prague; d. c. 1944, Auschwitz) and Eva Ginzová (b.1930 in Prague), Alice Ehrmann (b. 1927 in Prague), Helga Weissovà (b. 1929 in Prague), Helga Pollackovà (b. 1930), Eva Roubickovà (b. 1920), and Paul Weiner (b. 1931 in Prague).
Many diaries were written by children outside the walls of the ghetto. Sarah Fishkin (b. c. 1924; d. c. 1942) for example, kept a diary in occupied Belorussia (today, Belarus) in the town of Rubezhevichi. Riva Goltsman described the first unsettling six months of occupation in Dnepropetrovsk, in Ukraine. Leon Wells (b. 1925 in Stojanov by Lwów-today: L'viv) kept a diary as a young member of a Sonderkommando unit in the Janów Street forced-labor camp in Lvov (Lwów), while Günther Marcuse (b. 1923 in Berlin; d. 1944, Auschwitz) recounted his experiences in a forced-labor camp at Gross-Breesen, once a vocational training farm for Jewish youngsters hoping to emigrate from the Reich. Isabelle Jesion wrote her diary under German occupation in Paris, while Raymonde Nowodworski (b. 1929 in Warsaw; 1951 in Israel) portrayed her life in Centre Vauquelin, a children's home run by the L'Union générale des israélites de France (UGIF).
Each diary reflects a fragment
Diaries by children, teenagers, and young adults during the era of the Holocaust reflect a great variety of personal backgrounds and wartime circumstances. Their authors often addressed themes such as the nature of human suffering, the moral and ethical dimensions of persecution, and the struggle of hope against despair. Each diary reflects a fragment of its author's life, but, taken together, the diaries provide readers with a varied and complex view of young people who lived and died during the Holocaust.
The American Way: The Coexistence of Religious and Ethnic Identities
- Film: Big City (1948)
Children in the new Israeli State
(a) The experiment of Collective Education in the Kibbutz
The Jewish child today (in Israel and the diaspora)
Jewish vs public schools. Big emphasis on Jewish pre-school programs (as many as 100.000 are currently enrolled). Then Jewish children have the choice to attend Jewish schools (not only orthodox) or public schools. 200.000 kids are enrolled in private Jewish schools. For those who attend public schools there is a variety of after-school programs.
Religion and secularism. The ultra-orthodox see school as a way to protect children from secular society. Most Jews, however, attend public schools or do not see private Jewish schools in opposition to public education. Most students from private Jewish schools go to college, not to religious Seminaries.
Jewish identity and American identity.
Jewish Families have a lot of tools available today to raise a "Jewish" child who is integrated in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious secular society.
Book: Anita Diamant, and Karen Kushner, How to Raise a Jewish Child: A Practical Handbook for Family Life, 2000 (2nd ed. 2008)
Book: Books by Chaim Walder, Series: Kids Speak: Children Talk About Themselves (from 1993 to the present)
Related categories
References
Elisheva Baumgarten, Judaim, in Children and childhood in world religions: primary sources and texts, ed. Browning, Don S.; Bunge, Marcia (15-82)
- Children in Late Antiquity / D.L. Stamps / In: Dictionary of New Testament Background (2000 Evans & Porter), dictionary, 197-201
- Child, Children / Joseph A. Grassi / In: The Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992 Freedman), dictionary, 1:904-907