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I went to cheder from the age of three, to different melamedim. A melamed was a teacher. I had three of them. There were religious subjects at cheder, translating prayers from Hebrew to Yiddish, the Five Books of Moses. Because at cheder we first learned prayers in Hebrew, then there was the study of books: Bava Metziah, Bava Kama, then law and then Shulchan Arukh [Heb. ‘Set Table’, compendium of those areas of the halakhah that are applicable today. It was composed by Rabbi Yosef Karo of Safed in the 1560s, and became generally accepted as authoritative after Rabbi Moshe Isserls of Cracow supplemented it in the 1570s with notes (known as the Mappah – ‘Tablecloth’) giving the rulings followed by Ashkenazim.]. We learned about the principles of kosher life, sleep, everything about Jewish holiday customs. There’s everything in Shulchan Aruch, how I am supposed to sleep, which side to lie on, how to get up, which sleeve to put on first, which second, everything. Such details. And this Bava Metziah, that’s studying, first law. It starts out in Hebrew, of course. I am walking with my friend on the street and I find a tallit, a prayer garment. I bend over and pick it up, ‘I found it, therefore I should have it’, but he also says ‘I should have it’ and we’re ready to quarrel. And the problem needs to be solved, and everything starts out with details.
Then there are comments. It’s called Rashi [5] commentary. It’s written in Aramean. All the disputes are solved, just like they are in court, a final conclusion is reached. All difficult things, even family issues, concerning sex, but I didn’t understand that. I shouldn’t be saying this, but, as I said, there were three beds at home and I slept in one bed with Father and I never knew why he would get out of bed at night, I didn’t know where he went! Such was the culture, everything was normal. There was a time for everything, you’d find out about everything in due time. Later, when I was already studying everything in cheder, I began to study the kaballah. Many things in there didn’t seem to fit. I started asking the rabbi. How, I said, did Adam’s offspring come about if he only had three sons? And other problems of this kind. And he answered: ‘When you grow up, you will know everything, you will understand everything.’ I also remember that each Saturday at cheder we used to be assigned to these religious Jews, we met with them after the Saturday feast and they examined us in the Torah, asked us questions about everything we had studied in the last week.
Corporal punishment was used in cheder, when someone went skidding on Saturday and someone told on him, or when he was guilty of something else, stole something, was accused of something or caught red-handed. I remember some melamed had a so-called kanczuk [short leather whip] – a stick with leather straps, quite a few of these straps; they used it to beat students on their fingers or behinds. There was a teacher with a short leg – Symcha – and he’d sometimes kick students with this leg when they misbehaved. The student had to go under a table, he’d hold on to the table top, kick him with this short leg and yell: ‘You foundling, you mamzer [‘bastard’, Yiddish]!’
There was also another teacher who, when someone misbehaved, ordered the student to get undressed to his underwear and stand on this special chest, with a round lid, in the corner of the room. The teacher would bring a broom made of twigs, he’d take out one twig, a rod, give it to a second student and the rest of the broom to the one who was standing on the chest. He had to hold this broom up in the air, above his head. He’d have to stand in this position for 30 minutes or an hour. The student who got that rod had to make sure that the student with the broom wouldn’t put it down and if that happened, he was obliged to beat him with this rod on his buttocks. And then came an even more severe form of punishment. After half an hour, when the student got off that chest, the melamed asked the students to stand in two lines, two rows of students and he led that student through the middle. Each student from each row received one rod and when the culprit was walking next to him, he had to beat him with that rod on his behind. None of these punishments were ever used on me. I was very well behaved.
Then there are comments. It’s called Rashi [5] commentary. It’s written in Aramean. All the disputes are solved, just like they are in court, a final conclusion is reached. All difficult things, even family issues, concerning sex, but I didn’t understand that. I shouldn’t be saying this, but, as I said, there were three beds at home and I slept in one bed with Father and I never knew why he would get out of bed at night, I didn’t know where he went! Such was the culture, everything was normal. There was a time for everything, you’d find out about everything in due time. Later, when I was already studying everything in cheder, I began to study the kaballah. Many things in there didn’t seem to fit. I started asking the rabbi. How, I said, did Adam’s offspring come about if he only had three sons? And other problems of this kind. And he answered: ‘When you grow up, you will know everything, you will understand everything.’ I also remember that each Saturday at cheder we used to be assigned to these religious Jews, we met with them after the Saturday feast and they examined us in the Torah, asked us questions about everything we had studied in the last week.
Corporal punishment was used in cheder, when someone went skidding on Saturday and someone told on him, or when he was guilty of something else, stole something, was accused of something or caught red-handed. I remember some melamed had a so-called kanczuk [short leather whip] – a stick with leather straps, quite a few of these straps; they used it to beat students on their fingers or behinds. There was a teacher with a short leg – Symcha – and he’d sometimes kick students with this leg when they misbehaved. The student had to go under a table, he’d hold on to the table top, kick him with this short leg and yell: ‘You foundling, you mamzer [‘bastard’, Yiddish]!’
There was also another teacher who, when someone misbehaved, ordered the student to get undressed to his underwear and stand on this special chest, with a round lid, in the corner of the room. The teacher would bring a broom made of twigs, he’d take out one twig, a rod, give it to a second student and the rest of the broom to the one who was standing on the chest. He had to hold this broom up in the air, above his head. He’d have to stand in this position for 30 minutes or an hour. The student who got that rod had to make sure that the student with the broom wouldn’t put it down and if that happened, he was obliged to beat him with this rod on his buttocks. And then came an even more severe form of punishment. After half an hour, when the student got off that chest, the melamed asked the students to stand in two lines, two rows of students and he led that student through the middle. Each student from each row received one rod and when the culprit was walking next to him, he had to beat him with that rod on his behind. None of these punishments were ever used on me. I was very well behaved.
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Jakub Bromberg
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