Tag #156447 - Interview #78450 (Dezso Deutsch)

From my first grade on I attended another school too, where I studied Jewish subjects. It was not a proper yeshiva, it was a kind of pre-yeshiva. It was run by the Orthodox community and we were about the ten of us students there. We studied Humesh [the five books of  Moses], Rashi [commentaries to the Talmud written by Rashi], Gemore  [Gemara, part of the Talmud which interprets and explains the Mishna which preceded it], as well as Tosefot [critical and analytical glossaries attached to the Mishna and the Gemara]. The classes had their special choreography. There  was a copy of the Talmud and we would read out from it, then the bocher [yeshiva student] explained it, then we discussed it  and gave the explanation of the different stories and we were supposed to understand the different points of view of the sages. We translated everything into Yiddish. Then sometimes we discussed the same thing in Hungarian. The discussion was in Hungarian. There was no homework but a so-called review or report on Sundays. It was conducted by the rabbi and he asked questions on the subjects we had covered  the previous week  It was not a proper exam but rather a discussion of the material we had studied the previous week. He would ask questions and he would add his own explanation to the given question. I liked going to this place but it was quite stressful because I would come home from school, have my lunch and by two o’clock I had to be there. I generally studied until six and I had to do my homework in the evening [for the middle school.