Fall is in the air, so don’t forget to scrape some bark off the birch tree, sharpen a quill pen or two, and dust off the hornbook. And don’t worry if your spillin isn’t purrfekt — your teacher probably can’t “spill” too well, either. In other words, it’s back to school, back in the past!
But even though learning how to cook and bake launder and repair clothes clean the house and prepare homemade remedies for cuts and colds was the “core curriculum ” many Jewish girls did learn how to read Yiddish. Tzene Urena Techines (prayers for women written in Yiddish) and works of mussar written especially for women and girls were therefore found in many a Jewish home.
Hebrew was less commonly taught but girls would learn how to say essential prayers by listening to their mothers and grandmothers or by repeating the words after the firzogerins the specially appointed women prayer leaders who could be found in the women’s sections of some European shuls.
Girls from wealthier homes might also learn how to play a musical instrument draw and paint and do fancy embroidery. In fact making an embroidered sampler was often the way that a girl first learned to “write” the alphabet.
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