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About Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner
Expertise
Write to me with questions about Jewish customs and law, history, philosophy and tradition for answers from a Conservative perspective or conversion. I am a graduate of The Jewish Theological Seminary and a member of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. Having served in congregational pulpits since 1970, I now am President of the Foundation For Family Education, Inc. a non-profit educational endeavor. I established it to create new formats of hands-on programs and provide free educational downloads at www.jewishfreeware.org. In addition to general informational questions I welcome your questions about programs for social action, outreach to dual-faith families, inter-faith clergy projects, healing services, education for conversion, adult education for the congregation and the community. If you have questions about Informal and Formal Education I am ready to share my extensive experience with Youth Activities, Camping and Religious School/Hebrew High School on a congregational, community and national/international level.

Experience
I have served on the National Youth Commission for more than 25 years and serve on the Boards of the Conservative Zionist movement MERCAZ and the World Council of Synagogues. I have always dual-families and taught candidates for conversion with a great sense of fulfillment. I am very proud of 25 years on the Jewish camping staff of Camps Ramah. My greatest source of pride is my family! Ask me about them, please!:-)

You are here: Experts > Homework Help > Judaism > Conservative Judaism > education in Biblical times

Conservative Judaism - education in Biblical times

Expert: Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner - 10/22/2009

Question
Could the people read in the time of Moses. Were they taught to read and when did that start.

Thank You

Answer
Dear Jim,

Thank you for writing.

A quick answer: Perhaps Moses and other privileged upper classes were tuaght to read and perhaps even write, but the majority were only educated in oral traditions, not written.

In the recent 2007 updating of the Encyclopedia Judaica, my teacher Prof. Aaron Demsky writes:

" . . higher education or book learning in Mesopotamia and Egypt was formal and limited to the scribal class, which does not seem to have been the case in Israel. The difference was no doubt due to the simpler alphabetic system of writing used by the Hebrews.
Any description of education in the biblical period is necessarily incomplete and must ultimately rely on general impressions of what was applicable to most levels of society, as it is reflected in the Bible and later Jewish sources.
The sources at hand do not allow for a precise, chronological description of the development of pedagogical institutions or methodology.. ."

Since a major specialty of Dr. Demsky is ancient Middle Eastern alphabets / calligraphy, he would be familiar with literacy but he notes that what we know is more by inference than real data and written records of, shall we say, a syllabus or curriculum of a school.

I have concluded that there were scribes in the Biblical period who clearly were literate, able to read and write, in addition to outstanding teachers who functioned with oral traditions and unusual memories. Unfortunately, we don't have any data on Jewish literacy at the time of Moses. However, we know there were literate scribes and professionals in Egypt and apparently Moses himself was raised in the palace of the Pharaoh. We can assume that Moses received a royal education and would have been literate. We don't know about the Israelites or who or what social groups would have been educated to read and write, though they may have learned the traditions, history, legends, lore, theology, culture of the Israelites with which they prepared the next generations.

On the one hand, therefore Judaism appears to be from the earliest times committed to "education" my own quick research for you confirms what another colleague and teacher of mine mentioned frequently that the post-Biblical teachers were incredibly competent scholars and masters of Jewish law and literature, but he suggested that not all may have been literate - in terms of reading and writing.

The EJ 2007 includes the following quote, and I would suggest that you check with the EJ or the Anchor Bible Dictionary for "education."

"THE BABYLONIAN EXILE AND HELLENISTIC TIMES

The Jewish people successfully overcame the trauma of the Babylonian Exile. The small province of Judah that was established subsequently was politically part of the Persian Empire and economically dependent upon the gifts of wealthier Jews in exile.
Ezra the Scribe and his colleagues were empowered to teach the Torah to the Jews (Ezra 7:25), and under his guidance the Torah became the accepted basis of individual and community life. Beginnings of a program of mass education (Deut. 31:12–13; II Chron. 17:7–9) matured under Ezra into new institutions, intensifying the study of Torah and raising the quality of popular knowledge. Recognized instructors, called mevinim, were appointed to teach publicly. The Torah was read out and explained (Neh. 8:7–8). It was the beginning of the regular public lection of the Torah, later connected with the synagogal liturgy and ascribed anachronistically to Ezra (BK 82a). The internal tensions between stipulations of the Torah, on one hand, and between the Torah and the reality of the period on the other, led to a search for new meaning in the biblical text, thereby creating Midrash (Dan. 9:23–27; Neh. 8:13–15). In Hellenistic times there began to appear schools for public instruction (Eccles. 12:9; Ecclus. 39:1–3). Ben Sira, the late third century B.C.E. pedagogue, seems to have introduced tuition-free education (51:28–30). It was not uncommon for an informal study session to take place even at a student's house (Avot 1:4). Finally, toward the end of the second century B.C.E., *Simeon ben Shetah inaugurated the first known system of community-supported public education. A new intellectual model had emerged: the biblical hakham, or wise man, gave way to the rabbinic talmid hakham, or scholar."

Another resource if you need more specific information beyond these leads - contact the Reference Desk of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, jtsa.edu on line.

Best wishes

Rabbi Dov

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