ALTNEULAND

Organ of the Zionist Commission for the Exploration of Palestine

ONCE MORE ON THE CARE OF YOUTH.

On the present state and the future prospects of the educational school system in Jerusalem, the following is to be added to the earlier article*) by way of supplement and, in isolated points, of correction:

The building-up of the seminary will be completed at Easter of this year (1906), with the addition of the topmost class. The number of pupils in the school year 1905/06 amounts to 28, of whom 15 fall to the preparatory class, 8 to the third, and 5 to the second seminary class. In the preparatory division there are now also the five candidates for the rabbinate, already mentioned, from the Sephardic Jeshibba. Their training will in all probability give occasion for a reconciliation between the Sephardic Talmud-Torah and the modern school. The Sephardic Jews have hitherto lacked only capable teachers from their own community to accomplish the transformation. Hitherto, therefore, their children have mostly attended the French Alliance schools, the more so as the language of instruction there lies nearest to their mother tongue (Spagnolic); but the spirit of religious indifference which governs the education in those schools is little to the parents' liking. From this point of view the young teachers' seminary has indirectly opened the way to a gratifying regeneration of the Sephardic school system — if indeed religious grounding and education of the young signify a blessing for the future.