Education by the Jewish Mother
“JEWISH education began with the mother. What the true Jewish mother, considered as a teacher, was, we know from both the Testaments and from many other sources. The very household duties that she performed molded her children in accordance with the national discipline. ‘The Sabbath meal, the kindling of the Sabbath lamp, and the setting apart of a portion of the dough from the household bread—for these are but instances with which every Taph, as he clung to his mother’s skirts, must have been familiar.’ The bit of parchment fastened to the door-post, on which the name of the Most High was written . . . would be among the first things to arrest his attention.” “It was in the school of the mother’s knee that the stories of patriarchs and prophets, of statesmen and warriors, of poets and sages, of kings and judges, wise men and patriots, and of the great Lawgiver himself,—the whole forming the very best body of material for the purposes of child nurture found in any language,—were told and retold until they became parts of the mind itself. . . . As teachers of their children, the women of every country may learn lessons from the matrons of Israel.”—Hinsdale.