Eretz
Yisrael in Children’s Books Before 1948
[Note: I am publishing this in my blog as a work in
progress. The more time that I spend
researching the more information I find that I need to learn. As a work in progress I invite comments and
ideas on how to conclude the project. I
am not an expert in children’s literature and I don’t even know much about
current materials for Jewish children.
Many children’s books cross my desk, but I don’t have time to read
them.]
After V-E day (8 May 1945) most American soldiers were
not needed in Europe, but the U.S. Army had no way to quickly return them
home. My father was stuck in Italy
waiting for transport. He had a desk job
working regular hours. In one of his
letters to his family he wrote that he and some of his buddies were seeking
transport to take a vacation in Palestine.
He wanted “Next year in Jerusalem” to happen in 1945. They were not able
to find a boat for passage to Palestine.
When I read his letter a few years ago I caught a bug of an idea and a
question, what was American Jewish children’s literature writing about
Palestine? Were American Jewish children
taught about love of Eretz Yisrael?
This article will explore some examples of Jewish children’s
literature, but there is no way I can be comprehensive in a short article.
I was most interested in the period of 1900-1948. In 2014 Andrea Rapp wrote about the
historical children’s literature collection in the Isaac Meyer Wide Temple
Library [1] mentions two studies of literature,
Jonathan Sarna’s book, JPS
the Americanization of Jewish Culture 1888-1988 about the Jewish
Publication Society (Sarna 1989) and Linda Silver’s presentation, “Milestones
in American Jewish Children’s Literature”, given at the 2005 Association of
Jewish Libraries regional conference. (Rapp page 154-155). Neither work highlighted anything about
Israel, Palestine or Zionism in children’s literature. Sarna does mention that The Jewish
Publication Society (here after JPS) was concerned with the lack of children’s
books.
Roger Strauss
of publisher Farrar, Struss and Cudahy and JPS made a deal to write biographies
for Jewish children about great American Jews, but this was in 1956 after many years
of interest. It is significant because
until Straus pushed this idea JPS thought the children’s market was too small
to warrant any major publication effort.
This deal created Covenant Books and was a joint publication. JPS would sell to its members and Strauss
would sell to the general book trade.
This lack of interest in children’s books because of economic concerns
was a major reason very few books for children were written before the late
1960’s or 1970’s.
The Shavzin-Carsch
Collection that Rapp wrote about has 44 books written for primary grade
children published from 1900-1950. If I
subtract the 22 that are primarily Bible stories that leaves 22. For middle school and high school aged
students the collection has 103 books and 16 are Bible stories.
The creation of
books specifically aimed children did not have a long history. One major part of the philosophy of education
was to create obedient servants of the society.
In Jewish education this meant the learning of Torah and the laws and
traditions of daily, Shabbat and holiday ritual observance. From the earliest
times Jewish education was character education.
The Torah[2] was
not recreational reading; it was the source of Jewish law, ethics and religious
life. Children were seen as miniature adults who didn’t need imaginative
literature. Even in Christian society,
reading of the Bible and telling Bible stories was an important part a child’s
education.
Liberal
education, that is an understanding of the diversity of the world, is a recent
part of education. Liberal education
took a long time to develop. Many
universities and colleges before the early 20th century thought a
liberal education meant learning classical literature. Students didn’t learn how to think on their
own but were trained to repeat the mistakes or glory of the past. Because of this attitude toward education, it
is no far-fetched rationale to say that children did not need books that were
written for children.
Most of the
books in the list below tell stories or give explanations of Jewish holidays,
Shabbat, and Jewish traditions. While
the language is defiantly at a child’s level, all are trying to teach. For example, K’tonton’s adventures are
centered around holiday or Shabbat preparations or observances. While the stories are amusing and
entertaining, the stories are a children’s version of a treatise on Jewish
practices.
If you want to
read about the history of American Jewish education, Judah Pilch’s book deals with the events, people, and
happenings in American Jewish education, but never deals with the philosophy
and the “why” of education. In chapter 4, “From the early forties to the
mid-sixties,” by Judah Pilch does mention the role of the Jewish community of
Palestine and the impact of the State of Israel on Jewish education. After 1948
the study of Hebrew language and Jewish current events achieved a more
important part of the Jewish school’s curricula.
The Zionist
messages do appear in some Hebrew language textbooks. Many of the readers are from Israeli
(Palestinian) writers such as Hayyim Nachman Bialik and Ahad Ha’am.
Examples from
the books
Zevi Shafstein (1884-1972) was an
educator and writer. He arrived in the
United States in 1914 and two years later started teaching at the Teachers
Institute of Jewish Theological Seminary.
He was a professor of education until his retirement in 1960. He wrote many textbooks for children learning
Hebrew and edited a dictionary. In ארצנו is a story of a family that travels by
boat to Eretz Yisrael. Sharfstein never uses the word “Palestine.” When on the boat they meet some people going
to Israel to be halutzim. While in
Israel they visit the sea shore, small agricultural settlements, and talk about
the food and scenery. [3]
They never visit Jerusalem. This is one of the few openly Zionist books. It
does have a chapter mentioning Shabbat, but none of the religious observances
are mentioned. The only bracha is for the
Hanukkah candles. This is a textbook, not recreational or enrichment reading. It does not fit most of selection
criteria. Since it was written in 1938,
my father would not have read this in school. This book contrasts Marenof’s
textbook that has stories of religious observance and no mention of Eretz
Yisrael.
[to be continued…]
Selected Children’s Books Consulted
Marenof, Shlomo. עם ומועדיו : חומר לנסיון בהוראת הלשון העברית לגדולים. ניו יורק
: היברו פאבלישינג קאמפני, 1936
Shafstein, Zevi. ארצנו. נויורק : שילה,
1938.
Silverman, Althea Osber. Habibi
and Yow : a little boy and his dog. New York : Bloch Publishing Company,
1946.
A boy grows up learning Jewish traditions
and religious principles and customs.
Weilerstein, Sadie Rose. The
adventures of K'tonton : a little Jewish Tom Thumb. New York : National
Women's League of the United Synagogue, [c1935]
Weilerstein, Sadie
Rose. What the moon brought. Philadelphia : The Jewish Publication
Weilerstein, Sadie Rose. Little
new angel. Philadelphia : The Jewish
Publication Society of America, 1947.
Happy children learn about the makeup of
an ideal Jewish home through fascinating stories.
Weilerstein, Sadie Rose. What
the moon brought. Philadelphia : The Jewish Publication Society of America,
1942.
Stories of the Jewish holidays and the Shabbat,
woven around the experiences of two children in an American Jewish home.
Selected books on Palestine published before
1948
Falkenberg, Paul V. Palestine. [New York] : Holiday House, [1946]
Smither, Ethel Lisle. A
picture book of Palestine. New York
; Nashville : Abingdon-Cokesbury press, c1947.
Story of everyday life in Palestine in
Biblical times. The text is very stilted
and written in passive tense.
Trager, Hannah. Festival
stories of child life in a Jewish colony in Palestine, / Hannah Trager ...
with a preface by the Very Revd. Dr. Hertz. New York : E.P. Dutton &
Co., [c1920]
https://archive.org/details/festivalstorieso00trag eBook from the Internet Archive.
Trager, Hannah. Stories
of child life in a Jewish colony in Palestine. New York : E.P. Dutton,
[1919] https://archive.org/details/cu31924029097438 eBook from the Internet Archive.
Trager, Hannah. Pioneers in Palestine : stories of one
of the first settlers in Petach Tikvah. New York : E.P. Dutton, 1924.
Zeligs, Dorothy F. The
story of modern Palestine for young people. New York : Bloch, 1944. https://archive.org/details/storyofmodernpal00zeli eBook from the Internet Archive.
Other
Works Consulted
Drazin, Nathan. History of Jewish education. Baltimore
: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1940.
Pilch, Judah, editor. A history of Jewish education in the
United States. New York : The National Curriculum Institute of the American
Association for Jewish Education, 1969.
Sarna, Jonathan D. JPS
: the Americanization of Jewish culture, 1888-1988. Philadelphia : Jewish
Publication Society, 1989.
[1] Rapp, Andrea. 2014. "The Shavzin-Carsch
Collection of Historic Jewish Children’s Literature," Judaica
Librarianship 104 vol. 18, 154-166. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14263/2330-2976.1031
[2] By “Torah” I
mean both the actual text of the Torah, rest of the Tanach and the associated
oral literature. Perhaps Bible stories and stories from the Midrash were told
to entertain children? Or perhaps the stories are didactic and “entertainment
value” was not part of the teacher’s intent?
[3] This map of
Eretz Yisrael from Artzeinu has no
national or international borders.
[4]
Weilerstein
first submitted K’tonton to JPS in 1933.
The book was turned down by all three reviewers. They didn’t think JPS
members would be interested in buying this for their children. For the story
turn to Sarna pages 171-172.
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