Early Jewish Education

Ancient Jewish education was not institutionalized but rather conducted informally and privately. Children were given an elementary education by their parents, in the household. For boys, the father was the main role model. If a father was learned in Torah, his sons were likely to be so as well. In some places, scribes functioned as elementary teachers, paid by parents to teach their sons the skills needed to read the Torah and, in some cases, to do so publicly in the synagogue. Torah readers were especially needed in late antiquity, when synagogues became the centers of local communities. References to scribes as Torah teachers mostly appear in amoraic sources from the third century CE onward. This education took place not at schools in the modern sense but at informal gatherings.

Torah study was a particularly Jewish type of secondary education that developed in the rabbinic period, becoming a form of worship that took the place of sacrifice after the destruction of the Temple. A young male who already knew how to read the Torah would become the disciple of a renowned sage, living in his household, observing him, and serving him. For the most part, rabbinic education seems to have taken place in informal settings, although there are mentions in the Talmud of formal teaching in study houses and public spaces. In all likelihood, only a few individuals in each generation would have become Torah scholars. Torah study (Heb., talmud torah) reached its full flourishing in the rabbinic academies of the geonic period, from the sixth century onward.

An alternative option for wealthy, Hellenized Jewish families was (secular) Greek primary and secondary education. These families had Greek-speaking slaves in their households who would teach the children Greek. Greek-educated Jewish boys could move on to more advanced studies in philosophy, rhetoric, or law with Hellenistic intellectuals. We know from 2 Maccabees that Jewish education could also involve learning in Greek gymnasia. There is some evidence that girls also learned Greek, likely at home rather than in schools, although they were not instructed in Torah.