Guide
The Locations of Elementary Teaching among Early Jews
3rd–4th Centuries
Restricted
Rabbinic texts suggest that teachers could set themselves up anywhere to instruct children. The locations mentioned range from the teacher’s own home to semiprivate courtyards in apartment buildings (insulae), synagogues, and study houses; these were available at times when they were not being used by adults. Residents were sometimes bothered by the noise of the teachers’ and children’s voices. Passersby might overhear the lashes that teachers used to discipline children. Such references in amoraic sources suggest that in late antiquity the teaching of children by elementary teachers had become more widespread. Yet even then, there were regions in which no teachers were available.
Related Primary Sources
Primary Source
Teaching in Courtyards
Those who teach children [in the courtyard of an insula] and those who prepare banquets for each other, their neighbors can protest against them. This one can say to him, “They come and go; they ask…
Primary Source
Teaching as a Communal Matter
A maidservant of Bar Pata was passing by a synagogue and she saw the teacher hit a child more than was necessary. She said to him, “Let that man be…