{"id":4984,"date":"2026-01-08T17:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/?p=4984"},"modified":"2026-01-08T17:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:38:10","slug":"what-shall-we-tell-the-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/08\/what-shall-we-tell-the-children\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWhat Shall We Tell the Children?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Miriam Udel, Rifkind Fellow 2024-2025 & Member of the CJH Academic Advisory Council<\/h3>\n

What Shall We Tell the Children?<\/h2>\n

As I demonstrate in my critical study Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children\u2019s Literature<\/em><\/a>, the Yiddish children\u2019s literary canon that burgeoned on the secularist left during the first half of the twentieth century forms a rich archive for revisiting the anxieties and ideas that animated Ashkenazi modernity. This literature emerged from politically aligned fraternal organizations, each with its own network of schools and allied publishing programs. We can tease out adults\u2019 ideological aspirations and intuitions from the corpus of nearly one thousand books\u2014short stories, novels and novellas, poems, and plays\u2014and several periodicals that they devised for the young readers in their midst.<\/p>\n

But what about more programmatic statements regarding education and ideology? Starting in the 1930\u2019s, educational theorists and leaders, as well as rank-and-file teachers in the Yiddish after-school systems, talked among themselves in pedagogical bulletins. On unassuming mimeographed and stapled pages, they articulated their understanding of the best educational practices; shared primary source materials, lesson plans, and games for use in the classroom; and disseminated quantitative education research. The Buleten<\/em> launched in March 1935 as a project of the\u00a0 Yiddishist, ostensibly \u201cnon-political\u201d Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute schooling network.\u00b9\u00a0 The Bundist, explicitly socialist Arbeter ring (Workmen\u2019s Circle, renamed Workers Circle in 2020) launched its own periodical in 1939. In November 1941, both of these periodicals joined together under the aegis of the Jewish Educational Commission, henceforth to be known as the Pedagogisher buletin and placed under the editorship of grammarian, educational theorist, pedagogue, and children\u2019s author Yudl Mark (1897-1975).\u00b2<\/p>\n

Mark moved the monthly in a more theoretical and philosophical direction, opening every issue with an editorial-cum-essay about the focus of special issues or just topics of special concern. Because his tenure spanned most of the Holocaust, the founding of the State of Israel and other significant milestones, perusing the Pedagogisher buletin<\/em> allows us to track how Mark and his colleagues, or khaveyrim-lerer<\/em>,\u00a0 sought to teach about these events at every phase of children\u2019s development and education.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPedagogisher bule\u1e6den, November 1941<\/em>. Collection of YIVO Library.<\/p>\n

The inaugural issue of the Pedagogisher buletin<\/em>\u00a0[above], under Yudl Mark\u2019s editorship. Mark spells out plans for the publication and summarizes the contents of precursor publications. Items include language drills and literary materials suitable for classroom use.<\/p>\n

In the November 1941 inaugural issue, Mark explains the pre-history of the new publication and recapitulates the contents of both precursor bulletins, bemoaning the children\u2019s poor knowledge of the Yiddish language. Two months later, in January 1942, Y. Brumberg reinforces this theme, noting that many students are third-generation Americans who must learn Yiddish as a foreign language. The bulletin leans into the latest science on foreign-language instruction, reviewing relevant professional material in English.<\/p>\n

By the start of the new school year in September 1942, Mark writes on \u201cThe War and Our School Program,\u201d setting a course he will follow throughout the Holocaust when he observes, \u201cWe must acquaint children with the tragic situation.\u201d\u00b3 He imparts biblical heft to the theme a month later with an essay called \u201cAnd You Shall Tell Your Child\u2026.\u201d In February 1943, Yudl Mark offers a meditation on real-time Holocaust pedagogy, musing that teachers ought to embed the necessary facts within oral storytelling, scaled to the sensitivities and capacities of their pupils.\u00a0As suitable subjects, he offers an escalating scale of horrors from \u201cburning Jewish books\u201d to \u201cJewish soap.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>The opening of Mark\u2019s essay \u201cAnd You Shall Tell Your Child\u2026”\u00a0Pedagogisher bule\u1e6den, December 1942<\/em>.
\nCollection of YIVO Library.<\/p>\n

Not all was bleak. A special issue in November 1949 pondered the application of John Dewey\u2019s progressive educational theories in the Yiddish schools. Despite the Sholem Aleichem network\u2019s apolitical genesis, the Pedagogisher buletin<\/em> celebrated the formation of the Jewish State, even as they grappled with the challenges it posed: the January 1950 issue took for granted that there would be \u201cHebrew in Our Schools\u201d but weighed the question of whether the pronunciation would be Ashkenazi (closer to Yiddish) or Sephardi (in keeping with Modern Hebrew), while the March 1950 special issue considered \u201cThe Place of Israel in Our School Curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>
\nJanuary 1950, p. 5. \u201cHebrew In Our Schools\u2014With Ashkenazic or Sephardic Pronunciation.\u201d Explaining that Modern Hebrew pronunciation has elided the earlier distinction between long and short vowels, the diagram illustrates the author\u2019s claim that the Hebrew vocalic system originally reflected the visible position of the lips when forming each vowel sound.\u00a0Pedagogisher bule\u1e6den, January 1950<\/em>. Collection of YIVO Library.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9In her study of the New York-based Yiddish children\u2019s periodicals, Naomi Prawer Kadar observes that the rise of the Nazis reversed a trend toward universalism and de-emphasizing particularist Jewish content, whether it took the form of Zionism or Jewish religion. See her study Raising Secular Jews: Yiddish Schools and Their\u00a0Periodicals for American Children, 1917-1950<\/em>. Waltham, MA: Brandeis UP, 2017.
\n\u00b2For more on Mark\u2019s educational activities, see Burko, Alec Eliezer. \u201cSaving Yiddish: Yiddish Studies and the Language Sciences in America, 1940-1970.\u201d PhD diss. Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2019.
\n\u00b3Pedagogisher bulletin<\/em> 9 (Sept. 1942), p. 3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Miriam Udel, Rifkind Fellow 2024-2025 & Member of the CJH Academic Advisory Council What Shall We Tell the Children? As I demonstrate in my critical study Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children\u2019s Literature, the Yiddish children\u2019s literary canon that burgeoned on the secularist left during the first half of the twentieth century forms a rich archive for revisiting the anxieties and ideas that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[764,395,1350,829,50,841,155,372],"class_list":["post-4984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-childrens-literature","tag-education","tag-workers-circle","tag-workmens-circle","tag-yiddish","tag-yiddish-culture","tag-yivo","tag-yivo-collections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4984"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5000,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984\/revisions\/5000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}