Harmony School, 1990, Page 3

Description:	IHARMONY SCHOOL HISTORYas recalled by Steve BonchekWhen I was probably about fourteen or fifteen years old an uncle that Ireally respected showed me a book; it was the history of my family. It wasactually written in Yiddish. (Yiddish is a language which is a mixture ofHebrew and German. I cant read it. I know some words in it.) He wasshowing me this book and he only chose to read me one part of the book, Alljust about three paragraphs, but the paragraphs were all about my great great JLgrandfather and great grandfather starting schools in Poland. And the partsthat stuck in my mind were, number one, that they started schools, andnumber two, that they were accessible to poor people regardless of theirability to pay. Somehow that literally stuck in my mind from the time that Iwas fourteen or fifteen. And since then the book has actually beentranslated to English and Ive been able to read the parts that he chose to U*read to me. It was interesting because he could have read other parts of thebook to me that would have left me with a totally different impression. For ^0whatever reason this uncle of mine chose to read me these particular partsabout schools and really put this idea into my mind.From reading the English translation I found out my great greatgrandfather actually ran a pretty traditional school from the 1850s to 1880sin Poland. The school was for wealthy children who wanted to move on tothe higher level of Jewish education which were and still are calledYeshivas. But his son, my great grandfather, wanted to have a school thatwould have a broader curriculum than just Jewish study. He wanted toteach, for instance, the languages of Polish and Russian, I guess this wasfairly radical in those days, to Jewish kids. And he really met with a lot ofresistance from his family and the class of people (rabbis and teachers) hisfamily associated with, and he basically rebelled. What he did, according tothis book, was start hanging out, I think it said fraternizing, with thepoorest and most deprived. He ended up starting a school with the conceptof serving the people least fortunate in society and trying to help thembecome prestigious and learned in the eyes of the community. He instituteda policy of access to study the Torah (which is the Jewish laws, the five booksof Moses). He instituted a policy that anybody could study it regardless ofability to pay which was a pretty unusual thing. Wealthy people were theones that had access to this kind of study for many, many, many centuries inEastern Europe.3
Source:	http://cdm17129.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/hs-harmony/id/408
Collection:	Harmony School

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