[Avodah] TIDE Education in Lithuania

[Yitzchok Levine]

Not long ago I sent out an email about the establishment of TIDE 
schools in Lithuania during WW I. I learned about this from reading 
the book Ish Yehudi, a biography of Rav Joseph Tzvi Carlebach, 
written by his son Rav Shlomo Carlebach, former mashgiach of Yeshiva 
Rabbi Chaim Berlin. I posted the section of the book that deals with 
this topic at

http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/carlebach/tide_lita.pdf

The December 2008 issue of the Jewish Observer contains a review of 
Ish Yehudi written by Rabbi Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer.  The Editor of 
the JO wrote an "introduction" to this review. In part he wrote

"This essay extracts from the book under review details of the manner 
in which educational methodologies of the great German school of 
Torah im Derech Eretz were being introduced to be employed in the 
Lithuanian Yavneh and the Polish Bais Yaakov school networks to 
combat the problems of the day. This review has been reviewed by 
gedolei Torah and roshei yeshivos,  who confirmed the picture drawn 
by Rabbi Carlebach in his new work, and who encouraged us to put his 
"new" historical insights before our readership."

The article describes how Rav Carlebach set up TIDE schools in 
certain parts of Lithuania.

"The Yavneh system [these were TIDE schools - YL] was the main 
Orthodox school system in the shortlived independent republic of 
Lithuania. In the milieu created by this modern state, the 
old-fashioned cheder became extinct."

The footnote to this sentence says:

Heard from Reb Zalman Alpert, shlita,  in the name of Rabbi Tuvia 
Lasdun.  Reb Zalman also related to me in the name of his own rebbi, 
Rabbi Shimon Romm, that the vibrant young Orthodoxy that flourished 
in independent Lithuania between the wars was known as "Kovno 
Orthodoxy" (A similar Orthodoxy existed in Latvia.) It was anchored 
by the yeshivos of Slabodka, Telshe, Kelm and Ponovezh and the 
gedolei Torah that the yeshivas produced, but in the larger community 
outside the yeshivos it was dominated by ba'alei battim and movements 
such as the Agudah. The rav of Kovno, Rabbi Avrohom Dovber 
Kahana-Shapira was recognized as the leader of this Lithuanian 
Orthodoxy. By contrast, in the part of Lithuania (Minsk, Slutzk, 
Bobruisk and east) that was annexed by the USSR, religion was banned. 
Only Chabad managed to maintain limited, underground Jewish 
education. The part of Lithuania (ViIna, Lomza, Bialystok, and Brisk) 
that was annexed by Poland was also not as affected by the Torah im 
Derech Eretz influence. By the outbreak of the Second World War, with 
the exception of the talmidim of the great yeshivos (and a relatively 
nascent network of schools founded by talmidim of Novaradok), the 
youth of this region had been lost to Orthodoxy. Only the Chassidim 
of the region - Chabad, Slonim and Karlin-Stolin - fared somewhat 
better. Indicative of this trend is the fact that in 1936, Rabbi 
Elazar Menachem Mon Shach took a position as rosh yeshiva in the 
Karliner yeshiva in Luninets.

The article also says:

"With the approval of gedolei Torah, Rabbi Carlebach founded a 
Gymnasium (the European term for an academic high school), based on 
the German Torah im Derech Eretz model. Rabbi Carlebach brought in 
highly qualified teachers from Germany to assist in the venture. 
Among them was Dr. Leo Deutschlander, who later became famous for his 
enormous contribution to the Bais Yaakov school system. The school 
became known popularly as the Carlebach Gymnasium. By its third year 
of existence, it enrolled one thousand boys and girls in separate 
schools. Its remarkable accomplishments made a deep impression on the 
gedolim in Lithuania, particularly on the Rosh Hayeshiva of the great 
yeshiva of Telshe, Rabbi Yosef Leib Bloch. Rabbi Bloch invited Dr. 
Deutschlander, in collaboration with Rabbi Carlebach, to found the 
network of similar schools that came to be known as 'Yavneh.'

"The network included separate teachers' seminaries for men and women 
in Kovno, Gymnasiums in Kovno, Telshe, and Ponovezh, and 
approximately one hundred elementary schools - all of which brought 
the chinuch methodology of 'Western Europe to Eastern Europe. Yavneh 
was intertwined with Zeirei Agudas Yisroel, and it was mostly the 
idealistic Agudist young men and women who served as the leaders and 
teachers of the Yavneh system.

"Leafing through the extraordinarily impressive pages of Hane'eman 
also impresses upon one the extent to which the Lithuanian yeshiva 
world embraced elements of the German Jewish derech."

All of this flies in the face of what I have been told, namely, that 
Lithuanian gedolim were opposed to the study of virtually all secular 
subjects, period. It is indeed true that in almost all of the yeshiva 
gedolos there were no formal secular subjects taught. However, during 
this period both Lithuanian boys and girls attended elementary and 
high schools that included both limudei kodesh and limudei chol, just 
as most of our youth do today!


Yitzchok Levine 
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