Bikurei Chinuch

This interesting early textbook for Jewish youth includes a Hebrew-Dutch vocabulary, as well as letters and instructions on proper behaviour and etiquette. Jacob Belinfante published it in response to King Louis Napoleon’s pronouncements supporting the emacipation of Dutch Jewry. Napoleon’s interest in emancipation was predicated on the assumption that there would be a reform of Jewish education. “But to our regret...no one has realized that the majority of Jewish teachers in this kingdom do not know the language of the land, and also do not know how to teach their students gramatical Hebrew . . . Only one in a thousand children . . . can read when he graduates from school. The rest of the youngsters go to school for eight or nine years and graduate at the age of fourteen to translate even one verse of the Torah, nor unable to communicate properly in the language of the land.” (Preface)