Texts and Subject Areas
The standard education texts were the Mishna and later the Talmud and Gemora, all hand-written until invention of printing. However significant, emphasis was placed on developing good memory skills in addition to comprehension by practice of oral repetition.
Basic education today is considered those skills that are necessary to function in society. In Ancient Israel, the child would be taught from the six broad subject areas into which the Mishna is divided, including:
- Zeraim ("Seeds"), dealing with agricultural laws and prayers
- Moed ("Festival"), pertaining to the laws of the Shabbat and the Festivals
- Nashim ("Women"), concerning marriage and divorce
- Nezikin ("Damages"), dealing with civil and criminal law
- Kodashim ("Holy things"), regarding sacrificial rites, the Temple, and the dietary laws
- Tohorot ("Purities"), pertaining to the laws of purity and impurity, including the impurity of the dead, the laws of ritual purity for the priests (Kohanim), the laws of "family purity" (the menstrual laws)
To understand the subject areas the student was required to learn counting, basic chemistry, physics and astronomy, writing, geography, agriculture and animal biology, history, accounting and economy, social and cultural role differences, basic medicine and pharmacology, and many others. This is broadly known as Kol Torah, or Cul'Tura in the Jewish communities of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Empire.
Read more about this topic: History Of Education In Ancient Israel And Judah
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