Tag #108804 - Interview #78427 (Janina Wiener)

My father, who was a Zionist, had decided his daughter should know Hebrew, so twice a week, I think, I went to the Tarbut for two hours to learn Hebrew. The Tarbut was located at Za Zbrojownia Street. It’s easy to calculate – I was six when I went to elementary school, and I went there for six years, i.e. until the age of twelve. During that time, I learned Hebrew, only I don’t remember whether it was for three years or four. Anyway, I studied it for quite a long time. It was a co-ed class. Boys and girls. The teachers were all men, and the classes came in pairs. The first class was based on the Torah, and I remember that towards the end of my education at the Tarbut, we were reading not only the main text but also one of the commentaries, because under the Hebrew text of the Torah there are Rashi’s commentaries in small print. That was the first class, and the second one was based on some [non-religious] texts.

I attended those lessons all angry, because instead of playing with my girl friends, I had to sit there and study. And, in fact, I was probably the worst student in my class. I remember that when I went to high school and met there one of the girls that had been at the Tarbut with me, she was surprised that I was such a good student, because she remembered me as having trouble in school all the time. I simply didn’t want to be learning Hebrew. I was learning it against myself because my father wanted me to. My father didn’t know Hebrew so he couldn’t examine me. Absolutely. No one in the family could.