Judaism Before 70 CE

The development of Jewish educational institutions was a slow and long process that occurred between the third century BCE and the first century CE in Eretz Israel when the majority of the Jewish population was rural and illiterate.²⁹

In early times (about 515–200 BCE), academies for higher learning were established in Jerusalem to prepare the priests for the Temple, but their access was restricted to a very small group of people. Schools for higher education were founded in Babylon, Jerusalem, and later in other towns but there is no direct information on how many students attended them.³⁰

In the first century BCE, the president of the Sanhedrin Simeon ben Shetah promoted the establishment of free secondary schools throughout Palestine, which were supposed to prepare young adults (16 or 17 years old). Later, the high priest Joshua ben Gamla (ca. first century CE) issued a religious ruling that “teachers had to be appointed in each district and every city and that boys of the age of six or seven should be sent.”³¹

During the same period, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus stated that children's education was the principal care among the Jews.³²

Salo Baron attributed the increased emphasis on religious instruction to the competition for the leadership within the Jewish community between the Sadducees who accepted only the Written Torah and adopted the Hellenistic culture, and the Pharisees who aimed to expand the study of both the Written and the Oral Torah among all Jews, and strongly opposed the expansion of the Greek language and culture.³³

To reach their goal, members of the Pharisaic group prompted the major change in educational institutions as described above.³⁴ There is no evidence that the ruling of Joshua ben Gamla was immediately implemented. Catherine Hezser maintains that the vast majority of the Jewish population in Eretz Israel in the first two centuries CE continued to be rural and illiterate.³⁵ However, this ruling became a religious law that any Jewish father was asked to obey.

The Mishna, the Talmudic, and the Early Gaonic Period (70–638 CE)

The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE deeply changed the Jewish religion. The Sadducees, who lead the rebellion against the Romans, disappeared after the destruction of Jerusalem, whereas the Pharisees, who did not actively participate in the revolt, left Jerusalem after its destruction and established the new center of religious life in the academy (yeshiva) and the Sanhedrin at Jabneh. Under their leadership, the core of Judaism no longer consisted of the rituals, sacrifices, and ceremonies that could only be performed by the priests in the Temple, but became centered around the reading and teaching of the Torah.³⁶

Instruction meant religious instruction to prepare the male children to read, once adults, in the synagogue, which became the center of reading and learning the Torah.³⁷

Synagogues had existed in Eretz Israel well before the destruction of the Temple. However, after the destruction of the Temple many more synagogues were built in towns and even villages in Eretz Israel, and especially in Galilee where most Jews moved after the revolts in 70 and 135 CE against the Romans.³⁸

At the same time when many synagogues were built across Palestine, in the yeshiva at Jabneh, which functioned as an academy, a high court, and a parliament, the scholars (Tannaim) discussed religious, social, and economic matters submitted to them, interpreted the Bible and the sacred law, and issued rulings. They also systematically organized the vast body of Jewish Oral Law accumulated through the centuries, until rabbi Judah ha-Nassi completed their work by redacting the Mishna about 200 CE.³⁹

In his times, the word am ha-aretz (literally “people of the land”), which in early times referred to a Jewish individual who disregarded tithing and the norms of ritual purity and sacrifices (am ha-aretz lemitzvot), acquired the new meaning of “one who does not know and does not teach his sons the Torah.”⁴⁰ For the rabbis and the scholars, to be an am ha-aretz letorah meant to be considered an outcast in the Jewish community.

The transformation of Judaism with the core centered around reading and learning the Torah was prompted by the religious leaders in Eretz Israel where half of the world Jewish population lived and the vast majority were farmers, and was accepted and implemented by Babylonian Jews who were also mainly farmers. Given that the main goal was to make every male child able to read the Torah in the synagogue, it is hard to see an economic motive for a religious and educational reform that was promoted within a farming society.

From the third throughout the fifth century the Amoraim (the scholars in the yeshiva after the Tannaim) debated, discussed, and clarified the rulings in the Mishna. Their opinions were collected in the Talmud of the Land of Israel, redacted about 400 CE, which is mainly devoted to agriculture; a farming society was the target audience for whom the rabbis elaborated their rulings.

The implementation of the educational reform received a major push at this time. As Baron points out, “in the Talmudic period Jewish learning penetrated still deeper into the masses. This happened at a time when illiteracy was widespread throughout the Mediterranean world and when the Imperial City itself had only begun to establish public schools for the wealthy and the middle class.”⁴¹

Two different and independent sources support this claim. The Talmud of the Land of Israel contains, among others, three relevant rulings: one is about a communal tax to provide for the wages of teachers of the Torah and the Mishna, another is about the requirement that even unmarried people with no children who resided in a town, had to pay for the wages of teachers of the Torah and Mishna, and the third is about the possibility that the community as a whole can fire a teacher if he did not follow the parents' instructions.⁴²

The second and independent source of evidence comes from the archaeological discoveries on synagogues. During the Talmudic period, the reading of the Torah became more spread among Jews through the attendance of the local synagogues. Many synagogues were built in the third–fifth centuries in Judaea, Galilee, and the Golan.⁴³

Most of these locations were small towns or villages of farmers who funded the construction of synagogues. The archaeological findings on synagogues are the key facts supporting our claim because literary sources, such as the Talmud, indicate that synagogues at this time in Eretz Israel were the place of learning for adults and children.

Although Palestine remained important as the center for the yeshiva, Babylon (Iraq) grew in importance as the new center of Jewish religious and economic life. The scholars in the academies in Babylon collected their opinions and comments on the Mishna in the Babylonian Talmud, completed around 500 CE. Unlike the Talmud of the Land of Israel, the Babylonian Talmud has more material dealing with crafts and trade. Also, unlike the Talmud of the Land of Israel, which describes a communal organization of primary education, the Babylonian Talmud puts more emphasis on the parents' responsibility for paying for their children's education. For example, a ruling required a father to pay for his son's education and to teach him, or to have someone teach him, a craft.⁴⁴

The other source of information on the extent of religious instruction and primary education of children comes from the archaeological evidence on synagogues, which again provides information independently of the discussions in the Talmud. Many synagogues were also built in Mesopotamia and in all the lands of the Diaspora.⁴⁵

The growth of the yeshiva in Babylon and the growing number of scholars and students in the academies indirectly show that more students must have gotten some primary education, without which they could not enter the academies. Related to the yeshiva, the institution of the kallah (apparently begun in Babylon in the third century) indicates that education was becoming more widespread among the Jewish rural population in Iraq from the fourth century. The months of kallah were two months a year (March and August, when there were no agricultural activities) when Jews from everywhere visited the academy where a specific section of the Talmud was read and discussed by scholars. An important event of Jewish life was scheduled to occur at a time of the year when (literate) farmers could attend it.⁴⁶

During the kallah in spring, the questions sent from the Jewish communities everywhere were read and discussed by the scholars. The written answers (teshuvot, Responsa) to these questions were then sent back through the Jewish merchants. The rabbinic Responsa already existed in Talmudic times but did not constitute a separate body of literature from the Talmud. It is after the Babylonian Talmud was redacted and after the Amoraim were succeeded by the Geonim (the new heads of the academies) that the rabbinic Responsa became a separate body of literature. ⁴⁷

With regards to Jewish education, the rabbinic Responsa provide more information on the Babylonian academies than the primary schools. Yet, from the Responsa there is evidence that there were teachers who taught small children everywhere, even in villages, in Mesopotamia.⁴⁸

These teachers were among the community officials (together with rabbis, judges, and heads of synagogues) listed at the end of letters of excommunication that the Geonim sent to the many Jewish communities in the world.

The evidence from the early Gaonic Responsa is important because it comes before the Muslim period. By showing that more Jews educated their children in the period before the urbanization occurring in the Muslim Empire, the rabbinic Responsa support our claim that the Jews were investing in their children's religious literacy and education before the transition from agriculture into trade.

The Arab and Muslim Period (638–1170)

In the Arab and Muslim period, the Responsa of the Geonim and the documents of the Cairo Geniza confirm the common pattern among the Jewish communities: basic literacy among male Jews became almost universal in both rural and urban communities.

The rabbinic Responsa mention that there were teachers of small children everywhere.⁴⁹

Sherira Gaon (ca. 967–1006) wrote that “as a rule a Jew knows the Hebrew script.”⁵⁰ This Responsum was given to the question whether a Jewish individual who signed documents as witness understood the content of these documents. Sherira argued that some witnesses did not understand the content of what they were signing but, at the same time, asserted that every Jew knew the Hebrew script, which they learned in the primary schools or in the synagogues. In the synagogues, however, Jewish children did not learn only the Hebrew script, as clearly indicated in the Responsum of Hay Gaon (ca. 1007–1038) “One can teach the young children of the synagogue, while teaching Torah, Arabic script and arithmetic; but without the teaching of Torah, one should not teach these. And one should avoid, as far as possible, teaching the children of gentiles in the synagogues; but if there is a fear it may cause outrage, then it should be permitted, so as to keep the peace.”⁵¹ This Responsum is important for three reasons. First, it confirms that even in the Gaonic and Muslim period, the synagogue continued to be one of the major institutions among Jews for providing primary education to children. Many other Responsa refer to schoolchildren as the “children of the synagogues.” Second, the Responsum indicates that there was demand for education that went beyond just learning the Hebrew script. Third, even non-Jews were interested in sending their children to Jewish schools to learn nonreligious topics.

The thousands of letters, contracts, wills, and written transactions of the Cairo Geniza confirm the picture given in the rabbinic Responsa, but on a larger scale. These documents contain an endless number of references to school fees and teachers' salaries even from small towns and villages, such the little town of Damira, the provincial town of al-Mahalla, or the small village of Qalyub. ⁵²

The school fees were listed in the budgets of wealthy and humble households. For example, a wife from a very poor household asking for divorce claimed that her husband did not behave as a proper father because he did not pay the school fees for their sons. The documents often mention the appointment of teachers for orphan and poor children at community expenses. For in addition to the cost of providing his own children with Jewish education, each household head who had resided for 12 months or longer in a given location, had to pay a communal tax to finance the primary education of orphan or poor children.⁵³ “Teachers of the orphans” are mentioned in records from Old Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Baghdad.⁵⁴

In the world described in the documents of the Cairo Geniza, primary instruction was given in the synagogue, in the house of the teacher, or in the house of the child's parents in the case of wealthy and prominent families. Small communities and villages had to invite a teacher by promising a minimum weekly salary, whereas in towns and cities teachers competed one against the other to attract students. In many elementary schools in Egypt, teachers were foreigner Jews who had migrated there from other countries.⁵⁵

After acquiring basic literacy in primary schools or synagogues, Jewish merchants, physicians, and government officials gained higher skills in both reading and writing to the extent that they could write and discuss sophisticated religious arguments, as shown in the many letters of the Cairo Geniza. Being a scholar and being a merchant were often the same thing among the most educated Jews.⁵⁶

Joseph rosh ha-seder ben Jacob, a Jewish scholar from Iraq, writing in Egypt around 1150, described the level of education among Jews at that time by saying that there were four types of people: uneducated persons, the broad masses, scholars, and doctors.⁵⁷ The masses have learned to read the Pentateuch and Saadya's prayerbook. The scholar has studied other sections of the Bible and the codified law. The doctor was someone familiar with the Mishna, the Talmud, and their commentaries.

Schlomo Goitein summarized the wealth of evidence on the extent of Jewish primary education in the Muslim period saying that the documents of the Cairo Geniza show that in the Jewish communities everywhere, “elementary education was universal to a very remarkable degree, but its standards seem to have been rather poor.”⁵⁸

The standards were poor in the sense that having students acquire the ability to read and basic writing skills were the major goals of primary education. Thus, the letters written or signed by artisans and small shopkeepers were not written in the beautiful cursive script, but in the large script typical of books that were read and taught in primary schools. The art of writing in beautiful cursive script was taught only in advanced schools and was geared toward four types of professions: government officials, physicians, religious scholars, and merchants.

Thus, one thousand years after the religious and educational reform prompted by the Pharisees, most Jews had some basic literacy and a significant number of them, as merchants and scholars, had acquired higher levels of education and learning.

Urbanization, Eighth to Ninth Centuries

Urbanization greatly expanded during the Arab and Muslim period.⁵⁹

New cities were founded in Iraq and Iran. The Umayyad dynasty, which had its capital in Damascus, established as main centers Basra in 636 and Kufa in 638, whereas the Abbasid rulers developed Baghdad in 762 and Samarra in 836.⁶⁰ The estimated population of Baghdad in the eighth and ninth centuries was in the range of 600 thousand to 1 million people, whereas in comparison the largest European cities in the late twelfth century (e.g., Palermo, Paris, Seville, and Venice) had populations in the range of 60,000 to 150,000 people.⁶¹

The growth of new cities, towns, and administrative centers increased the demand for urban and skilled occupations in the lands under Muslim rule. The literate Jewish rural population in Iraq, and later in all the Muslim Empire, moved to urban centers, abandoned agriculture, and became engaged in crafts and trade. In these cities, the Jewish population became very large.⁶²

It has been estimated that about 1 million Jews (80 percent of world Jewry) lived in Mesopotamia in the eighth century.⁶³

Whereas the most educated Jews (the scholars in the academies) had left agriculture and become merchants well before the expanded urbanization in Iran and Iraq, the literate Jewish rural population left agriculture when the growth of cities in the Muslim Empire made available to them the urban and skilled occupations. Although some non-Jews also moved to the new urban centers and entered skilled occupations, most of them remained farmers.⁶⁴

At this time there were many minorities living in Iraq, including the Christians who were almost equal in numbers to the Jews.⁶⁵ The Muslim rulers imposed no economic or occupational restrictions on non-Muslims except for the poll tax that Jews, Christians, and any non-Muslim individual had to pay. Hence, it has to be the distinctive characteristic of the Jewish people—their social structure and literacy—that gave them the comparative advantage to switch to the better paid occupations in the new cities.

Returns to Jewish Education and Jewish Comparative Advantage

Our main thesis is that the educational reform that made the reading of the Torah the core of Judaism endowed the Jews with a comparative advantage in urban, skilled occupations. But how did the investment in religious education, prompted by the transformation of Judaism at the beginning of the first millennium, bring economic returns to the Jewish people centuries later?

Learning as children to read one language (Hebrew) enabled the Jews to read other languages (Aramaic, Greek, and Latin) that were used in the locations where the Jews were living in the first half of the millennium. Later, in the Muslim period, it enabled them to read and to write documents in Hebrew-Arabic, as the documents of the Cairo Geniza amply show, and to write with Hebrew characters the local languages of the locations in western Europe where they migrated (e.g., French, Italian, German, and Latin).⁶⁶

The ability to read religious texts in Hebrew also enabled the Jews to read any other documents written in Hebrew, such as business letters, sale and purchase contracts, partnership deeds, and loans, even if the local languages they spoke were different.⁶⁷

This enabled and enhanced the network externality among Jewish merchants described by Greif.⁶⁸ Only a Jewish merchant who could read a fellow merchant's letter, was able to enforce sanctions on Jewish traders who cheated and acted opportunistically toward other Jewish merchants. Thus, literacy was a pre-condition for the use of community sanctions and the Jewish court system through the written letters among Jewish merchants as illustrated by the documents of the Cairo Geniza, and through the rulings of the scholars in the academies in Iraq dispatched to the Jewish communities everywhere through the mail system of the Jewish merchants, as documented by the huge number of rabbinic Responsa.

In addition to basic literacy, those Jews who learned the Mishna and especially the Talmud, also acquired the rational thinking and the debating ability which is required to understand the Talmudic debates and is also helpful in commercial transactions and moneylending.⁶⁹

Literacy and education were valuable not only for merchants and moneylenders. Unlike today, the production of almost all goods was custom-tailored in the first millennium. Even for artisans and craftsmen such as goldsmiths, jewelers, blacksmiths, producers of weapons, shoemakers, dyers, and tailors, there was an advantage from being able to write contracts, which specified the characteristics of the raw materials and the finished products, in case disputes arose later on with either the customers or the merchants.⁷⁰

Among the documents of the Cairo Geniza, there were letters written or signed by artisans and small shopkeepers.⁷¹

Education and Migrations

Since the early ninth century, as many Jews became craftsmen and merchants, they voluntarily migrated to North Africa, Muslim Spain, Sicily, and towns in western Europe. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, they spread to Champagne and South Germany where fairs and the revival of trade started flourishing.⁷²

They could also be found in many locations in Mesopotamia and Egypt. At that time (eighth–tenth centuries), they generated a network of trade embracing Europe, North Africa, the Middle and Near East. These migrations were motivated by increasing trade opportunities that enabled the Jews to reach standards of living comparable to the upper classes in all countries where they settled.⁷³ Literacy and education made mobility less costly because it enabled educated people to stay in touch with each other, which was very valuable in maintaining family and business connections when living in different and distant countries.⁷⁴

The Jews who were engaged in long-distance trade had the highest human capital.⁷⁵

The documents of the Cairo Geniza and the rabbinic Responsa indicate that they were doing their business by writing letters, they were involved in complicated transactions, moneylending, partnerships and interest-rate calculations that required a sophisticated understanding of trade and partnership rules with both Jews and non-Jews, and trade over many commodities in many languages in different countries. Some of these traders were also the religious leaders of the Jewish communities. Thus, selection certainly occurred with the most educated Jews moving into the high-skill international trade activities.

Both the documents of the Cairo Geniza and Benjamin de Tudela's travel itinerary show that in the Muslim period, the Jews were living in small communities everywhere from China and Aden in the East to Spain and Germany in the West, whereas only a few locations (such as Baghdad) hosted very large Jewish communities. In the tenth–eleventh centuries the Jewish Diaspora was at its height and continued throughout history. One implication of our thesis is that the Diaspora and the minority status of the Jews in many locations were not exogenous facts (as Kuznets postulated) but were the endogenous outcomes of their selection into urban and skilled occupations.