ABSTRACT
At the bottom of the social hierarchy was the common schoolteacher, employed full-time, dependent on fees and/or public funds, in communities often unable (or unwilling) to pay a living wage. The low status and pay of the melamed pointed to a persistent historic paradox in Jewish life: children’s teachers of Judaism – a religion of social justice, above all in dealings with the poor – were acknowledged as a national treasure but individually were often treated unjustly, and with contempt. The teacher was a victim of the belief, evidently going back to the biblical period, that teaching Torah is a holy task which should done gratis. The rabbis reluctantly authorized payment, indirectly, in various ways and using legal fictions to avoid infringing the Law, but the basic view was that teachers should not be paid, that they were engaged in an activity as holy as prayer. This meant that they were often despised for being paid, however little. As a result, schoolteaching often marked the ultimate humiliation of men who failed in every other endeavor. The fate of teachers had unfortunate consequences in the later history of Jewish education. Teaching in Jewish schools tended to be a low status profession, and badly paid. The frequent contempt in post-1789 Jewish literature toward traditional Jewish education originated in centuries of neglect and malpractice, in which the treatment of teachers was a running sore. In the wealthier communities that valued success they were looked down upon for their poverty, which seemed and often was a mark of their failure. The image of the schoolteacher degenerated, to the point where it was possible to ask if he was doing more harm than good.
