The building at 42 Pushkinska Street, which now houses the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Ivan Franko Zhytomyr State University, has a long and interesting history. Its construction is connected with the implementation of one of the imperial educational projects – the Jewish Teachers’ Institute

What allows a non-metropolitan city to overcome the signs of provincialism? First of all, the cultural and intellectual environment that is formed in it under certain conditions and circumstances. The main among such conditions is the presence of a powerful educational center, the representatives of which determine the «face» of the city.

Zhytomyr, which is geographically connected to the Right Bank of Ukraine, became part of the Russian Empire as a result of the second partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1793. The main «legacy» of the liquidated state, which received the empire, was a significant number of Polish and Jewish populations. A significant number of settlements, established by Catherine II, the boundaries of Jewish settlement, belonged to the category of towns («shtetl» in Yiddish). The traditional life of the Shtetl Jewish communities had its own characteristics and differed from the lives of the nearest neighbors. It was about their own laws and rules, rituals and educational practices, which were based on the traditions associated with Judaism.

In this religious system, a special place belonged to Hebrew, which for a long time was considered exclusively the language of book wisdom and did not belong to the colloquial ones, having rather the status of a language for the insiders. Yiddish remained the language of daily, everyday communication between the inhabitants of the shtetls. The statutory norm of 1804 allowed the use of the Hebrew language only in religious ceremonies and in everyday life, and all office work, trade agreements and other legal actions were to be carried out exclusively in Russian.
As part of the imperial strategies of acculturation and assimilation, the idea of establishing control over Jewish traditional education emerged at that time. The first «approach» by the authorities to this area was made in the second half of the forties of the XIX century. At this time, a decision was made to establish educational institutions within the walls of which Jewish youth were to be trained to work in Jewish schools with Russian as the language of instruction. Such Jewish teacher training institutes with Russian as the language of instruction were opened only in two cities of the so-called Western and South-Western regions of the empire – Zhytomyr and Vilno (author’s note – the modern capital of Lithuania, the city of Vilnius).

The institutions were opened on the basis of rabbinical schools, which functioned here from 1847 to 1873, when their state reform took place. Graduates of the newly established institutes had the right to teach exclusively in Jewish educational institutions. In terms of their level of influence and concentration of intellectual forces, teacher training institutes were not inferior to universities.
The Zhytomyr Jewish Teachers’ Institute began its work in 1873, and for 12 years it became a center of attraction not only for prominent representatives of Jewish culture and education. The teachers of this school are associated with the development of literature, as well as the acquisition of Hebrew status as a language of daily communication. The powerful Enlightenment Enlightenment movement, whose main goal was enlightenment, and its representatives, the Maskilim, made every effort to overcome isolation and the penetration of modernizing elements into Jewish society. This also applied to the adaptation of Hebrew to daily conversational practices.

One of the creators of the new language norms is considered to be Mendele Moher Sforima (author’s real name is Sholem-Jankew Broyde), who taught at the Zhytomyr Rabbinical School from 1869 and at the Teachers’ Institute from 1873 to 1881. In 1869 he lived in Berdychiv, but after the publication of the drama «Di Taxe», in which he criticized the Berdychiv authorities, the author was forced to move to Zhytomyr. The Zhytomyr period of his work also includes the appearance of the novel Fishke der Krumer, which was eventually transformed into a novel and a play that enjoyed popularity in Jewish theaters.

From 1850 to 1861, Jakob Eichenbaum served as an inspector and teacher at the rabbinical school in Zhytomyr. His poem entitled “Four Seasons” was one of the first collections of poetry «Gaskali». The formation of the literary standard of the Hebrew language was also associated with the special attention of its creators to the mathematical sciences and classes, which stimulated intellectual development. Jacob Eichenbaum’s work, The Battle (Gakrab), published in 1840 in London, became very popular. In the book, the author in poetic form outlined the rules of chess in the form of battles between two armies. The work was translated into Russian and republished several times because it was extremely popular. However, the most significant is that the poem became an important stage in the development of poetry in Hebrew.
After the death of Jakob Eichenbaum in 1862, the famous mathematician and teacher Haim-Zelik Slonimsky was appointed the new inspector of the Zhytomyr Rabbinical School. On the eve of his appointment, in 1861, he started publishing a newspaper in Warsaw called Ha-Tsfira («Time») in Hebrew. Since its inception, the main task has been to popularize natural and mathematical knowledge, which has remained an integral part of the publication, which was published with small breaks for over 40 years. Slonimsky was also the author of many other publications that promoted scientific knowledge. In addition to the textbook on algebra «Mosday Hochma» («Fundamentals of Wisdom»), Slonimsky once published two books on astronomy – «Kokhva de Shavit» («Comet») and «Toldot ha-shamaim» («History of Heaven»). Slonimsky also authored some devices: in 1840 he invented a calculator, about which the newspaper Litovsky Visnyk wrote: «In terms of its volume, it deserves convenience and cheapness to be put into general use». Later, Slonimsky received a patent for his invention, continuing, although not very actively, to engage in invention. Today, many years after the scientist’s death, his scientific achievements are used in various scientific fields, including programming.

Returning to the Zhytomyr Jewish Institute, it should be noted that according to the government’s decision, only Christians could hold the positions of director and teachers of the institute. Exceptions concerned the position of inspector and teacher of Jewish subjects and mathematics. This requirement became a positive factor in the development of Zhytomyr, as specialists came here from different regions of the empire, and it contributed to the formation of a powerful intellectual and multicultural center in the city for a long time.
What were the economic and cultural consequences of the functioning of the Jewish Teachers’ Institute? About this a little later…