Page:Short Treatise on God, Man and His Wellbeing.djvu/30

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The general features of Spinoza's early education it is not difficult to delineate. The Amsterdam Jewish community had their own boys school, which was founded about 1638, and which all Jewish boys would attend as a matter of course. The general curriculum of this school is known from contemporary accounts. We also know the names and characters of some of its most important teachers in the time of Spinoza. There were seven classes in the school. In the lowest class little boys were taught to read their prayers in Hebrew. In the second class they learned to read and chant the Pentateuch in Hebrew. In the next class they were taught to translate parts of the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Spanish (which for a long time continued to be the mother-tongue of many Amsterdam Jews, notwithstanding the worse than step motherly treatment which had been meted out to them and their fathers in Spain). Here also they commenced to study Rashi's Hebrew Commentary on the Pentateuch—a commentary written in the eleventh century, but sober far beyond its age. The boys in the fourth class studied the Prophets and the Hagiographa. In the remaining higher classes they studied Hebrew Grammar, portions of the Talmud and of the later Hebrew Codes, the works of Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, and others, according to the discretion of the Rabbi who instructed and advised them. The school hours were from 8 till 11 A.M. and from 2 till 5 P.M. (or earlier during the winter months). We are explicitly informed that during the hours that the boys were at home they would receive private tuition in secular subjects, even in verse-making. The school also possessed a good lending library.

Of the teachers under whose influence Spinoza must have come during his school-days, the most important