Hebrew Children’s Literature & the Jewish Enlightenment | Part 3

Did you know that Jewish children in the 19th century often learned moral lessons through fables? One remarkable example is Mashal u-Melitsa, a collection of Hebrew fables published in 1860 by Moritz Steinschneider.

These stories blended Enlightenment ideals with traditional Jewish teaching. Like their European peers, Jewish children were encouraged to learn honesty, discipline, and civic values — but here, the lessons were conveyed in Hebrew, keeping the language alive while reshaping it into a modern educational tool.

The rise of Hebrew children’s literature reflected a major cultural shift: not only were Jewish writers adapting European genres like fables and moral tales, but they were also creating a Jewish Enlightenment curriculum in both Hebrew and German. This dual approach showed how Jewish education evolved — balancing tradition with modernity.
In the next episode, we’ll explore how Jewish children’s books of the late 19th century — like Eugenie Werthauer’s Freitagabend und andere Erzählungen — began reflecting middle-class family life and the realities of integration into German society.

📖 Mashal u-Melitsa : a collection of fables and parables for the use of Jewish youth in the Eastern countries by Moritz Steinschneider. Fables were popular texts for children's books during the Enlightenment. Berlin : Adolf Fridlender, [1860]. LBI Library, r 1199.

🌍 An illustration from Metsi'at ha-arets ha-hadashah, the Hebrew a of Joachim Campe's The Discovery of America. . Joachim Campe's works were frequently translated for Jewish children because of their usefulness in conveying Englightenment values. Altona, 1807. LBI Library, r 1175.

🔗 Visit our website to read more about how fables and moral lessons shaped Jewish children’s books — https://www.lbi.org/collections/child...

🖼️ Portrait of a young boy on a tricycle, approximately 1900. LBI Photos, F 1966B
🖼️ Portrait of Albert, Philippine and Hanne Stargardt, 1893. By the late 1800, Part of: Anneliese Riess Collection, AR 10019. LBI Photos, F 84494.

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