Lionel Blaskey memory of Cheder

In 1906 I was five and Ray was seven and that’s when we started Cheder, in Paradise Square, with Mr. Finklestone as headmaster and Mr. Valenchik and Mr. Lesser. We had two groups of classes each night, one 5.30 – 7.00, and one 7.00 – 8.30 with the teachers alternating the classes. Then we had a service Saturday morning at the Cheder, classes Saturday afternoon and classes again on Sunday, 10.00 – 12.00.

In the evenings when we’d finish at half past eight there was many a time we’d have to run through gangs of boys – goyim – who were there waiting for us, and we used to have brick fights, but we used to throw back as well, don’t worry.

And then of course there were all the Jewish shops in that area. Many times I used to pick up the shopping on the way home – black bread, herrings, that sort of thing in a net bag.

There was no special preparation for Barmitzvah. When you went to Cheder every day by the time it came to your Barmitzvah ah, you knew everything. You didn’t have to learn any special Maftir — practically all the class could whip off any Maftir. No, we didn’t have an examination for Barmitzvah, but of course we had examinations every year to see whether or not you were promoted into the next class, and if you weren’t good enough you stayed down.

The teachers were terribly strict. They used to stop us talking. They all had canes and all the time they were walking about, backwards and forwards with their canes, prodding anyone who wasn’t paying attention. I remember one boy stood up and had a fight with one of the teachers in class, a real fisticuffs do.

Members of the Education Board used to drop in at the Classes on a Sunday morning for ten minutes or so, to see how we were getting on. Levi Abrahams was the secretary, and we had to pay him when we arrived on a Sunday morning. He sat there at a desk and we’d hand over the money. A shilling a week it was then, though some paid sixpence.

Yomtov was the outstanding time. You know how time goes very slowly when you’re a child, and I used to think, “Pesach will never come”. Pesach was the big time for new clothes. We all got new suits from Fosters on West Bar. There were four prices of suits, 5/6, 6/6, 7/6 and 8/6, and if you got a suit at 8/6, you were really millionaire class.

Everything was put on one side for the Yomtavim in those days. The first year I fasted, I was ten years old, and I was absolutely all in. When it was over, they took me across to one of these workmen’s cafes and had a cup of tea and a bun to bring me round. I probably got a shilling for fasting—something like that.

Simchat Torah we had a performance. We all had a candle and a little house made of cardboard, with windows made of coloured tissue paper, on a stick. I remember poking our fingers through the windows when it was over. And we walked round with these in a procession, like they do now with the flags.

The whole community was in that little area; Scotland St., Infirmary Rd., Silver St. — like a little ghetto. There was no life outside it. Most people hadn’t been in England more than ten years, and some were just arriving. As new children came to Cheder they couldn’t speak English. My grandmother of course didn’t speak English, and my parents, although they both spoke English, at home spoke Yiddish to one another. It was a fantastic life in those days.

(Source: ‘The Best Days of Our Lives’, Interviews by Judy Simons, in Sheffield Jewish Journal, No. 105, April 1972, p. 12)