School (Cheder)

The congregation maintained a Jewish school (Israelitische Elementar- und Religionsschule), but in 1890 it moved to the Gemeindehaus in Nürnberger Straße 3.1925 the rabbi and both teachers taught 33 children at the Jewish Community School; religious instruction at the higher public schools was given by Rabbi Dr. Gradenwitz. Since 1937, a two-class Jewish school had also been established there.Already Moritz Daniel Oppenheim learned Hebrew and Jewish prayers in the cheder.

Cheder (חֶדֶר) is the Hebrew word for "room" and the designation for the traditional, religiously oriented schools. Classes were held in the home of the teacher, who was financed by the Jewish community or a group of parents. The cheder was usually connected to the synagogue. This form of education was usually available only to boys, girls usually learned alongside with their mothers. Classes were held in small groups with boys of different ages. Boys entered the cheder at about three years of age. They first learned the Hebrew alphabet and the Hebrew language (colloquial language of European Jewry from the Middle Ages until the Enlightenment was Yiddish). Reading aloud to each other and memorizing were the predominant forms of learning. At the age of 13 to 14, education in the cheder was completed with the bar mitzvah 

For further study to become rabbi or sofer there were yeshivot, ie. Talmudic colleges, for example in Worms, Fürth or in Prague, which enjoyed a high reputation for Jewish studies. After many Jews fled to Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages from Jewish pogroms associated with the Crusades the intellectual center of European Jewry was located in this region for many centuries.

In the Enlightenment, the cheders were criticized: lack of qualifications of the teachers who taught alongside and the isolation from the educational system of the Christian environment were criticized.