Here are some questions little Jewish boys and girls had, asked and answered in The Jewish Child, 1912-13.
Esther Apfelbaum, Hyman Norman, Dora Moskowitz, and Jacob Seworsky wanted to know "How did the Jews get the Yiddish language?"
Florence Cohen, Henrietta Hotz, Jacob Becker, and Hyman Rosen, proto-SAR students (cc @Doc_RPS) wished to know "Why do Jews have to wear a hat in the synagogue? and why are we not allowed to wear our hats in public school?"
Frieda Willensky and Reuben Caplan wanted to know "Why do we read Hebrew backwards?"
Lillian Steigbigel asked "Did the people in the time of Moses of Joshua have any second names, if so what was the second name of Moses?"
Bertha Benjame asks "Please tell me why our mothers do not wash dishes with soap?"
Ruth Berman asks a really smart question several weeks later: "If soap is "trepha", why do the Jewish people wash dish towels with soap?"
Annie Weissbrook asks "Why do our mothers put their hands on their faces while lighting the "Sbbath Lights?""
Sarah Spielman wants to know "Will you tell me whether Ruth was at first a Christian girl and how she became a Jewess?"
Mary Starr asks "Why do so many Jewish women wear wigs or "sheitels"?"
Here are a few other questions, one of which, by Harry D. Wise, once again wonders "Why if the Hebrew language written from right to left, unlike all others?"
And here is a 'riddle'.
Who is he?
He is She.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
"This Mordechai said 'the [conditional] gett that Ansel Cohen had written yesterday [to divorce his wife in case he was imprisoned for gambling debts and could not return to England] is shit,' in the English language...'
London, 1705
Not surprisingly, the first bit of Hebrew-sefer printed matter in England was about a controversy, namely a gett, a bill of divorce, written by the 'chief rabbi 'of the Ashkenazim, Uri Phoebus Hamburger, known in English as Aaron Hart.
His enemies argued in a book printed in Amsterdam that, well, the gett was shit.