Sefer HaTalmid. Shana Rishona Khelek Alef. [= First year, Part One]

In Hebrew. 200 x 143 mm. 124 pages. Printed on high quality paper. Illustrated. Throughout the book are penciled, easily erasable, markings, Some very small tears at blank margins of some pages. Scharfstein was a prolific Hebrew-language educator, writer, and publishing entrepreneur who authored 423 works in 698 publications. He was one of the leading Jewish educators in the U.S. and his Hebrew instructional materials were in very wide use. His c. 100 Hebrew textbooks for children were still deemed classics in Hebrew schools half a century after they were first published. Scharfstein was educated as a child by private tutors. He was born in the Podolia region of the Russian Empire, in present-day Ukraine. During his childhood, he was strongly influenced by the Haskalah movement, and the movement's emphasis on childhood education and the development of a contemporary Hebrew press shaped his life and career. After witnessing the violence of pogroms, followed by the World War I, he immigrated to the United States, where he soon founded a monthly magazine for children, Shaharut (Youth), published by the Bureau of Jewish Education in New York City, Shaharut's original mission was to teach Jewish topics and Hebrew language. After the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the periodical shifted to short stories and articles about Jewish life in Eretz Israel. Scharfstein also joined the Bureau of Jewish Education, founded by noted American Hebraist Samson Benderly. In th early 1920s he founded Shilo Publishing House with the help of his brother, Asher. Controlling his own press and going to market with his own materials freed Scharfstein from the limitations of working within the existing philosophical, pedagogical, and financial power structures of the Hebraist movement. He became, in effect, a teacher of teachers. One of his first books was emblematic of his mission: Sipurei ha-Torah li-yeladim (Torah Stories for Children). Together with his son, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, he authored the first Hebrew textbook for blind English-speaking readers with The Jewish Braille Institute.