DEREKH YELADIM BY SARAH FEYGE FONER: A DIDACTIC HEBREW HISTORICAL STORY

While most of the literature of the Haskalah was written for adults, a few attempts were made to provide material for young people who had mastered modern Hebrew. Stories for children were quite rare. One of the first historical romances in Hebrew for children was written by one of the first women to be considered a Haskalah writer.1 Sarah Feyge Menkin was born around 1855 in Zagar, Lithuania, into a family related to the Gaon of Vilna.2 She received an intensive Jewish education, including the study of the Talmud. The family moved to Dvinsk, Latvia, when she was a child, and later to Riga, Latvia. There she studied German and Rus sian, and read the Hebrew writings of the Haskalah. It was in Riga that Sarah wrote her first novel, Ahavat Yesharim ('The Love of the Righteous). It was very much influenced by other novels of the Haskalah and was reviewed very unfavorably by David Frishman. Like many Jewish writers of her time, Sarah sent a copy of her book to Sir Moses Montefiore, then approaching his 100th birthday. He responded very graciously, in a letter set in Hebrew type, signed very shakily in Hebrew block letters and in English script, and accompanied by a gift of four pounds sterling. Sarah Menkin was married to Hebrew writer Meir Foner between 1881 and 1886, for the name on the title page of her second book is Sarah Feyge Foner mibet Menkin. Derekh Yeladim o Sippur Mirushalayim (The Way of Children or a story from Jerusalem) is only 15 Vi pages long.4 Two pages are taken up by a Foreword, one page is a facsimile of the letter from Sir Moses Montefiore, another has a dedication of the book to Sir Moses, so that, along with some blank end papers, the story itself takes up only seven and a half pages. Foner's didactic motive in dedicating her story to the memory of Sir Moses is expressed in her Foreword: