Tarbut

The Tarbut movement was a network of secular, Hebrew-language schools in parts of the former Jewish Pale of Settlement, specifically in Poland, Romania and Lithuania.

Some schools affiliated with the movement continue to operate today and new ones were established in the United States and other destinations of emigrants from central and eastern Europe.

European Jews who appealed to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for aid included poet Chaim Nachman Bialik and Zionist leaders Nahum Sokolow and Vladimir Jabotinsky.

Nonetheless, some Tarbut schools continued to operate during the war years, notably one in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, which served the large population of Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Poland.

The graduating students took high school matriculation exams under the auspices of the Polish government-in-exile, and as a result were able to continue their higher education after the war.