cheder
Americannoun
noun
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(in Western countries) elementary religious education classes, usually outside normal school hours
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more traditionally, a full-time elementary religious school
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informal a place of corrective instruction; prison
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of cheder
literally: room
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Kecel had no yeshiva, so Menahem gained an elementary knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish law and ritual at a cheder, a Jewish primary school.
From New York Times ● Dec. 27, 2022
One of twelve brothers & sisters, he went to school in the one-room village cheder, where the rabbi's goat stumbled about among the drying wash and tumbling babies.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Of the Talmud he knew very little, having preferred to play with his gentile friends to wasting his hours in the cheder.
From Rabbi and Priest A Story by Goldsmith, Milton
Shall he waste his precious years helping his father teach cheder?
From Rabbi and Priest A Story by Goldsmith, Milton
Why is it that when I come from "cheder," and do not find Busie I cannot eat?
From Jewish Children by Berman, Hannah
There was a theater for performances and a Sabil-Kuttab, which Frankie explained was used both as a communal water source and an elementary school similar to our cheders.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
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I spent seven years at it, not counting the several years of Talmud which I had had at the various cheders What is the Talmud?
From The Rise of David Levinsky by Cahan, Abraham
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.