Shalom Jonah Czarno — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Doctor Shalom Jonah Czarno (1878-1932) was a Hebrew teacher and educator in Russia and Lithuania; he was one of the trailblazers of Hebrew education in Russia and Poland. He was principal of schools and teachers' seminars as well as the author of the first Hebrew textbooks.

Czarno was born in Vilna, the center of Jewish culture for north-west Russia (Lithuania). He received his teaching diploma in 1897 and then founded government schools for Jewish children in the region of Vitebsk. He subsequently went to the University of Berlin where he received a doctorate. He returned to Russia and settled in Grodno where he, together with his friend Aharon Kahanstam who headed the Hebrew "Pedagogical Courses", laid the foundations for the pedagogical courses in Hebrew. He taught Bible, Hebrew, Literature and Natural Sciences in Grodno until 1914.

He was conscripted to the army during World War One but was released after a short time and took upon himself the management of the Grodno courses, which had, by this time, moved to Krakow. There he was principal of the first Tarbut high school. When the Hebrew educational institutes were liquidated in Ukraine in 1921, he returned to Lithuania, headed the Hebrew Reali high school in Kovno and founded and directed the Tarbut teachers' seminar. He moved from Kovno to Bialystok and, six months later, settled back in Vilna where he was one of the first members of Tarbut, the Hebrew educational movement.

He wrote books about teaching methods of history, geography etc. His articles appeared in journals of education, Hebrew newspapers and magazine supplements in Eastern Europe; he edited the anthology Bein Hazmanim (1918-19), a pedagogical booklet as well as a pedagogical anthology.

After his death a teachers' seminar, a kindergarten teachers' seminar and a high school in Vilna were named after him. There is also a street in Tel Aviv bearing his name.

Translated from: Wikipedia