Good little boys played quietly in their places, but most of the boys ran out of the house and jumped and yelled and quarrelled.
There was nothing in what the boys did in heder that I could not have done--if I had not been a girl.

For a girl it was enough if she could read her prayers in Hebrew, and follow the meaning by the Yiddish translation at the bottom of the page.

It did not take long to learn this much,--a couple of terms with a rebbetzin (female teacher),--and after that she was done with books.
A girl's real schoolroom was her mother's kitchen.

There she learned to bake and cook and manage, to knit, sew, and embroider; also to spin and weave, in country places.

And while her hands were busy, her mother instructed her in the laws regulating a pious Jewish household and in the conduct proper for a Jewish wife; for, of course, every girl hoped to be a wife.