Around 1640, Rabbi Sabatti Scheftel Hurwitz of Frankfurt, on a journey to Poland, went out of his way to make a detour through Amsterdam. Among the Jews there, he tells us, he encountered “many reputable and learned people.” He went to observe the Portuguese community's schools and was impressed enough by what he saw to lament the fact that “nothing of such a sort was found in our land.” Another visitor to Amsterdam, Shabbethai Bass, a Polish scholar, related that

Bass goes on – obviously taking much delight in what he saw – to describe the structure of the school day and the levels of teaching. He remarks on the great number of students in the classrooms (“and may they keep on increasing!”) and notes the progress the pupils made in their studies as they advanced from one grade to the next.

The foundations for the educational system that so impressed Jewish (and Gentile) visitors to Amsterdam's Jewish quarter were established early, in 1616, when Beth Jacob and Neve Shalom instituted the Talmud Torah Society.