Jewish education during the transition period in Jewish life in the three decades prior to the first world war was going through a period of groping and trial before it found its true expression in the form of the new Improved Heder. The Heder Metukan came into being because Jewish parents, teachers and community leaders were struggling to find a positive form of modern Jewish living, which would satisfy their needs as modern Jews dissatisfied with conditions as they were, but looking towards the future with hope and with courage. The program of the new Heder, which was revolutionary in nature, exerted influence on the youth of the Russian Jewish community, because it addressed itself to the actual needs and problems of the day. It granted the past a place of importance, but concerned itself in larger measure with the present and the future. It withstood the outside pressure of both the assimilationists and the ultra-orthodox, and forged its own experience.