Mullah Joshua Amram was a teacher in the city of Herat in northwestern Afghanistan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In comparison with teachers from the Garjī family, he was a progressive educator. Aided by his teaching assistant, the blind musician Mullah Joseph Bakhchī, who played the harmonium, Mullah Amram had his classes memorize the favorite liturgical poems (Heb. piyyuṭim) of Afghan Jewry and used pictures (which he drew himself) to help them understand matters he was teaching. His classes, conducted in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judeo…