The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965

The conventional history of Jewish education in the United States focuses on the contributions of Samson Benderly and his male disciples. This volume tells a different story—the story of the women who either influenced or were influenced by Benderly or his closest friend, Mordecai Kaplan. Through ten portraits, the contributors illuminate the impact of these unheralded women who introduced American Jews to Hebraism and Zionism and laid the foundation for contemporary Jewish experiential education. Taken together, these ten portraits illuminate the important and hitherto unexamined contribution of women to the development of American Jewish education.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9781584659099

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Seminary.

Introduction

CAROL K. INGALL

The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910–1965, introduces the unheralded educators who planted the seeds of social reform and progressivism in the soil and soul of American Jewish education. It highlights eleven eminent women who either informed the educational philosophies of the twentieth century’s most influential Jewish pedagogues, Samson Benderly (1876–1944) and Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983), or put them into practice. The women profiled are Ethel Feineman and Grace Weiner, Jessie Sampter, Rebecca Aaronson Brickner, Libbie L. Braverman, Mamie Gamoran, Sadie Rose Weilerstein, Anna G. Sherman, Temima Gezari, Tzipora Jochsberger, and Sylvia C. Ettenberg. They not only recast Jewish education in the progressive, experiential model of John Dewey (1859–1952) and his followers but also implemented a pedagogy based on the primacy of Hebrew language and culture.¹

Like much feminist scholarship, this book is intended, in part, to fill in the gaps in a history written by men about the achievements of men (the chronicle of captains and kings) and recover . . . past history and forgotten heroines (hooks, 2000, xi). Scholars of Jewish education are familiar with the contributions of the Benderly boys, as Benderly’s male disciples came to be known, but much less is known about the women who were disciples of Benderly and Kaplan. By illuminating the contributions of these women, this book offers a fuller analysis of American Jewish education. One simply cannot understand the development of the field without a close look at the aspirations, careers, and accomplishments of the women who taught in Jewish schools, wrote books that lined the shelves of Jewish classrooms and homes, created learning experiences for other Jewish women, and experimented with new forms of informal Jewish education in youth groups and camps. To paraphrase Larry Cuban (1992), the eminent historian of American education, if the Jewish community had an itch, it was these women who did the scratching (216).

This volume documents the role these women played in implementing the Jewish communal agendas of instruction and enculturation from 1920 to 1965. As Kaufman (2006) has noted, In the new world, the feminization of Jewish education would go hand in hand with the Americanization of the Jew (897). Influenced by the tenets of progressivism and a love of Hebrew and Zionism, these women believed that the United States afforded an ideal environment for Jewish life to flourish. Jewish education could produce an American equivalent of the fabled golden age of Iberian Jewry, one in which Jews would be full participants in American society while still firmly rooted to Jewish culture, customs, and religious practice. The American Jewish synthesis they forged was built on a love of the Hebrew language and literature, and Zionism. To fully appreciate their efforts, it is important to understand the efforts of the generation that preceded them.

In his history of Hebraism in America, Mintz (1993) discussed the efforts of a cultural elite to revive Hebrew in the period just before World War I with the founding of the journal Hatoren (The Mast) in 1913 and the Histadrut Ivrit (Hebrew Union) in 1916. While Hatoren promoted Hebrew literature, the Histadrut tried to foster Hebrew culture and Hebrew nationalism (i.e., Zionism) through lectures, meetings, and eventually, a newspaper. Mintz observes, It is undeniable that if Hebraism has made any impact on the American Jewish scene it is essentially through its influence on education. The story of how a small band of committed Hebraists ‘kidnapped’ the Talmud Torah [communally funded supplementary schools] movement and retained control of it for several decades needs to be told (64).

The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education tells this story. These women and others like them, teachers and authors, were the kidnappers. It was they who kept Hebrew and Hebrew nationalism alive through education, not only in the Talmud Torah and in the first decades of the suburban synagogue schools, but also in children’s literature, camps and youth groups, adult Jewish education for women, and cultural arts programs for all ages.

Contextualizing the Endeavor: American Jewish Education before the Women Who Reconstructed It

In assessing the contributions of Maimonides to the theory and practice of medicine of his time, Sherwin Nuland (2005) used a yardstick that is applicable to other professions as well. What was the state of the profession at the time and how was it affected by the contributions of the person or persons under study? Did the professional add to theory and practice? Did he or she leave a legacy that newcomers to the profession could look to as a model of theory and practice? (154–55).

The history of Jews in the United States is the story of a love affair. The women whose portraits appear in this volume shared this romance and the concomitant belief that America was good for the Jews. From the earliest beginnings of Jewish settlement (1654), America offered the promise of religious freedom and full cultural integration. Each subsequent century brought to American shores Jewish immigrants who were responding to economic insecurity and religious persecution. Although some rabbis may have railed against emigrating to the treife medina (the unkosher nation) or ama reika (the empty nation), the process of Jewish assimilation into modernity and the weakening hold of traditional religion had begun long before the immigrants reached the shores of the goldene medina (the nation of gold) (Sarna, 2004, 154ff).

Making a home in America meant being enculturated into American society: learning English, accepting civic obligations, and understanding American mores and values. It also meant making a Jewish home by learning Hebrew and passing on Jewish folkways, religious practices, and values. These immigrants had to become Americans while ensuring that they and their descendants would remain Jews. Fitting into American society demanded new institutions and new educational models; the communal solutions to these challenges were profoundly influenced by the educational philosophy and institutions of their American neighbors.

The Puritans who founded Harvard College in 1636 believed that secular education and religion were inextricable. Both were accessible through the use of God-given rationality; each was an avenue to the pursuit of truth. No educated gentleman, particularly one destined for the ministry, could be considered literate without knowledge of Hebrew and Holy Writ. Eighteenth-century Sephardic Jews shared a similar view of the intertwining of general and religious education. The board of trustees of Shearith Israel (the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation), the first congregation in the United States, referred to education as the first thing which ought to be pursued in life, in order to constitute us rational (Marcus, 1996, 43).

Like their Protestant neighbors, Jews founded schools that included religious and secular instruction, precursors of today’s Jewish day schools. Their goals were character education as well as cultural literacy. When the trustees of Congregation Shearith Israel sought a schoolmaster in the mid-1700s, the job description laid out their priorities. Congregational leaders expected the teacher to serve as a moral exemplar who was single, modest, and sober (Marcus, 1996, 41) and, of course, male. The instructor would be able to teach our children ye Hebrew language; English and Spanish he ought to know, but he will not suit unless he understands Hebrew and English at least (Marcus, 41). In 1762 they hired Mr. Abraham I. Abrahams to teach Hebrew, English, Spanish, writing, and ciphering (Marcus, 42). In 1804 the trustees reaffirmed the rationale for religious education: In order to make your children virtuous, you must rear them in the strict principles of our holy religion and teach them Hebrew the key to understanding prayer (Marcus, 43). These schools were charged with turning out good American citizens and knowledgeable members of the Jewish community; they were open to all Jewish children regardless of their parents’ ability to pay tuition.

One of the leading figures of nineteenth-century American Jewish history was Rebecca Gratz (1781–1869). The daughter of a successful merchant who immigrated to Philadelphia in 1754 from Silesia, Gratz established the first known Jewish Sunday school in the United States in 1838 (Ashton, 1997). In the era of the Second Great Awakening, some Christian women, friends of Gratz, took a leading role in educational and eleemosynary activities. Other Philadelphians responded to the religious revival by targeting Jews for conversion. These efforts prompted Gratz to establish a school, similar to those established by her Protestant friends, but designed to teach Jewish children the tenets of their faith. Open to all Jewish children, her school, unlike the full-time Shearith Israel model, met only on Sundays. Gratz’s institution also differed from the Shearith Israel school by leaving secular studies to private tutors for those who could afford it. Rosa Mordecai, who taught for her great-aunt Rebecca Gratz, recalled that the school was a virtues-driven institution, prizing those qualities that would make children better Americans, not just better Jews. She was extremely particular [about instilling] neatness and cleanliness. A soiled dress, crooked collar, or sticky hands never escaped her penetrating glance and the reproof or remedy was instantaneous (cited in Marcus, 1996, 153). The curriculum emphasized piety. Gratz would begin school with a prayer: Come ye children, hearken unto me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord. She followed with a Bible reading in English, a Hebrew hymn, and passing the collection plate for the poor of Jerusalem. The children had no distinctively Jewish textbooks; instead they used Pike’s Catechism and Scripture Lessons published by the Christian American Sunday School Union. As Mordecai recalled, Many a long summer’s day have I spent, pasting pieces of paper over answers unsuitable for Jewish children, and many were the fruitless efforts of those children to read through, over, or under the hidden lines (Marcus, 154). Knowing little or no Hebrew, Gratz could not teach Jewish texts in their original language. Other than the collection of tzedakah (charity; literally, doing justice) for their coreligionists in Palestine, the curriculum was a replica of that of the Protestant Sunday schools in the city.

As Reform Judaism, an import from German communities, took root in the United States, Gratz’s model for Jewish education was duplicated in places like Charleston, Savannah, and Baltimore. Following in the footsteps of German reformers like Abraham Geiger (1810–74) and Samuel Holdheim (1806–60), American Reform rabbis believed they could create an indigenous American Judaism by dispensing with Jewish differences, excising those nationalistic elements that made Jews unassimilable. By emphasizing the rationality of Jewish religion, conducting prayer and preaching in the vernacular, and adding more decorum and aesthetics to synagogue practices, they imposed a Protestant aesthetic on Jewish worship. Eisen (1983) noted that Judaism became a religion and not a national identity, a set of beliefs destined to converge with those of enlightened gentiles (21). A one-day-a-week school taught by well-meaning women with only a modicum of Hebrew who emphasized ethical, not ethnic, behavior suited Reform rabbis’ purposes very well.

If there were those who suggested that the key to Jewish success in America was the reformation of Judaism, others opted for a more traditionalist approach, calling for the reformation of Jewish education, thereby ensuring Jewish particularity and Jewish survival. One of these spokespersons was Isaac Leeser (1806–68), the most prolific writer of his day on Jewish issues. Born in Westphalia, Leeser proposed an educational alternative to the model instituted by his fellow Philadelphian Rebecca Gratz. He opted for bringing back the day school model of the Sephardic period. In 1835 he proposed establishing a school that would feature Hebrew instruction with both Sephardic and Ashkenazic (German) pronunciation; instruction in Jewish religion using texts he translated from the German; and lessons in English grammar, geography, history, arithmetic, and writing. Leeser also offered his services to such Christians as might be willing to send their children to such an institution (Marcus, 150). He was also willing to add Latin, Greek, German, French, Spanish, Italian, natural history, natural philosophy, drawing, and singing to the curriculum (Marcus, 150).

Suspicious of the newly established common school, which offered free public education with a dollop of Protestant values, Leeser noted: As Jews we are to observe many little ceremonies, [and] are to acquire many details of religious duties, which none other but a Jew can impart (cited in Marcus, 151). He maintained that Jewish religious education had to be more than ethical monotheism and required a special context and a committed teacher to maintain its integrity.

In 1843 Leeser addressed his concern about the Protestant nature of the common school in the pages of the Occident, the newspaper he edited: We are in great error if we suppose that Christian teachers do not endeavor to influence actively the sentiments of Jewish pupils (cited in Graff, 2003, 71). He was wary of Bible reading in the common schools, seeing it as an attempt to proselytize (Handlin, 1982, 8). Leeser looked to a more intensive Jewish education to reinvigorate a pale American Judaism and rejected the efforts of educational reformers to eliminate those differences that separated Jews from their gentile neighbors. He believed that Jewish education must concern itself with the teaching of moral values, not only skills and knowledge, and considered Hebrew language and literature as a cure for Jewish indifference. In place of empty benches in the house of worship, in place of public profanation of all our religion holds sacred: there will be an increase of righteousness and religious knowledge; the synagogues will be crowded with worshippers who delight to call on God in their own—dear—national tongue, to them not a dead language; and the reproach of lukewarmness will not be any more uttered against us (Marcus, 151). As his biographer noted, By offering adequate instruction to American Jews, adults as well as children, [Leeser] hoped to simultaneously Americanize Judaism and ‘Judaize’ American Jews (Sussman, 1995, 81). This would become a leitmotif in the history of American Jewish education for more than a century.

Even the dean of American Reform rabbis, Isaac Mayer Wise, initially took issue with the Jewish Sunday school movement shortly after he arrived from Germany in 1847. He noted that in America religious instruction for children is imparted each Sabbath or Sunday by good-hearted young women. What fruits these few hours can bring forth hardly necessitates further description (cited in Graff, 2008, 27). By 1870 Wise had changed his mind; the overwhelming appeal of the common school put Jewish day schools out of business. It is our settled opinion here that the education of the young is the business of the State, and the religious instruction, to which we add the Hebrew, is the duty of the religious bodies. Neither ought to interfere with the other. The secular branches belong to the public schools, religion in the Sabbath schools, respectively (cited in Graff, 2008, 36). Wise’s underlying assumption was that Jews thrive when church and state are separate, and what was good for the American people, i.e., serious religious instruction, was good for the Jews. More than twenty Jewish day schools had been established in the 1840s and 1850s; by the early 1870s all of them had closed (Graff, 2003, 70).

Wise’s view, not Leeser’s, carried the day. The more than 2 million Jews who came to the United States between 1881 and 1924 were smitten by American schools and the promise of universal free public education unimaginable in the Russian Empire, Romania, and Austria-Hungary. The ubiquitous McGuffey Readers drove the curriculum of the common school. The American Book Company, successors to the series’ first publishers, estimated that more than 1.2 million copies of the readers were sold between 1836 and 1920 (Mosier, 1965, 168). The series taught children not only reading and American history, but also American values. The authors, a motley group of liberal and conservative reformers united by Christian or Unitarian piety, included William Holmes McGuffey and his brother Alexander, abolitionists like Catherine Lyman and Henry Ward Beecher, and temperance advocates like Lucius M. Sargent and Lydia G. Sigourney. They used heroes as representations of rugged individualism, the dignity of labor, the basic virtues of thrift, honesty, and charity (Minnich, 1936, vi). Heroes also served as exemplars of the kind of patriotism the authors were eager to instill in the immigrants streaming to U.S.