The History of Our Expanding School Systems DETROIT JEWISH NEWS-9 Friday, September 24, 1954 Present Standards Raised. to Meet Greater - Aced vanced curriculum to graduates of all Yiddish elementary schools. Experience sands of youth in America during the in the High School shows that there are past generation. The oldest such school no basic ideological conflicts among the in this country was opened in New York schools. by the Poale Zion movement in 1910. The socialist-territorialist groups, too, played The Present Outlook an important role in the pioneering pe- The United Hebrew Schools is perhaps riod of the Yiddish secular schools. The the strongest centralized Talmud Torah Workmen's Circle movement after 1918 system in the country -today. began supporting socialist Yiddish It is the educational arm of the Jew- schools. One of the early differences among these schools was the part that ish Welfare Federation. It is now giving Hebrew and Jewish tradition should play supplementary Jewish education to some 2,000 pupils in Jewish neighborhoods. in the education of the young. The schools are located at Linwood and As time went on, the differences which Taylor; the Bnai Moshe Congregation on led to the creation of separate schools Dexter; the Rose Sittig Cohen Building by the Jewish National Workers Alliance, at Lawton and Tyler; the Adas Shalom Workmen's Circle, and Sholem Aleichem Congregation on Curtis near Livernois; grouping began to dwindle. The cultural the Beth Aaron Congregation on Wyom- value of Hebrew was recognized and all ing and Thatcher; on Schaefer and schools, sooner or later, started to share Seven Mile where the new Esther Ber- a positive attitude to the struggles of the man Branch Building is beginning its Yishuv in Palestine. As to the question program this fall; and in the Oak Park- of traditional observances, the schools Huntington Woods neighborhood. Addi- also reached some degree of unity. tional .units are planned for the near future in Oak Park and in the Seven Yiddish schools have existed in troit since 1912 when a group of Poale Mile-Evergreen area where many Jewish Zionists followed New York's example families have recently located. In the and started a week-end school with latter two units and at the Esther Ber- Joseph Haggai as one of its teachers. man Branch, the facilities will be de- This school met in rented. rooms on veloped so as to make maximum provi- High Street but soon moved to the sions for a co-operative program with Hannah Schloss Building where it re- the Jewish Community Center. mained for six years. Afterwards, it had The United Hebrew Schools, in addi- its own building on Hancock Street tion to fulfilling its responsibility of where it met during the week, but fol- providing the basic elementary Jewish lowing a fire in 1921 it ceased opera- education for the community, also oper- tion, The socialist-territorialist group ates a pre-school nursery and offers organized a progressive I. L. Peretz post-graduate courses in its high school School on East Ferry Street in 1917 with and in the Midrasha. The latter, institu- J. Comay as the first teacher. By 1921 tion was organized in 1948 to give Jewish th.e Workmen's Circle organization had high school graduates the opportunity to started its school in the Lyceum on continue their studies and to provide Livingston Street and in the following training for young men and women who year the Peretz School merged with it. wish to prepare for Hebrew school Subsequent locations were on Delmar teaching. In addition to its own pupils, the system has increasingly been aiding and on Holbrook. For a short period in 1926 and 1927 an the students of other week-day and "Umparteieshe" school existed on Kenil- Sunday schools worth Avenue. This school was an at- by providing tempt to find the point around which t r ansportation, all Yiddishist labor ideologies could tech nical and unite. A branch was operated on 12th a d ministrative Street and the teachers included S. guidance, c u r- Bercovitch and M. Haar. When this riculum p 1 a n- \, school closed, the ensuing separation left ning a i d, per- ) a Sholem Aleichem Institute and School sonnel, libra r y facilities, maps, ; in the Kenilworth building and a Far- films and simi- band Folk School on 12th Street. Since 1927 the Workmen's Circle, Farband- lar services. Labor Zionist and Sholem Aleichem F e d eration groups in Detroit have maintained in- makes it pos- dividual Yiddish schools. In 1930 the sible for the combined enrollment of all of these United Hebre 1 schools was about 450. About 15 years Schools to func- ago the three schools were able -t o get tion effedtively together and organize a United High as the commu- School. This institution offers an ad- nal school. The Abe Kasle Continued from Page 8) responsibility for the program is the concern of the widely representative UHS Board ,of Directors under the lead- ership during the last ten years of Abe Kasle, its president. While the UHS pro- gram in its own schools probably best meets the educational needs of Conserv- ative-Orthodox Jews, in recent years the UHS has been serving some of the spe- cific needs of Reform education as the result of having worked . out a special curriculum in co-operation with the Sub- urban Temple. Similarly it has been ex- perimenting in the direction of super- vising the Sholem Aleichem School whose curriculum has been designed to serve those children desiring the type of Yiddish school education proposed by the Sholem Aleichem Institute. Bar Mitzvah Requirements The two most important problems which the schools have had to cope with in recent years concern the length of stay of pupils in the school and the shortage of qualified instructors. It is encouraging- to note that for the past five years pupils have been continuing their Jewish studies over a longer period of time. To a large extent, this can be traced to the requirement established two years ago by the Conservative syna- gogues in Detroit and the United Hebrew Schools that a minimum attendance of four years at a Jewish school is the prerequisite for Bar Mitzvah celebration. The teacher problem remains a difficult one. Midrasha graduates have already •been helpful to some extent. Favorable salary scales, retirement plans, and other important personnel practices which do not prevail universally in the field of Jewish education have made it possible to maintain high personnel standards in Detroit. Two of the three Yiddish schools are located today where they have been for a number of years—the United Jewish Folk School of the Farband at Linwood near Grand and the Workmen's Circle School on Linwood near Burlingame. The Sholem Aleichem school several years ago moved to Wyoming near Cur- tis. The programs of the three schools have come closer together. In fact, a study of the curriculum and courses of- fered by these three schools does not show any important difference from the program of the United Hebrew Schools except for the stress on the Yiddish language and literature, the hallmark of the Yiddish school movement. The en- rollment of these schools has been de- clining gradually so that today none of them has much more than 100 pupils in its afternoon department. This may be due, if only in part, to the population movement to the Northwest area. Sunday School Registrations The popularity of the Sunday school continues. Fifteen years ago there were almost 3,000 children attending such schools sponsored by seven Reform, Con- servative and Orthodox congregations. Over 1,000 pupils were enrolled in the Shaarey Zedek Sunday School alone. The registration today is well over 4,000. For some time there has been a general aware- ness that the one day a week school is not sufficiently intensive to give children ail adequate Jedish education. There is a trend to introduce week-day sessions, usually for the higher classes of the Sunday school. Since the Sunday school is here to stay, it is necessary continu- ally to try to improve it and enrich its curriculum so that the need for addi- tional instruction during the week will be appreciated by pupils and parents. Priority for Schools Outlook for the Future Although the enrollment in the afternoon department of the Yeshivath Beth Yehuclah is today less than it was .10 or 15 years ago, there has been a great rise in the nursery and kinder- garten attendance. The increase in registration of the Yeshivah's all-day school has_ been more significant. From 112 pupils in 1944 the enrollment rose to 175 in 1949 and is 335 today. The Yeshi- vah is presently engaged in enlarging its building on Dexter. It plans to have sufficient, modern classrooms to alle- viate crowded conditions in its annex and provide for an anticipated increase in registration in the coming years. For the past two years the Yeshivah has conducted a branch school at the Northwest Israel Congregation on Wy- oming and Santa Matia. For decades Detroit has given a place of honor to Jewish education as part of its general community program. Our Federation, through depression years and in prosperous times, has given pri- ority to the development of effective schools to help our youth grow adulthood with a sense of security and happiness in their Jewishness. Wo can all be proud of the fact that Federation has been expending more funds for Jewish education than many other large cities such as Boston, Cleveland, Balti- more, Newark or Los Angeles. It is our hope that Jewish education, at least to the extent it is community-sponsored, will more and more stress the common denominators of Jewish life and "K'lal Yisroel" rather than any propagandistic ideologies that struggle for supremacy within the Jewish community. A Solemn Salute to the American Jewish Tercentenary 300 years of American Jewish history attest athletics, on the farms. and in the factories. to the progress of a great pioneering com- In this year of re-dedication to the service munity. American Jewry has made great of our country, we welcome the New Year contributions to science and culture, to 5715 with a prayer for the security of this Government and Industry, as members of land, for the happiness of all its people and the Judiciary, in our schools and colleges, in for the peace of the world. Oar Best Wishes to All Our Relatives and Friends and to the &air* Community for a . Very Happy New Year Hordes Agency INSURANCE . 17616 Wyoming UN. 3-2900 William Hordes Earl Hordes • Picture of a diorama depicting the arrival of the first group of in New Amsterdam in September, 1654. Jews. BROKERAGE BUSINESS SOLICITED