“Jewish identity,” which emerged as an analytical term in the 1950s, appealed to a set of needs that American Jews felt in the postwar period, which accounted for its popularity. Identity was the quintessential conundrum for a community on the threshold of acceptance. The work of Kurt Lewin, Erik Erikson, Will Herberg, Marshall Sklare, and others helped to shape the communal conversation. The reframing of that discourse from one that was essentially psychosocial and therapeutic to one that was sociological and survivalist reflected the community’s growing sense of physical and socioeconomic security in the 1950s and early 1960s. The American Jewish Committee and its Division of Scientific Research offers an enlightening case study of this phenomenon. Jewish educators seized on identity formation, making it the raison d’etre of their endeavor. But the ascent of identity discourse also introduced a number of challenges for the Jewish educator—conceptual, methodological, political, and even existential.

background

The Objectives of Jewish Education

On the Origins and Persistence of the Jewish Identity Industry in Jewish Education.

The evaluation of attitudes and the jewish school

Anna G. Sherman (18977-1980) taught Hebrew language at the various extension schools of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in a career which began in 1923 and lasted for nearly forty years. Her name appears on the academic registers of the institution—with respites for residence in Eretz Yisrael, childbirth, or illness—through 1960-1964, with the final notation, \"On leave of absence.\" Her reluctant goodbye to the institution and profession she loved so dearly is a fitting coda to a life in which profession and vocation were one. Sherman studied at the Teachers Institute of JTS (TI) during those heady years when Mordecai Kaplan (1881-1983) and his colleagues were changing the shape of American Jewish education. Kaplan took on the leadership of the TI in 1909 after Jacob Schiff donated the funds to create a separate institution downtown in a former vocational school for boys. Sherman graduated in 1916, winning the Alumni Prize for the outstanding class essay. She received a diploma, rather than a degree (degrees were not granted until 1924). Studying during the years 1912-1916, when the TI was changing from a part-time program to a serious institution committed to teacher education (Kaufman, 1997, p. 586), Anna must have been exposed to the teaching of the \"Benderly Boys,\" disciples of Samson Benderly (1876-1944) who brought his combination of progressive education and intense Hebraism to the TI. In 1912 Benderly, Kaplan's good friend and the head of the Bureau of Jewish Education of New York, suggested that some promising students at Teachers College who shared his views on Jewish education spend a part of each day at the TI in a special program under his tutelage. Isaac Berkson and Alexander M. Dushkin began their connection with the TI in 1912. By 1915 Berkson, Dushkin, Chipkin, and Honor were teaching on the faculty, the first of the coterie of passionate Hebraists and Jewish educators known as the Benderly Boys. Among those associated with the group were Emanuel Gamoran, Barnett Brickner, Leo Honor, Louis Prashker, Philip Kleinman, Merwin Isaacs, Samuel Dinin, Jacob Golub, Samuel Margoshes, Ben Rosen, Mordecai Soltes, David Rudavsky, Judah Lapson, Samuel Citron, Zevi Scharfstein, Albert Schoolman, and Abraham Gannes. The Boys included several women: Rose Abramson, Rebecca Aronson, Libbie Suchoff, Hannajlka Langer, Devora Lapson, and Anna's good friend, Leah Klepper (Kaufman, 1997, p. 584). What characterized the group was their Deweyan linkage of education and experience. Their hallmark was Ivrit b Ivrit, teaching Hebrew in Hebrew, as a living language. Dr. Harry Friedenwald, a friend and colleague of Benderly in Baltimore, describes Benderly's pedagogy:

The Objectives of Jewish Education

Citations

On the Origins and Persistence of the Jewish Identity Industry in Jewish Education.

The evaluation of attitudes and the jewish school

Anna G. Sherman: A “Benderly Girl’?

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