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Oct. 7, 2011
The story of Passionate Pioneers
Author presents a comprehensive record of Yiddish secular education in North America.
AL STEIN
Passionate Pioneers: The Story of Yiddish Secular Education in North America, 1910–1960, at nearly 500 pages including an index, is the result of nine years of determined research by Fradle Pomerantz Freidenreich, a professional educator who has served Jewish education in North America and Israel as a teacher, principal, curriculum writer, camp director, consultant and as a trainer of teacher educators at universities and colleges.
It is clear from the integration of personal narrative and objective reporting that the author’s motivation for this research was personal as well as professional. Freidenreich is the daughter of Israel Chaim Pomerantz, a noted Yiddish poet, educator and cultural activist whose extensive archives “provided much of the source material for this book and pointed the way to wonderful networking possibilities.”
Passionate Pioneers is the first comprehensive, documented record of the 50-year heyday of Yiddish secular education in North America. Until it was published last year, the Yiddish secular school movement and Yiddish educational camps, which preceded the Hebrew camps, have been largely ignored by historians. The reasons for this neglect were partly ideological, as Jonathan Sarna notes in his foreword: “advocates of Hebrew-centred Jewish religious education disagreed fundamentally with the approach of the Yiddish secularists.”
Sarna notes that this book “distinguishes between different types of schools: sequentially from early childhood education to adult education, and ideologically from Labor Zionist schools to communist schools,” and also includes “the world of Yiddish secular summer camps, representing the full spectrum of Jewish ideological movements of the time.”
A glance at the table of contents reveals the huge scope of this work. The author’s introduction includes an overview, methodology, editorial and personal notes, and unusual connections.
The five major sections of the book are:
1) Historical and Cultural Background, which includes a) The Jewish Immigrant Experience, b) About Yiddish, Yiddishism and Yiddishkayt, c) Jewish Secularism. This section alone is worth the price of the book and will resonate profoundly in those reared and educated within this vibrant but now almost vanished environment.
2) Jewish Schooling in North America, which includes a) Roots and Development, b) Forms of Jewish Education.
3) Yiddish Secular Education, which includes a) A Historical Overview, b) National Sponsoring Groups and their Education Departments, c) Leadership and Governance, d) Yiddish Secular Schools and their Formats, e) Curricula of the Shule Networks, f) Innovations and Notable Features of Yiddish Secular Education, g) Publications and Conferences, h) The Teaching Profession, i) The Impact of National and World Events on the Shuln.
4) Communities and their Yiddish Secular Shuln, which includes, a) Chicago, A Community Study, b) Agrarian and Colony Schools, c) A Multitude of Communities.
5) Jewish Education Summer Camps, which includes a) Jewish Educational and Cultural Camping, b) Yiddish Secular Summer Camps, c) Camp Boiberik, One of Many, d) A Multitude of Camps.
The author points out that “the worldwide Jewish education movement known as Di Yidishe Veltlekhe Shul Bavegung was conceived in eastern Europe. In North America, it took on a life of its own under the leadership of immigrants who had brought its leading ideas and programs with them from Europe.” As they saw it, Yiddish secular education and Yiddishkayt (Jewishness) were the most important ways of providing the community with hemshekh (continuity), in order to preserve a distinct Jewish cultural and ethnic identity. Another potent force in the lives of these immigrants was the Jewish labor movement that was committed to the same socialist ethic that was integral to the general labor movement. For the Jewish labor movement, Yiddishkayt incorporated universal human dignity and social justice that was measured by ethical and fair behavior toward one’s fellow human beings, not by how much Jewish tradition one observed. These immigrants wanted to provide an education for their children that would transmit clearly identified Jewish values. “Many socialist members of Jewish unions were also members of fraternal Jewish organizations that sponsored Yiddish secular schools,” notes Freidenreich.
According to the 1931 Canadian Census, 96 percent of the total Canadian Jewish population of 155,700 reported Yiddish as their mother tongue. In 1971, only 18 percent of a total population of 275,025 made the same claim. Yiddish was the lingua franca not only of eastern European Jewry, but also of first and second generations of immigrant North American Jews. According to Passionate Pioneers, “Most secular Jewish immigrants, agreeing with [Chaim] Zhitlovsky, saw Yiddish as the bond uniting Jews.... It was, for them, a symbol of Jewish creativity and continuity.” Zhitlovsky and his followers in Canada promoted cultural pluralism, what we now call multiculturalism or multi-ethnic education, and this became a basic principle of Canadian Yiddish secular schools, where the Yiddish language was seen also as a cornerstone of “peoplehood.”
The importance of a separate, secular, modern and progressive day-school education was recognized in Canada many years earlier than in the United States and was not seen as unpatriotic: “In the U.S., prior to 1960, the Jewish day school was not considered a significant model in Jewish education.... Immigrant Jews sent their children to public schools ... believing this would provide the best and fastest way for their children ... to become ‘real Americans.’”
Many examples are cited in this book and elsewhere of the strong impact (emotionally and intellectually) the shuln and camps had on the developing Jewish identity of their students. “Between the 1920s and the late 1940s, Yiddish secular schools played a crucial role in North American Jewish education.... These institutions succeeded in great measure, until the late 1940s if not beyond, to instil in students and campers a love for and appreciation of the rich and historic Yiddish culture and its contribution to Jewish life,” writes Freidenreich.
As someone who had the good fortune to be reared within the close-knit extended family that was the Calgary Yiddishist community and attend its Peretz Shule day and supplementary school for 12 years, I can attest to Freidenreich’s observations and conclusions about the lasting effect of that experience – enjoyment in being Jewish and living Jewishly. I witnessed the dedication and untiring effort of a relatively small group of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, mostly working-class intelligentsia, who were determined to transmit the Yiddish language and its cultural riches to following generations. This dedication and effort was duplicated in hundreds of other communities in North America.
Freidenreich’s afterword speaks eloquently about the decline and legacy of the Yiddish secular school movement. She writes: “For many of us, it is not until later in our mature lives that we are able to fully appreciate and value the contributions of those who taught and mentored us. The strong imprint made upon the lives of those of us who are ‘products’ of this unique education are inestimable. We received an invaluable legacy of knowledge, values and a particular weltanschauung, that has helped shape us as adults, and has enriched the North American Jewish historical record.”
The book’s appendices include a listing of Yiddish secular schools in North America (1910-1960), the texts of popular Yiddish school and camp songs, a helpful glossary and index, and a select bibliography.
I have quoted extensively from the author’s text in order to give prospective readers a sense of the author’s incisive writing and of the scope of her work. At only $35 USD, including a CD of popular school and camp songs, sung by the author, Shmulik Alpert, Chana Broder and others, this resource is a real bargain and a must read for anyone involved in Jewish education, past or present.
Al Stein was reared in the Yiddishist mishpokhe of Calgary and graduated from the Peretz Shule there. He is a member of the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture and the Outlook Collective in Vancouver, where he pursues his interest in Yiddish culture and language. A version of this article was published in the July/August 2011 Outlook magazine.
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