Passionate Pioneers: The Story of Yiddish Secular Education in North America 1910-1960

About this book

A little known chapter in the history of Jewish education in North America involves a wide network of Yiddish schools and summer camps for children and adults that sought to transmit a distinctive authentic definition of secular yiddishkayt. Together they comprised a vibrant multi-faceted education movement with lasting significance. The founders of these institutions Eastern European immigrants were true visionaries and while they had many ideological and political differences they were unified in seeking continuity with the richness of their past. They pioneered new educational models far ahead of their times. And were often considered radical as they emphasized Yiddish language and literature Jewish history folklore and Jewish traditions in various interpretations. Full of passion they sought to touch the hearts and minds of students with meaningful experiences to teach both values and facts. Passionate Pioneers is the first comprehensive documented record of this movement. Freidenreich consulted many archives in the U.S. and Canada and tracked down the stories of hundreds of students and campers as well as the professionals and laypeople involved. She studied the communities sponsoring groups curricula and publications-in a process that can be described as educational archaeology. Against the background of the turbulent early decades of twentieth-century U.S. and Canadian life Freidenreich reported on the myriad challenges frustrations and accomplishments of this singular movement its eventual decline and the impressive legacy left to successive generations. "For far too long Yiddish camps and the Yiddish secular school movement in general in America have been ignored by historians. This volume presents the fruits of Freidenreichs prodigius research. It reveals first and foremost the colossal dimensions of Yiddish secular education in North America that included close to 1000 schools in 160 different communities 39 summer camps and who knows how many students. It distinguishes between different types of schools: sequentially from early childhood education to adult education and ideologically from Labor Zionist schools to Communist schools." Jonathan D. Sarna from the Foreword