Overview

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.

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9781584658559

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The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education performs valuable service in recalling to life the central role women played in the development of American Jewish education in all its variety. Each essay makes a compelling case for the importance of an individual woman who, regardless of obstacles, offered her skills, talents, and ideas to a field where she could achieve success both for herself and her community. --H-Net Reviews

Experiences in the American hinterlands have influenced the lives of even inveterate New Yorkers; the artist and educator Temima Gezari, for example, born in Pinsk in 1905 and raised in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, road tripped to New Mexico with a couple of friends in 1931 to attend the Taos School of Art. Upon her return to New York and after some tutorials from Diego Rivera she painted the murals for Mordecai Kaplan's Society for the Advancement of Judaism. Gezari's pedagogical interventions are the subject of one of the essays in a 2010 collection edited by the Jewish Theological Seminary's Carol Ingall, newly available in a more affordable paperback, titled The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965 (Brandeis, March). Other influential pedagogues and pioneers profiled here include Hadassah's Jessie Sampter, ardent Hebraist Anna G. Sherman, and Sadie Rose Weilerstein, author of the beloved K'tonton books. Tablet

The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education performs valuable service in recalling to life the central role women played in the development of American Jewish education in all its variety. Each essay makes a compelling case for the importance of an individual woman who, regardless of obstacles, offered her skills, talents, and ideas to a field where she could achieve success both for herself and her community. --H-Net

Author Information

CAROL K. INGALL is the Dr. Bernard Heller Professor of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

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