Passionate Pioneers: The Story of Yiddish Secular Education in North America, 1910-1960
Fradle Pomerantz Freidenreich, with a foreword by Jonathan D. Sarna | | ISBN: 978-0-8419-1458-2 $65.00 |
| ISBN: 978-0-8419-1457-5 $35.00 |
| 2010/498 pages/LC: 2010014397 Distributed for Holmes & Meier Publishers
Includes a CD of Yiddish school and camp songs |
DESCRIPTION
A little-known chapter in American Jewish history involves a wide network of Yiddish schools and camps—a vibrant, multifaceted educational movement—that sought to transmit a distinctive sense of secular yiddishkayt, or Jewishness. The first comprehensive record of this movement, Passionate Pioneers documents the myriad challenges, frustrations, and accomplishments of Yiddish secular education, its eventual decline, and the impressive legacy left to successive generations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fradle Pomerantz Freidenreich has worked in Jewish education as a teacher, principal, curriculum developer, camp director, consultant, and university lecturer.
CONTENTS
- Foreword—Jonathan D. Sarna.
- Introduction.
- HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND.
- The Jewish Immigrant Experience.
- About Yiddish, Yiddishism, and Yiddishkayt.
- Jewish Secularism.
- JEWISH SCHOOLING IN NORTH AMERICA.
- Roots and Development: An Overview.
- Forms of Jewish Education.
- YIDDISH SECULAR EDUCATION.
- A Historical Overview.
- National Sponsoring Groups and Their Education Departments.
- Leadership and Governance.
- Yiddish Secular Schools and Their Formats.
- Curricula of the Shule Networks.
- Innovations and Notable Features of Yiddish Secular Education.
- Publications and Conferences.
- The Teaching Profession.
- The Impact of National and World Events on the Shuln.
- COMMUNITIES AND THEIR YIDDISH SECULAR SHULN.
- Chicago, A Community Study.
- Agrarian Colony Schools.
- A Multitude of Communities.
- JEWISH EDUCATON SUMMER CAMPS.
- Jewish Educational and Cultural Camping.
- Yiddish Secular Summer Camps.
- Camp Boiberik, One of Many.
- A Multitude of Camps.
- Afterword.
- Appendixes: Listing of Yiddish Secular Schools (1910-1960).
- Selected Yiddish School and Camp Songs.
"Passionate Pioneers is a valuable history and analysis of a world of secular yiddishkayt that has greatly diminished but hasn't disappeared. It is a book that members of the secular Jewish community should read to understand their past, their present, and their possible future."—Barnett Zurnoff, Jewish Currents
"The first comprehensive, documented record of the 50-year heyday of Yiddish secular education in North America.... This resource is a must read for anyone involved in Jewish education, past or present."—Jewish Independent
"[Freidenreich] challenges all who seek to understand American Jewry's past to pay closer attention to Yiddish secular culture. No comprehensive study of American Jewish history is complete without it."—from the Foreword by Jonathan D. Sarna