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IV.
SCHOOLS
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Nothing
reflects the variety of identities in Vancouver Jewish society
better than the number and type of schools that this small
community established by the mid 1930s. Amongst the many large
and small schools was Congregation
Emanu-El, which served the West End Jews in the
first decades of the twentieth century. It had its own afternoon
school, with the teaching apparently done by young women from
the congregation. Horace Raphael remembered that:
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Temple
Emanu-El had a Sunday school, which I attended, which
met at the Women's University Club on Thurlow Street
near Robson…There was no rabbi when I was a child.
Mrs. Blackson was one of my teachers. The school had
atrophied by the time I was ten or eleven years old…We
also had a Hebrew school in the West End where we
were coached for our Bar Mitzvahs at Mrs. Sudman's
home. She had a home on Davie St. I remember that
there was a man named Mr. Huberman who was my bar
mitzvah coach (1925).
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Vancouver
Hebrew School, directors and teachers, Lag B'Omer,
1927 Back L: M. Lederman, teacher; Norman Levin; Joseph
Youngson, principal; M. Kroll, teacher; sam Klausner;
Nathan J. Klausner; Isidore L. Kotsman; Harry Oreck
Front L: Abe Rothstein; Ben Margolis; Kiva Katznelson;
Rabbi S. P. Wohlgelernter; John Reed; Louis Halperin,
president; A. Max Charkow. Small child, Jack Klausner
JHS
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Students
of the Beth Israel Hebrew School (conservative) held
at the JCC, Vancouver, c. 1937 JHS
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In 1918, the Vancouver Hebrew School
was incorporated from the old afternoon school of the orthodox
B'nai Yehuda synagogue. When Congregation Schara Tzedeck finished
its building, the school became, in effect, part of the synagogue,
although the members occasionally complained of the financial
burden. It met four nights a week and Sunday mornings. The
curriculum was largely traditional subjects, such as Jewish
laws and customs, prayers, Bible and Hebrew. The school later
incorporated as Talmud Torah (1934), an independent association
under the Societies Act.
The Council of Jewish Women
(est. 1924) created a Sunday school shortly after it began
operation, and ran it until 1932, when the conservative synagogue,
Beth Israel, took over
responsibility for the school.
In 1927, the Muter Fareyn began discussing
a supplementary Jewish school built along secular, leftist,
principles. Like so many Jewish socialists, for them Yiddish
was the language of the Jewish masses, thus ideally suited
for the development of a Jewish secular culture. Yiddish language
and literature were the cornerstones of the curriculum for
the Sholem Aleichem School,
which they established in 1928. Like the Talmud Torah, it
too was an afternoon school. Despite the hard work of the
Muter Fareyn, the school disbanded by the mid 1930s.
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Section
1
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Section
2
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Section
3
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Section
4
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Where
Did We Come From?
Where Did We Go?
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Making
a Living
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Integration/Rejection
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Building
a Community
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