Cleveland Jews and the Making of a Midwestern Community 9781978809970

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CLEVELAND JEWS AND THE MAKING OF A MIDWESTERN COMMUNITY Q

CLEVELAND JEWS AND THE MAKING OF A MIDWESTERN COMMUNITY Q

Edited by Sean Martin a n d J o h n J. G r a b o ws k i

rutgers university press new brunswick, camden, and newark, new jersey, and london

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Martin, Sean, 1968–, editor. | Grabowski, John J., editor. Title: Cleveland Jews and the making of a Midwestern community : edited by Sean Martin and John J. Grabowski. Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019018933 | ISBN 9781978809949 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978809970 (web pdf) | ISBN 9781978809956 (epub) | ISBN 9781978809963 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Jews—­ Ohio—­ Cleveland—­ History. | Cleveland (Ohio)—­ Ethnic relations. Classification: LCC F499.C69 J5425 2020 | DDC 305.8009991/32—­dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018933 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. This collection copyright © 2020 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Individual chapters copyright © 2020 in the names of their authors All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. ♾ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-­1992. www.rutgersuniversitypress.org Manufactured in the United States of America

For Alan D. Gross

C O N T E NTS

Foreword  ix Stephen H. Hoffman

Introduction: Cleveland and Its Jews: New Perspectives on Communal History  1 Eli Lederhendler



1 “A Link in the Great American Chain”: The Evolution of Jewish Orthodoxy in Cleveland to 1940  14 Ira Robinson



2 Jewish Philanthropy in Cleveland to 1990  35 David C. Hammack



3 Abraham Hayyim Friedland and the Context, Structures, and Content of Jewish Education  58 Sylvia F. Abrams and Lifsa Schachter



4 Everyman vs. Superman: Harvey Pekar, Comics, and Cleveland  80 Samantha Baskind



5 Ethnic Identity and Local Politics: Abba Hillel Silver as a Community Leader and International Politician in Cleveland, 1940–­1950  102 Zohar Segev

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6 “She Will Be the Mary Poppins We Have Been Searching For”: The Rise of Feminism and Organizational Change in the Cleveland Section of the National Council of Jewish Women  122 Mary McCune



7 Trepidation, Tolerance, and Turnover: Jewish-­Black Relations in Cleveland Neighborhoods, 1920–­1960  142 Todd M. Michney



8 Jewish Suburbanization and Jewish Presence in the “City without Jews”  162 J. Mark Souther



9 Suburban Temple and the Creation of Postwar American Judaism  183 Rachel Gordan



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People-­to-­People: Cleveland’s Jewish Community and the Exodus of Soviet Jews  203 Shaul Kelner Afterword  223 Sean Martin Acknowledgments  227 Notes on Contributors  229 Index  231

F O R EWO R D

Cleveland has a reputation as a very generous city in America. This has been even more true of Cleveland’s Jewish community. But beyond money, Jewish Clevelanders have been influential in shaping key movements in nineteenth and twentieth-­century Jewish history. This collection is an attempt to capture some of these historical dynamics. Some of the chapters reflect Cleveland’s take on stories that unfolded across Jewish America. Others are unique insights into Cleveland Jewry’s special perspective on events. The Jewish Federation of Cleveland is grateful for the contribution of each of the authors and in particular to the roles played by Sean Martin, John J. Grabowski, Sally H. Wertheim, and Alan D. Gross in bringing this book to life. Jews by inclination and tradition are a historical people. I hope these chapters will feed that natural appetite to know our past so we may learn how to innovate to meet twenty-­first-­century challenges.

Stephen H. Hoffman President Jewish Federation of Cleveland

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CLEVELAND JEWS AND THE MAKING OF A MIDWESTERN COMMUNITY Q

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CLEVELAND AND ITS JEWS new perspectives on communal history Eli Lederhendler It is local history that can show American Jewish life as it has been lived. . . . Local communities, not national organizations, hold the real power in American Jewry.1 —­Lloyd P. Gartner

This volume offers readers a fresh look at a significant American community—­ Cleveland, Ohio—­from the vantage point of one of its subcommunities: the Jews. Cleveland’s Jewish population is fairly representative of Jewish communities in the United States, reflecting as it does the proportional size, status, and lifestyle characteristics of the Jewish population within American society at large. Typical of the lives of many other American Jews, the metropolitan environment in which Cleveland Jews live is socially complex and heterogeneous, characterized by the substantial presence of other minority populations and immigrant and ethnic groups.2 Thus a treatment of Cleveland’s Jewish community emerges from—­and is wholly engaged with—­concerns regarding wider questions of cultural and social diversity, economic viability, intergroup relations, urban and suburban interactions, and religious pluralism. Even though this book is focused on one group, foregrounded for particular analysis, the implications of these targeted studies certainly invite further discussion and comparative perspectives. For the general study of ethnic group behavior in urban and metropolitan American social spaces, this volume offers a rich variety of specific insights that flesh out the implications of the phenomenon that has been dubbed ethnoburbs (or “ethburbs”). While these designations have frequently been deployed by scholars investigating Asian American urbanism and suburbanism as well as in 1

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general for “visible minorities,” we have in the present instance a rare case of a “white” ethnic minority group that defies the regnant patterns of most of the Ellis Island ethnics, as Bruce Phillips has pointed out. Moreover, while the ethnoburb model has provided conceptual tools to understand the suburban experiences of first-­generation immigrants in contemporary America, the history of Jews in postwar Greater Cleveland extends the model by focusing on an ethnic minority with a relatively small first-­generational cohort. Moreover, the chapters in this volume pursue themes that have emerged in other recent studies of Jews in Midwestern American metropolitan communities, such as Lila Corwin Berman’s study about Detroit. A study based on the Jews of the Cleveland metropolitan area fits, therefore, within an emergent field of social research.3 Like most other American Jews, the Jews of Greater Cleveland tend to cluster in concentrated residential pockets rather than disperse randomly. The approximately eighty thousand Jews living in the area as of 2011 are a small segment of the local residents and number about 3 to 4 percent of the area’s overall population. This proportion is about double the national percentage of Jews in the United States. That statistical overproportion is a reflection of Jews’ above-­ average metropolitan concentration compared to the United States population at large. In the early twentieth century, Jews represented about 10 percent of the local population, but the continued demographic changes of the city until the 1970s, the preference of many Jews for larger cities, and the gradual drifting of Jewish populations toward the south and west have combined to reduce Jews’ share in the Greater Cleveland area to its present level.4 Like many other American Jews, the socioeconomic profile of Cleveland Jews is mainly middle to upper-­middle class (16 percent live on under twenty-­five thousand dollars a year; 46 percent earn between twenty-­five and seventy-­ five thousand dollars a year; and 38 percent are in higher income brackets). Roughly two-­thirds of them are Ohio-­born residents (57 percent hail from Greater Cleveland), the rest having been born elsewhere in the United States or abroad (6 percent from the former Soviet Union). Despite the influx of newcomers, there has been no net population growth over time: the estimated Jewish population in the Greater Cleveland area has not changed since 1996. By the same token, however, Cleveland Jewry has not shrunk in absolute numbers in tandem with the recent slight decline in the overall Greater Cleveland population.5 The activity of various Jewish agencies devoted to religious, welfare, and social services offers ample evidence of a pool of resources, differing motivations, and social engagement with both fellow Jews and others. These features of communal life attract a substantial part of the Jewish public at any given time. Two-­thirds say they typically donate money to Jewish causes; 42  per­cent of Jewish households report synagogue membership, down from 52 percent since 1996; and about 18 percent are affiliated with a Jewish Community Center or another Jewish organization. About half the Jews affirm, when asked,

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that they regard “being part of a Jewish community” to be personally “very important.”6 There are, evidently, some discrepancies here, implying that the subjective belief in the value of community outstrips actual affiliation behavior, that synagogue membership is widely (though not universally) considered a stand-­in for other kinds of community affiliation, or that in the minds of some people, “community” may not necessarily mean membership in institutions and organizations. Jews in Cleveland, as elsewhere, are diversified internally by their different family histories, religious beliefs, political outlooks, and habits of self-­ identification. One local resident suggested to me that the Jewish Federation of Cleveland projects a strong public presence, which she sees as a reflection of how many Jews identify with being Jewish. At the same time, she believes, synagogue attendance and religious observance are less in evidence among the non-­ Orthodox majority of the population.7 Cleveland’s Jewish communal history has attracted the attention of a number of different scholars and commentators over the years. One of the most elaborate—­and still one of the best of its genre—­was the pioneering study by the distinguished late historian Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Cleveland (originally written in the early postwar years, published in 1978, and republished a decade later). Gartner’s research took him only up to the end of the Second World War, leaving the postwar years and more recent decades to later scholars.8 The postwar period had, in fact, been briefly sketched in the early 1960s in a book about Jews in urban America.9 Cleveland, one of the top ten most populous U.S. Jewish communities, was featured (with deliberate irony) as the “City without Jews.” The label referred to the fact that an overwhelming majority of Jewish residents had left the city of Cleveland only to regroup in rather compact enclaves in its eastern suburbs. In 1978, the year that Gartner’s History was first published, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland issued a photographic history of the city’s Jewish life, entitled Merging Traditions. That book, unlike Gartner’s, also included the years from 1945 to 1975. The title of the final chapter, “Moving Farther East,” confirmed what had been written during the previous decade about Jewish deurbanization in Cleveland.10 The ironic epithet, the “City without Jews,” had apparently struck a raw nerve. Revised and republished in 2004, the Jewish Federation–­sponsored volume retained a vigorous riposte to the still-­rankling description, declaring that “to an outsider Cleveland may seem like a ‘city without Jews’” (emphasis mine). For those who lived there, the text averred, the suburbs were very much a part of the larger Cleveland community, which was said to be “confident of its place in Northeast Ohio, the nation, and the world.”11 Indeed, the “City without Jews” episode is recalled yet again in two of the chapters in this volume, written respectively by Todd Michney and Mark Souther. Claims on behalf of the Jews’ continued civic involvement are certainly well founded, and they accord with

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analogous developments in other cities, which historian Lila Corwin Berman has dubbed a “politics of remote urban activism” (as mentioned by Souther).12 A demographic survey conducted by the Jewish Federation in 2011 confirmed the continued decline of Jewish residence in older and more central areas of Greater Cleveland and a significant transition to the eastern (Beachwood and Solon) and southeastern suburban zones. Residential areas to which Jews are attracted are characterized generally by high-­income households, a very low percentage of poor residents, a large majority of white residents, substantially higher levels of high school and academic attainments than the Ohio average, the amenities of low-­density living, and a solid majority of married-­couple households.13 This pattern of continuing suburbanization, it should be noted, differs somewhat from the renewed urbanizing trend that has been observed among both younger Jews and seniors in a number of other American cities.14 One purpose of this book, therefore, is not merely to revisit some of the older history of Cleveland’s Jewry but to fill out, adjust, and revise some of the memories of the past, as recorded in the Jewish community’s self-­portrait and its photographic archive, and to connect them more directly to contemporary social studies. Although the individual topics are specific and diverse, they add up to a composite that allows for generalizations. Contemporary issues in Cleveland can now be read back into previous eras, as in the chapter by Michney on relations between Jews and blacks in Cleveland from 1920 to 1960 and in Souther’s chapter on suburbanization and urban persistence. Complicating the aim of arriving at an overall picture, we note that the primordial categories of identity and Jewishness that served Gartner so well in his day are today open to question. Conventional terms like religion, ethnicity, and community must be carefully parsed. For instance, one must now take into account mixed-­religion households, in which there is a non-­Jewish partner. Such households accounted for 38 percent of married couples in the Cleveland Jewish community study in 2011 (as compared to just 23 percent in 1996). Children raised in such households live in a variety of family cultures, including those with a Jewish orientation (33 percent), those with no orientation to a particular religious identity (23 percent), those with a mixed orientation (Jewish and something else, 22 percent), or a non-­Jewish orientation (7 percent).15 It has, indeed, been queried whether in our day there exist any quintessentially Jewish characteristics that serve uniformly as a yardstick for Jewish community life. Some observers take this identity deconstruction quite far, suggesting that Jews actually share little in common with each other apart from “one thing and one thing alone—­they identify as Jews, whatever that may mean.”16 This radically skeptical position privileges an uncompromisingly individualistic and elastic social model over models that would allow for acknowledged social boundaries and collective social embeddedness. A glimpse into this more individualistic, less institutionalized version of American Jewish identity is offered by Samantha

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Figure i.1  Civil Subdivisions, Cuyahoga County, 1995. (Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University)

Baskind in her chapter on the comics author and graphic novelist Harvey Pekar. On the whole, however, the other chapters in this book use a more straightforward standard of mainstream or core Jewishness based on a combination of kinship and religious affiliation. This volume explores the challenges and complexities of a large and diverse community in the interest of providing a revised historical and social portrait. The model of plural and loosely combined subgroups, implicit in these chapters, points substantially beyond the model of “community” in the singular—­and I believe that it points even beyond the usual observations about fabled, perennial disagreements within any Jewish society. Internal divisions, after all, have always existed among Jews. American Jewry, being no exception to the general rule, is famously subdivided into streams and movements and often fraught with intense internal debate. Usually this is touted by the Jews themselves as evidence of democracy and pluralism. Gartner’s historical canvas, readers might recall, contained a record of the fractious segmentation that seemed to plague Cleveland Jewry in its populous heyday. But in his telling, this history of friction and partisanship actually provided the motivation to construct an overarching, multipurpose community for multiple constituencies, in which differences would shade into the woodwork. In the final analysis, Gartner’s History was

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unmistakably a portrait of a collective entity, metaphorically reminiscent of a boisterous extended family. When seen in such a light, Zohar Segev’s chapter on Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver’s career in Zionist politics in the 1930s and 1940s, both in Cleveland and beyond, seems to second Gartner’s construct. Segev portrays Silver, one of the most prominent American rabbis in his day, within a context where Jewish identity markers were taken more or less for granted and where something like a consensus about core Jewish interests was conceivable. For example, Segev reminds us that Silver took the notion of a “Jewish vote” at face value, quite seriously entertaining the notion of parlaying Jewish electoral postures into political leverage. Silver’s view of the ballot as a tool to be wielded in the interest of ethnic politicking strikes the reader as far removed from today’s political discourse (though, even without bloc voting as a strategy, Jews and other demographic groups are still regarded as displaying typical voting profiles at election time). That notion of Jewish communal solidarity seems to be firmly rooted in the history of the 1940s. By 1945, as Gartner was describing the immediate postwar scene, the long-­standing divisions between various wings of the community were healing, the population’s economic hardships of the interwar years were easing, and tensions between “old-­stock” and “new-­stock” Jews had, as he put it, “mostly disappeared.” He even ventured the opinion that “the age of harmony that seemed to be dawning made some people—­frequently they were the youth—­look wistfully upon the two generations of issues and conflict in Jewish life which had ended.”17 The ideal of collective unity thereafter retained currency among Cleveland’s Jewish communal leaders. Sidney Vincent, a paragon of community-­building and one of the authors of the aforementioned, programmatically entitled Merging Traditions, described Cleveland’s postwar Jewish community as “diverse yet unified.”18 The 2004 reedition of that volume confessed that “internal disagreements . . . occur naturally within a very diverse community” but opined that efforts to assuage such differences were afoot.19 Gartner’s ostensible “age of harmony,” it seems, has taken a long time in arriving, and the upshot may be something more akin to an “age of autonomy.” That is something worth pondering. Do Jews, clustered together spatially, catering to their own needs via voluntary associations they establish and pay for, constitute a social entity whose overall sum is greater than its individual parts? Or are they merely a set of loosely conjoined enterprises, over which an activist but ultimately sectoral leadership is (still) attempting to assert a grander vision? Could the more cohesive notion of community, informed by and supportive of a collective identity, have been inherently tied to highly specific locations—­such as a city block, a compact neighborhood, and a close-­knit web of face-­to-­face relationships? If so, does the expanding topography of suburban sprawl tend to loosen and even derail a city-­bred sense of intimacy (along with its fraternal

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squabbles, snubs, and competitiveness) conjured by images of past generations? Does suburbanization rather promote a new array of locale-­based relations? Of potential interest here is the following comment on the nature of suburban culture and particularistic interests, with particular reference to matters of religious behavior in America: “In terms of professional sports teams . . . , suburbanites tend to think of themselves as Clevelanders or Philadelphians. In terms of schools and municipal services . . . the suburbanites identify with their own smaller communities. . . . Religious life, with few exceptions, falls in the localized sphere of activity involving the families, schools . . . , care for church friends, and personal development.”20 Yet despite this idea of fragmentation, the sense that several authors in our volume convey is that “community” as a subjective experience and as a social construct is not limited to personal, local, and spontaneous ties. Mary McCune, in her chapter on the nature of innovative organization among women, illuminates this very point. The example she provides suggests that association, mutual support, and commitment can be deliberately cultivated among people who possess few if any prior, face-­to-­face relationships. Her analysis of the activities of the Council of Jewish Women echoes, in that respect, something that the American anthropologist Riv-­Ellen Prell has written elsewhere about the innovative communal energy that percolated through postwar Jewish suburban communities. Arguing against a simplistic lament over the ostensibly thin social resources at the disposal of stereotypical suburban communities, Prell proposes instead an appreciation of “dynamic cultural processes, contestation, and even pioneers.”21 Jewish life in the postwar Cleveland–­based community certainly retained its sectoral character and its individualism. Disagreements, separations, and jostling for resources occurred as distinct interest groups sought to create space for themselves within the larger fabric of Jewish life. Rachel Gordan’s chapter on the formation of Suburban Temple, a breakaway congregation of Reform Jews, affords a good example of this. She sheds light on how members’ dissatisfaction with existing Jewish school models played an essential role in defining a new constituency among younger Jewish families. The history of Orthodox Jews in America generally and Cleveland in particular (already partly adumbrated in Gartner’s History as well as in Merging Traditions), receives fresh and more detailed attention in this volume. Jewish Orthodoxy is a subject that has received limited attention (with rare exceptions) outside the parochial confines of Jewish historical and social studies and Jewish media.22 Even within American Jewish scholarship, it has not played a particularly central role, given the minority status of Orthodox Judaism within the wider field of American Jewish life. Reform temples in Cleveland and their nationally known rabbis featured prominently in the earlier histories of Cleveland Jewry. Indeed, during the Great Depression, the careers of these rabbis, who functioned as public intellectuals, continued to flourish even amid a kind of “spiritual Depression” in

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terms of congregation size and vitality.23 In the postwar history of Cleveland, in contrast, attention has shifted to the growing importance of the Orthodox Jewish sector. The chapter by Ira Robinson surveys and documents the issues of integrationist versus separationist religious institutionalization, highlighting the responses aroused in the larger Jewish sphere by Orthodox exclusivism on one hand and by internal Orthodox debates and fractional conflicts on the other. Additional examples of sectoral perspectives and their potential for new activism appear in Shaul Kelner’s chapter on Soviet Jewry advocacy. Kelner notes that this focus for new activity originated in the mid-­1960s in a fairly marginal sector of Cleveland’s Jewish community and gained wider traction only by stages. It also becomes clear that in the matter of helping ex-­Soviet Jewish émigrés resettle in Cleveland, organizations and institutions have provided much wherewithal to the resettlement effort but have been less effective in grappling face-­to-­face with individual dilemmas and solutions. The latter, over time, came to depend on the grassroots, personal input of immigrant families themselves, who have emerged as a new subcommunity in their own right. In that sense, these chapters elaborate on the point that leadership can be the product of dissent, differentiation, and individual effort as much as (or even more than) the outgrowth of a larger organization or consensus. The volume brings together a variety of themes and individual histories in a format that seems more in keeping with the notion of a multiplicity of initiatives and experiences than a centralistic projection of coherency.

Migration, Americanization, and Beyond The narrative of immigration, resettlement, and Americanization is part and parcel of the extant literature on Jewish communal history in the United States. Frequently, local communal histories function as memory tapestries, striving to interweave two important threads: the “outer” history of how local Jewries have found their place in the public life of their towns and cities, and the “inner,” inter-­generational narrative of separation from the “old country” and adaptation to new patterns of life. Previous examples of Cleveland Jewish histories have all been typical of this genre.24 In its way, Sylvia Abrams’s and Lifsa Schachter’s chapter, recounting the life and times of the Hebrew educator Abraham Hayyim Friedland, is also a portrait in miniature of this dual perspective. It delineates one man’s quest that begins at the most personal level and ends up illuminating the vicissitudes of immigrant adaptation in a wider communal framework. Is the Jewish experience in Cleveland a refraction of the larger shifts and developments in the city and the region at large? That may be taken as almost axiomatic—­American Jewish urban and posturban experiences can never be limited to a narrow-­gauge focus on the exemplary institutions and patterns of the Jews’ ethno-­religious “otherness.” Never having been sequestered from public life at

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large (a point already made in Gartner’s study), whatever is Jewish in a more particularistic sense is at the same time a feature of a wider, more complex panorama of society and culture. That which is properly fraternal—­bound together by formal and informal associational ties—­is likely to coexist cheek-­by-­jowl with the anecdotal and individual; what city life is like at its richest, subjective level. The chapter by Samantha Baskind mentioned previously draws upon the life of one of Cleveland’s popular-­culture heroes. Exploring the ways in which this is not just but also a Jewish story, Baskind follows Pekar’s experiences, which are, in the end, about family, kinship, and memory. At another level, the chapter on philanthropy by David C. Hammack tackles the question of voluntary support for Jewish institutions and, almost in the same breath, the parallel support offered by Jews on behalf of general civic improvement, institutions, and projects. Similar in its double-­barreled attention to a Jewish-­based organization involved in general social change is McCune’s aforementioned portrayal of Jewish women’s activism in Cleveland. The chapter by Michney on race relations in the interwar and early postwar periods again shows how a general issue becomes the template for a consideration of Jews’ social involvements at various civic, economic, and political levels. Specifically, this chapter also raises interesting points about the loop connecting the massive shift of Jewish residents away from their former neighborhoods; the concurrent influx of Black homeowners, tenants, and employees into pockets of former Jewish residential concentration; and the relocation and retooling of Jewish community facilities in the face of new demographic realities. In this loop, there is no clear way to disengage the particularly Jewish concern with community affiliation from the general issues of a changing urban demography. The issue of “community” therefore is implicated in the context of intergroup boundary formation; this is reinforced by reading the chapters by Michney and Souther in tandem. The discourse surrounding community erosion and institutional rebuilding and the relationship between these and larger demographic issues in Cleveland, including racial issues, is analyzed here at length.25 Where might we go from here? is the implied question that lingers after reading the chapters in this volume. Immigration, Americanization, and integration into the wider civic realm are paradigmatic issues that do not necessarily reside wholly in the past: witness the data cited at the outset about foreign-­born members of Cleveland’s Jewish community today, and especially the data regarding community members from the former Soviet Union. Their stories, although briefly touched upon in Kelner’s chapter on the Soviet Jewry movement, await future study. Of related interest is the fact that domestic migration continues to characterize the demographics of community life. This applies not only to the patterns of suburbanization discussed in this volume but also to community emigration and immigration, neither of which has received attention here. The Jewish

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population report written several years ago showed that it exhibits a mix of Cleveland area–­born residents (slightly more than half of the Jewish total) with those from out of town and out of state. The community’s changing profile, in turn, becomes a factor in the quality and character of communal institutions, their attractiveness to residents, and their agendas. Given the instability and flux of economic and professional opportunities in America generally and in the Cleveland vicinity specifically, we might want to know more about the selective processes by which the Jewish population is constantly altering. Studies suggest that relocation may occur more than once in a lifetime; that such moves are anticipated as part of a life course; that intrastate and interstate domestic migration rises along with rising academic and professional qualifications (college graduates and those with graduate degrees); and that women hold a slight edge over men in their rates of relocation independent of their academic attainment levels. Furthermore, data show that intrastate and interstate relocations can be a factor in retarding active participation in community, religious, and other social networks. Still, locations with higher concentrations of Jewish residents tend to retain higher percentages of those who live there to begin with or of those who move there. In addition, in-­migrants who persist in their new homes over time (at least a decade) are apt to begin behaving as their more rooted Jewish neighbors do with respect to Jewish practices and belonging.26 Mention has been made throughout these chapters of individual and collective activism. The topic is relevant to many of the initiatives that galvanized the collective life of Cleveland Jewry, just as it is pertinent to the interface between the Jewish community and the larger urban environment. There is basic information that has yet to be researched in this regard, however. It would be interesting to know, for instance, what kind of role business leaders in the Jewish community have played in Cleveland’s urban renewal and community development projects.27 An urban-­based community, Cleveland Jewry is also part of a regional and interregional (indeed, global) set of concentric circles. Chapters in this book such as Segev’s portrait of Abba Hillel Silver, Kelner’s report on advocacy for Soviet Jewry, and McCune’s analysis of women’s activism all point beyond local matters to political movements and trends in America and around the world. The rationale behind volumes about local history militates against overgeneralizing the particular, since it is in their very specificity that they achieve what general histories frequently overlook. At the same time, one might readily imagine a comingling of the local community genre with a set of comparative regional or cross-­regional studies involving other Ohio communities, other midsized metropolitan Jewries, or other, non-­Jewish neighbors in Greater Cleveland (religious, immigrant, racial, and ethnic groups). This volume takes an important step toward promoting more elaborate research strategies in the future. The Jewish community of Greater Cleveland

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offers ample scope for addressing a variety of issues in social history. The scholarly attention that it attracts—­and has attracted over time—­affords readers a rich perspective on contemporary Jewry in a changing America.

notes 1. Lloyd P. Gartner, “Metropolis and Periphery in American Jewry,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry, ed. Jonathan Frankel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 1:341. 2. City​-­­­­Data​.com, accessed March  20, 2018, http://​www​.city​-data​.com/​races/​races​-Cleveland​ -Ohio​.html; Robert L. Smith, “Asians, Hispanics Populate Latest Wave of Northeast Ohio’s Newcomers,” Plain Dealer, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​blog​.cleveland​.com/​metro/​2011/​04/​asians​ _hispanics​_populate​_late​.html; cf. Jeffrey S. Lowe, “Limitations of Community Development Partnerships: Cleveland Ohio and Neighborhood Progress Inc.,” Cities 25 (2008): 40. 3. Lila Corwin Berman, Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); Bruce Phillips, “Not Quite White: The Emergence of Jewish ‘Ethnoburbs’ in Los Angeles, 1920–­2010,” American Jewish History, 100: 1, 73–­104; Wei Li, Ethnoburb: The New Ethnic Community in Urban America (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018); Shuguang Wang and Jason Zhong, “Delineating Ethnoburbs in Metropolitan Toronto,” CERIS Working Paper Series no. 100 (April 2013), accessed July 5, 2018, http://​www​.torontolip​.org/​Portals/​0/​Resources/​General/​Delineating​%20Ethnoburbs​%20in​ %20Metropolitan​%20Toronto​.pdf. 4. Jewish population data cited from the 2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study, conducted by Jacob B. Ukeles, Pearl Beck, Ron Miller, and David Dutwin; accessed February 20, 2017, from the Berman Jewish Data Bank, http://​www​.jewishdatabank​.org/​Studies/​ downloadFile​.cfm​?FileID​=​2813. Cf. American Jewish Year Book, 108 (2008): 206, table 1: Jewish Population in the United States, 2008. Jews enumerated in Greater Cleveland in 2011 actually represent an overcount by some 2,500: college students not living in the Cleveland area at the time the data were gathered were included in the survey anyway as members of Cleveland households. In 2010, the five-­county Cleveland-­Elyria Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) had a population of 2,077,240 (down slightly from 2000 figures). United States Census Bureau, Metropolitan and Micropolitan, accessed March 20, 2018, https://​ www​.census​.gov/​programs​-surveys/​metro​-micro​.html. For figures showing the relative loss of Jewish residential population in the eastern northcentral states over the period between 1930 and 1990, see Sidney Goldstein and Alice Goldstein, Jews on the Move: Implications for Jewish Identity (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), 38–­39, table 2.2. 5. “2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study,” Berman Jewish Databank, accessed March  20, 2018, http://​www​.jewishdatabank​.org/​Studies/​downloadFile​.cfm​?FileID​=​2813. In 2015, the City of Cleveland reported that the median per capita income for the Cleveland metro area was $29,859. “Cleveland-­Elyria-­Mentor Household Income,” Department of Numbers, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.deptofnumbers​.com/​income/​ohio/​ cleveland/. Forbes reported the median household income in the Cleveland metro area in 2016 as $50,722. “The Best Places for Business and Careers,” Forbes, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.forbes​.com/​places/​oh/​cleveland/. 6. “2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study,” Berman Jewish Databank, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jewishdatabank​.org/​Studies/​downloadFile​.cfm​?FileID​=​2813. 7. Personal communication with the author via email, November 23, 2016. 8. Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Cleveland (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society in cooperation with the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, 1987 [1978]). 9. Eugene J. Lipman and Albert Vorspan, eds., A Tale of Ten Cities: The Triple Ghetto in American Religious Life (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1962), 45–­77.

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10. In the late 1980s, Marc Lee Raphael revisited the same terrain in an essay devoted to Cleveland Heights and Jewish residents’ responses to racial integration. Marc Lee Raphael, “Jewish Responses to the Integration of a Suburb: Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 1960–­1980,” American Jewish Archives 44, no. 2 (1992): 541–­563. 11. Judah Rubinstein with Jane A. Avner, Merging Traditions: Jewish Life in Cleveland, rev. ed. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, in cooperation with the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and the Western Reserve Historical Society, 2004 [1978]), 222. 12. Lila Corwin Berman, “Jewish Urban Politics in the City and Beyond,” Journal of American History 99, no. 2 (September 2012): 516; Berman, Metropolitan Jews. 13. “2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study: Solon, Ohio,” Census Reporter, accessed March 20, 2018, https://​censusreporter​.org/​profiles/​16000US3972928​-solon​-oh/; “2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study: Solon, Ohio,” Census Reporter, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.solonohio​.org/​DocumentCenter/​Home/​View/​764; “2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study: Beachwood, Ohio,” Census Reporter, accessed March 20, 2018, https://​censusreporter​.org/​profiles/​16000US3904500​-beachwood​-oh/. 14. I thank Professor Stuart Schoenfeld of York University for sharing with me some of his insights on this phenomenon, especially in a paper he delivered at the Eastern Sociological Society meetings in Baltimore in 2014, “Changing Urban Geography and North American Jewish Life.” 15. “2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study,” Census Reporter, accessed March 20, 2018, https://​censusreporter​.org/​profiles/​16000US3972928​-solon​-oh/. 16. Caryn Aviv and David Shneer, New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 175. See also Bethamie Horowitz, “Old Casks in New Times: The Reshaping of American Jewish Identity in the 21st Century,” in Eli Lederhendler, ed., Ethnicity and Beyond: Theories and Dilemmas of Jewish Group Demarcation. Studies in Contemporary Jewry 25 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 79–­90. 17. Gartner, History, 318–­319. 18. Rubinstein and Avner, Merging Traditions, 222. 19. Rubinstein and Avner, 222. 20. James Hudnut-­Beumler, “Suburbanization and Religion,” in The Cambridge History of Religions in America, vol. 3, 1945 to the Present, ed. Stephen J. Stein (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 123. 21. Riv-­Ellen Prell, “Community and the Discourse of Elegy: The Postwar Suburban Debate,” in Imagining the American Jewish Community, ed. Jack Wertheimer (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press and University Press of New England, 2007), 86. I tip my hat to my good friend and colleague Riv-­Ellen Prell on this point, which she made in the course of a friendly debate between the two of us. On the reassessment of feminist activism within volunteer Jewish women’s organizations, despite the once general assumption that feminism and volunteer women’s community groups had little in common, see Paula E. Hyman’s remarks in the same volume, “Feminism and the American Jewish Community,” in Imagining the American Jewish Community, ed. Jack Wertheimer (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press and University Press of New England, 2007), 244. 22. Orthodox Judaism receives brief mention in Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vols. 2 and 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991; 1996); in a competent entry (“Judaism, Orthodox”) by Jeffrey Gurock in Encyclopedia of Religion in America, ed. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (Washington, D.C.: CQ, 2010), 2:1135–­1141; and pertinent comments are included in cross-­cultural anthologies such as Arnold Eisen, “Choosing Chosenness in America: The Changing Faces of Judaism,” in Immigration and Religion in America: Comparative and Historical Perspectives, ed. Richard Alba, Albert J. Raboteau, and Josh DeWind (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 229, 237, 238–­239. 23. Gartner, History, 311. The term spiritual Depression was used in 1931 to characterize the overall decline of synagogue memberships in American Judaism, and the phrase was quoted

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in the New York Times on August 11 of that year. See Beth Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 184, 254n87. 24. An example is Bob Gries, Five Generations: 175 Years of Love for Cleveland (Cleveland: Bob Gries and Live, 2014). 25. Readers might compare Gerald H. Gamm, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); cf. Raphael, “Jewish Responses,” 541–­563. 26. Uzi Rebhun, The Wandering Jew in America (Boston: Academic, 2011), 19–­22, 61–­116. 27. Lowe, “Limitations of Community Development Partnerships,” 37–­44.

chapter 1

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“A LINK IN THE GREAT AMERICAN CHAIN” the evolution of jewish orthodoxy in cleveland to 1940 Ira Robinson

In 1945 Rabbi Israel Porath characterized the Cleveland Orthodox community as “a link in the Great American Chain.”1 The nineteenth-­century founders of Cleveland’s Jewish community arrived with hardly any notion that Judaism could mean anything other than the traditional Judaism that existed in their ancestral homeland of Unsleben, Bavaria.2 The founders of Cleveland’s Jewish community certainly understood that it was possible, especially in America, to be neglectful of the laws and customs of Judaism.3 Thus the 1839 Alsbacher Document, an ethical will written by the Unsleben religious teacher Lazarus Kohn and given to the immigrants before they left, warned, “Do not turn away from the religion of our fathers . . . Don’t tear yourselves away from the laws in which your fathers and mothers searched for assurance and found it.”4 This chapter sketches the evolution of Orthodoxy in Cleveland up to 1940 and concentrates on issues of rabbinic power, including the development of synagogues, communal organizations, Jewish education, and kashrut (system of Judaic dietary laws).5 After a discussion of the earliest Jewish settlers prior to the coalescence of “Orthodox” Judaism in relation to Reform Judaism, I turn to the religious life of Eastern European immigrants before World War II.6 Comprehensive historical accounts of Orthodoxy in any other major American Jewish community have not yet been attempted.7 This chapter is necessarily preliminary; only a full, comprehensive monograph will truly do justice to this subject.

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Beginnings When in the 1840s Cleveland Jews began to create synagogues, they were designed to adhere as closely as possible to the synagogues known to the Jews of Unsleben. Lloyd Gartner describes the first synagogues as “the two little Orthodox congregations.”8 However, neither the Anshe Chesed nor the Tifereth Israel congregations were “Orthodox” because Orthodoxy implies a religious alternative—­Reform Judaism, which was then coalescing in Europe but strongly manifested its presence in North America only in the mid-­nineteenth century. It was in fact the leadership of Reform Judaism that designated those who resisted its claims to represent Judaism as “Orthodox.”9 When Reform did appeal to American Jews, speaking cogently to their social and religious situation, Gartner notes that certain “Reform” tendencies appeared in Cleveland (sooner in Tifereth Israel than Anshe Chesed). However, both congregations remained essentially traditional for several years, with Anshe Chesed housing a mikvah for ritual purification of women and both congregations employing shoḥtim (persons licensed by rabbinic authority to slaughter animals and poultry in accordance with Judaic law) to supply kosher meat.10 In 1857 the traditionalist leader Isaac Leeser visited Cleveland and observed that “all communities in Cleveland are Orthodox . . . Reform does not seem to have made rapid progress. There are many who keep [the Sabbath] holy.”11 Cleveland’s mid-­nineteenth-­century traditionalist community included Joseph Levy, who had obtained traditional rabbinic ordination in Europe and settled in Cleveland with an extensive library of rabbinic literature but did not seek a rabbinical position. American Reform leader Isaac Mayer Wise, no friend of Orthodoxy, described Levy as “a learned rabbinical Jew of the oldest stamp . . . He stands firm upon the basis of the rabbinical literature, and commands respect from [sic] his religious position by his simple, firm, and decided language.”12 In the 1850s, Levy administered a Jewish divorce (get) in Cleveland that achieved great notoriety locally and nationally. The get was administered without the participation of Cleveland’s only “official” rabbi, Isidor Kalisch. In any event, Cleveland’s Plain Dealer and the Asmonean in New York opposed the Cleveland get, while Isaac Leeser’s Occident and American Jewish Advocate not only supported Levy editorially13 but also published Levy’s Hebrew responsum defending the get’s propriety.14 This constitutes the first rabbinic responsum in Hebrew published in an American periodical.15 In the late nineteenth century, Reform Judaism made important inroads in Jewish Cleveland. Though the degree of liberation from Orthodoxy varied from synagogue to synagogue and family to family, two things are clear: first, by the 1890s, most Jewish immigrants to Cleveland had accommodated themselves to Reform Judaism; second, the established Jewish community had noticed an increasing—­and to them, disturbing—­presence of Eastern European Jews who

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did not share their cultural and religious orientation. Though Eastern European Jews varied greatly in terms of religious belief, ranging from militantly Orthodox to militantly atheist, the acculturated local Jewish establishment tended to regard all Eastern European Jews, whom they considered economically and religiously marginal, as “Orthodox” regardless of their level of Judaic observance.16 In 1895 Emma C. Davis broadly and negatively characterized Jewish newcomers to Cleveland as “these bigoted followers of the orthodox rabbinical law . . . whose minds are stunted, whose characters are warped and who have become adepts and who have grown wily in the evasions of law.”17 This mind-­set of Cleveland’s Jewish elite caused a situation in which the newly arrived Eastern European Jews felt it necessary to establish their own institutions, including both synagogues and self-­help organizations.

Synagogues The immigrant Orthodox synagogues were characterized in an 1887 Cleveland newspaper as showing “the dark side of the European ghetto.”18 What do we know of these institutions in a place Rabbi Solomon Goldman characterized as “the most synagogue-­minded city in the country”?19 I. J. Benjamin, who traveled through the Jewish communities of North America, visited Cleveland in January 1862. Beyond the well-­established Anshe Chesed and Tifereth Israel congregations, he also noticed “a small Polish congregation, recently founded and as yet without a synagogue.”20 This was undoubtedly Anshe Emeth,21 founded by Polish Jews in 1857. Other early congregations included Beth Israel Chevra Kadisha (Lithuanian, 1860)22 and B’nai Jeshurun (Hungarian, 1866).23 The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia entry for Cleveland counted “no less than eleven minor congregations, mostly Russian, with a combined membership of 700—­the largest of them, Beth Hamidrash Hagodol Beth Israel having 600 seat-­holders.”24 The list of congregations in Cleveland in the first volume of the American Jewish Year Book (AJYB), covering 1899–­1900, also lists eleven.25 In 1923 Gartner states the number of Orthodox congregations as sixteen,26 while seventeen Orthodox synagogues are listed in the 1935 Cleveland directory.27 The proliferation of Orthodox congregations in Cleveland followed patterns common to most American Jewish communities. Synagogues were formed on the basis of European place of origin. Another criterion was liturgy, with some congregations praying in the Ashkenazic liturgy prevalent in much of Eastern Europe and others, like Nusach Ari—­a congregation founded in 1906 that was apparently Hasidic (“a sect entirely new to Cleveland Judaism”)—­praying with the liturgy of Nusach Sfard or Nusach Ari.28 Ultimately, a Hasidic rabbi, ha-­rav ha zaddik (“the righteous rabbi”) Meir Leifer, became the rabbi of Anshe Marmoresh Bnei Yaakov and founded a dynasty as the “Clevelander Rebbe,” living in Cleveland from 1922 until 1934, when he moved to Brooklyn, New York.29

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Sabbath observance was another criterion. Cleveland’s Orthodox synagogues conducted themselves in completely traditional ways, but many congregants were no longer strict observers because of America’s overwhelming economic reality, where jobs enabling Sabbath observance were few.30 In contrast, some congregations wished to attract strictly Sabbath-­ observant members. Thus members of the Synagogue of the Government of Grodno pledged to refrain from labor on Saturdays and Jewish holidays,31 and the Hungarian congregation Shomre Shabbos, founded in 1905 on East Thirty-­Seventh Street, accepted only Sabbath observers as members.32 Yet another issue leading to the proliferation of synagogues was internal strife. The issue of separate seating for men and women, which largely defined the differences between Orthodox and non-­Orthodox congregations,33 arose in B’nai Jeshurun in 1904. B’nai Jeshurun’s adoption of mixed seating led to the founding of an Orthodox breakaway congregation, Oheb Zedek.34 Anshe Emeth had already debated this issue in the late 1880s. In the case of Anshe Emeth, however, the dispute was essentially contained until the 1920s, when the congregation, now united with Congregation Beth Tefilo and transmogrified into the Jewish Center, amid great strife opted for mixed seating in 1924 under the leadership of Rabbi Solomon Goldman.35 In response to this momentous change, Orthodox elements in the congregation determined to fight what they regarded as a betrayal of Orthodoxy by their congregation. They were advised by Rabbi Samuel Benjamin, who opposed mixed seating and was therefore ousted as the congregation’s rabbi. The faction founded a short-­lived newspaper as a rival to Samuel Rocker’s Die Yiddishe Velt (Jewish world, hereafter JW) whose main purpose was to fight Rabbi Goldman and the Jewish Center.36 The opposition presented by the Orthodox group, which called itself the “Committee of 100,” culminated in a lawsuit against Rabbi Goldman and the congregation, alleging that the synagogue’s constitution provided that the congregation must remain Orthodox. The Jewish Center and Rabbi Goldman responded that the congregation’s ritual and practice remained fully in accordance with traditional Judaism. The issue in the trial became, therefore, What constitutes Orthodoxy?37 The congregation’s official self-­justification in response to the suit illustrates the extent to which “Orthodox” congregations in Cleveland were subject to “Reform” influences: It is true that our congregation was founded sixty years ago, but for more than a quarter of a century it has been moving in the direction of what is generally known as Conservative Judaism. Some twenty years ago we engaged as our spiritual leader the late Rabbi Samuel Margolis, who was known to shave, to eat without a hat, and seldom if ever attended daily services. Our congregation never pretended to be Orthodox. We have had late Friday evening service for

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Ira Robinson more than a decade. We have had religious school and confirmation of boys and girls together for about fifteen years . . . Ours was also one of the first congregations to join the United Synagogue of America. In 1921 prior to Rabbi Goldman’s coming to our congregation we considered a merger with a well-­ known Conservative congregation in Cleveland.38

In the original trial, which attracted worldwide attention, the judge ruled that the court had no jurisdiction over a purely religious issue.39 The Orthodox plaintiffs appealed, and initially the court of appeals granted a temporary injunction against the Jewish Center and its rabbi, enjoining them from using the synagogue as a Conservative house of worship. It ordered a retrial, contending the synagogue was a trust formed for Orthodox purposes and that its trustees could not change the synagogue ritual from Orthodox to Conservative.40 However, the Orthodox victory was short lived. The Jewish Center brought the issue before another appellate court, which concurred with the original decision that the case was “a strictly ecclesiastical question” and again dismissed the suit.41 The Supreme Court of Ohio, in December 1929, upheld that decision.42 The Jewish Center case served to more clearly demarcate the often fuzzy line between “Orthodox” and “Conservative” and caused much bitterness on both sides. Rabbi Goldman in particular, disliked by the Orthodox side, reciprocated and harbored what Leon Wiesenfeld describes as a virulent hatred of the Orthodox, whom “if he had the power, he would have exiled . . . to Siberia, as long as not to have them in Cleveland.”43

Organizations By the early twentieth century, Orthodox Jews had arrived in sufficient numbers and had acquired enough experience to realize that they had not achieved the recognition by the established Jewish community to which they felt entitled. In 1911 Rabbi N. H. Ebin and JW editor Samuel Rocker demanded that “the Orthodox element of the community” be more represented on the board of the Council Educational Alliance. Even though the Alliance responded by appointing Ebin, Rocker, and others as Orthodox representatives, the issue did not rest.44 In 1923 Cleveland’s Jewish Federation commissioned a report by Samuel A. Goldsmith that pinpointed Orthodox discontent as a major issue. Goldsmith recommended that Mt. Sinai Hospital provide kosher food despite the “personal customs or attitudes of the members of the board of trustees,” that the federation should close on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, and that it assume responsibility for Jewish education.45 The Goldsmith report recommendations

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were certainly not implemented to the satisfaction of the Orthodox, as we see in a 1924 Jewish Telegraphic Agency report on the annual community chest drive: When the various sums allotted to each charitable and philanthropic organization of the city were announced our orthodox element found that they were not given their fair share. They . . . were not given anything even remotely approaching what is due them in proportion to the substantial sums contributed to the Community Chest each year by the orthodox Jews . . . it seems the orthodox Jews are considered step-­children and are regarded with disfavor and suspicion.46

It was only in 1926 that the federation offered its first financial assistance to Orthodox Jewish institutions,47 and during the lean times of the Great Depression, it refused to financially rescue Orthodox institutions, leaving an acute “mutual bitterness” that lasted for decades.48 The insensitivity of the federation to the needs of Orthodox Jews resulted in the establishment of parallel communal organizations specifically designed to serve the Orthodox. In 1906 an Orthodox home for the elderly opened because the existing Montefiore Home for Aged and Infirm Israelites would not serve kosher food.49 Similarly, an Orthodox Jewish home for children, chartered in May 1919 and opened in August 1920 as the Orthodox Jewish Orphan Asylum, was an alternative to the existing Jewish Orphan Home, which was directed by a Reform rabbi and had a predominantly Reform board of trustees. The Orthodox home was established to raise the orphans in an “Orthodox Jewish spirit” and to place them with Orthodox families.50

Rabbis Many rabbis came to Cleveland to serve the Orthodox community. They shared a commitment to Talmudic learning and Judaic law (halakha) but were divided by geographic origin. Rabbis from Lithuania, for example, did not necessarily get along with rabbis from Hungary.51 Rabbis also opposed each other because there were so few opportunities for them to make a decent living. Many of the synagogues they served could not give them an adequate salary, so most rabbis depended economically on positions in the kosher meat industry as rabbinical supervisors or, failing that, in positions of lesser prestige and income, like slaughterers (shoḥtim) and inspectors (mashgiḥim). The persistent lack of enough positions meant that rabbis found themselves in tight economic competition, a major cause of the chaotic kashrut situation until the 1940s.52 Despite these divisive forces, Eastern European Jews in Cleveland tried several times to unite the Orthodox community and rabbinate. These attempts, however, could not withstand the powerful forces militating against Orthodox unity.

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In his survey of Jewish Cleveland, Wiesenfeld speaks of an unspecified “ludicrous attempt made by several Orthodox rabbis to elect in Cleveland a chief rabbi. The attempt ended in a fiasco and a scandal.”53 There are several incidents to which Wiesenfeld might have referred. The first was in 1890, when an unnamed rabbi (reportedly from Pittsburgh) was elected chief rabbi of several Cleveland congregations but did not remain in the city for more than a few weeks.54 A second possibility may have been the formation of the “Council of Cleveland Rabbis” reported in volume seventeen of the American Jewish Year Book (AJYB), 1915–­1916. A third possibility happened when, in 1918, twenty-­four members of the Union of Orthodox Congregations of Cleveland offered the chief rabbinate of Cleveland to Rabbi Maier Jung of London, who ultimately did not take up this offer. However, his son, Rabbi Leo Jung, did come to Cleveland to be the rabbi of Congregation Knesseth Israel, beginning his distinguished career in the American rabbinate there, which lasted from 1920 to 1922.55 A fourth possibility concerns Rabbi Benjamin Gittelson (1853–­1932), who came to Cleveland in 1890 as the rabbi of Beth Hamidrash Hagodol Beth Israel, the area’s largest Orthodox congregation. Upon his death in 1932, he was called “zekan ha-­rabbonim.”56 This signified a senior rabbi primus inter pares. He was prominent enough to feature among the rabbis profiled in AJYB in 1904.57 Despite Gittelson’s prominence and publications,58 he was not able to assert leadership over more than a few congregations.59 Resistance to his leadership is evident in an obituary that described Gittelson’s first years in the city, when he likely would have tried to exert a leadership role, as not successful (gliklekh) because the Cleveland congregations did not live in peace, his income (parnose) was not plentiful, and he had therefore devoted himself to the study of Torah.60 An Orthodox rabbinical leader who never vied for the title of chief rabbi but whose career in Cleveland made a significant impact was Rabbi Samuel Margolies (1879–­1917).61 Margolies came to Cleveland uniquely prepared for the American Orthodox rabbinate. He was the son of one of the most prominent Orthodox rabbis in America, Moses Sebulun Margolies. His family sent him to Lithuania for yeshiva training. When he returned, he entered Harvard College, graduating in 1902. He came to Cleveland in 1904 to become the rabbi of Anshe Emeth with the ability to preach and interact with his congregants in both English and Yiddish. His rabbinical duties included encouraging the establishment of an Orthodox congregation in Glenville, Beth Tefilo, which merged with Anshe Emeth in 1916 and gave rise to the formation of the Jewish center on East 105th Street in the early 1920s. As the city’s first English-­speaking Orthodox spokesman,62 Margolies helped to lead a number of short-­lived initiatives to unite the Eastern European community. These included the Union of Jewish Organizations (1906–­1909), which attempted to unite some forty-­five community organizations;63 a 1913 attempt to organize a Cleveland branch of the Union of Orthodox

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Jewish Congregations of America that hoped to unite all local Orthodox communities;64 and the Cleveland kehilla (1913–­1914).65 The Orthodox rabbi who over his decades-­long career in Cleveland most approximated the role of chief rabbi was Israel Porath (1886–­1974).66 In 1925 Rabbi Porath, who served a congregation in Plainfield, New Jersey, came to Cleveland for a convention and was offered a position by Congregation Oheb Zedek.67 Beyond his rabbinic erudition, Rabbi Porath brought to Cleveland an ability to articulate his ideas in nearly flawless English.68 By 1927 Rabbi Porath had visibly taken a leading role in Cleveland’s Orthodox rabbinate and was well on his way to attaining the position of representative Orthodox rabbi in Cleveland.69 Yet Rabbi Porath did not achieve a full leadership position at this point. In 1929 members of the Cleveland Orthodox community imported Rabbi Judah Levenberg (1884–­1938) of New Haven, intending to make him the primary Orthodox rabbi and his yeshiva, which he brought with him, the first institute of Talmudic learning in Cleveland.70 Rabbi Levenberg’s failed attempt to impose his rabbinic leadership on Cleveland Jewry will be detailed below. The fate of his yeshiva will be discussed in the context of Orthodox education in Cleveland.

Education Cleveland’s Eastern European Jews sent their children to public schools. Until the 1940s, Jewish parents who desired a Jewish education for their children relied on institutions that supplemented public school education and met after school or on weekends. Samuel Margolies expressed the nearly universal opinion of Cleveland Jewry when he stated, “We do not favor parochial schools.”71 What supplementary alternatives were available? Sunday schools met once weekly. The Orthodox Sunday School movement in Cleveland was clearly inspired by the dominant Cleveland Reform model,72 a phenomenon noted by several Cleveland rabbis, including both Levenberg and Porath.73 Reform influence was also apparent to the young people themselves. Cleveland Orthodox leader Abraham Katz recalls that as a boy, he and his father “came together in a little Shul to pray and my friends attended temples decorated beautifully.” He asked his father, “Why can’t we have such beautiful temples to pray in?”74 At the Cleveland Jewish Center, still officially Orthodox in the early 1920s, the congregation adopted confirmation for the youth, a clear Reform influence.75 Reform seemed well-­nigh irresistible. As Rabbi Porath stated, one had to “fight against the current [of Reform] by going with the current.”76 Rabbi Porath discussed his own congregation’s Sunday school, which was by far its most popular educational offering, stating, “I must admit that I am not too much of an advocator [sic] of the Sunday school system. If parents think that they do their best by sending their little ones on Sunday only for two hours . . . they make a big mistake. If

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you want your children to become acquainted with Jewish religion, and be able to [pray] and read, you must send them at [sic] the Hebrew daily.”77 The “Hebrew daily” met several times weekly and thus could present a wider curriculum. A number of these afternoon Hebrew schools existed in Cleveland. The most prominent was the Cleveland Hebrew Schools, called the “Talmud Torah.” These schools, which trace their history in Cleveland to 1885, began to teach their students the Hebrew language in Hebrew (‘ivrit be-­‘ivrit), foregoing the traditional method of translating sacred texts like the Pentateuch into Yiddish.78 This innovation, along with the perceived secularism of some of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools leaders like A. H. Friedland, discomfited traditionalists. Thus Rabbi Phillip Rosenberg issued an undated two-­page circular, likely in the 1920s, exhorting Cleveland Jews not to entrust their children’s education to one (clearly meaning Friedland) who had given a public address praising the Jewish “apostate” Baruch Spinoza. Instead, Rabbi Rosenberg appealed to parents to send their children to the Yeshivath Adath Bnei Israel (YABI), a school more in line with traditional Judaic education as practiced in Eastern Europe.79 Gartner characterized YABI, established in 1915, as “more or less a large ḥeder and provid[ing] bar mitzvah preparation.”80 It was certainly that, but another important factor was YABI’s attention, at least in the higher grades, to Talmud study. Study of the Talmud had existed in Cleveland at least since the mid-­nineteenth century and was actively pursued, as seen in Rabbi Gittelson’s first book (1898), which largely consists of addresses at the ceremonial ending of Talmud study.81 Porath, remembering the Cleveland community of the 1920s, recalled synagogues “with Torah scholars studying daily classes in Gemara [the Talmud], Mishna, Eyn Yaakov, etc.”82 JW in 1923 advertised a Talmud study group in the Ohel Jacob synagogue.83 That same year, Ḥayyim Mikhl Frank, proprietor of a Hebrew bookstore, advertised volumes of Shas [Talmud] Mishna and Eyn Yaakov.84 But for the most part, Talmud study in Cleveland remained an adult activity and, as Samuel Rocker remarked, one that attracted fewer and fewer men. In Rocker’s words, “We have abandoned [Talmud study] completely and forgotten it . . . Talmud study has become the possession of a few individuals, while the people as a whole has no part in it . . . If this present situation will continue for the period of two or three generations, then, God forbid, the teaching of the Talmud will be forgotten among us, and even more so among our descendants in our country.”85 There were efforts to reverse this trend. In August 1923, the Cleveland Talmud Torah branch at 2491 East Fifty-­Fifth Street announced classes in Talmud study, which had hitherto been notable for its absence in the Cleveland Hebrew Schools curriculum.86 However, it was YABI especially that tried to promote the cause of Talmud study among Cleveland’s youth. In October 1923, JW reported a YABI celebration featuring a recitation by boys studying the Talmud (gemore kinder): The Talmud, that wondrous source of wisdom and science, has been here in Cleveland a closed book for our children. The Yeshiva [YABI] has demonstrated

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Figure 1.1  Talmud Torah, Cedar Branch, Cleveland Hebrew School & Institute, 8908 Cedar Avenue, 1910s. (WRHS)

that also with American children one can learn Gemara and Tosafot with great understanding. It has also demonstrated to Cleveland Jews that the Yeshiva is the only spiritual center where Jewish children will be educated according to the correct traditional Orthodox spirit.87

However, all these efforts did not make much of a dent. Rabbi Porath devoted his scholarly work to writing Mavo’ ha-­Talmud, a guide to making Talmud study easier both for young students who had never studied Gemara and for adults who had forgotten the learning of their youth.88 In 1938, he stated that in all of Cleveland, there were perhaps only twenty-­five children studying the Talmud, and that in all of the American yeshivot, there were perhaps four students from Cleveland.89 A serious attempt to rectify this situation was a project to establish an advanced school of Talmudic learning in Cleveland. In 1929 Rabbi Judah Heshel Levenberg moved to Cleveland from New Haven with a mandate to bring his yeshiva, commonly referred to as the Yeshiva of New Haven. It became known in Hebrew as the “New Haven Yeshiva in Cleveland” and in English variously as the “Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary of America” and the “Rabbinical Seminary and College of Talmud.”90 This experiment lasted until Rabbi Levenberg’s death in 1938. Coming to Cleveland, Rabbi Levenberg had been promised by his Cleveland backers

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a salary of five thousand dollars a year as well as an initial funding of eighteen thousand dollars for his yeshiva, which at that time boasted forty students.91 One of the reasons, perhaps, for his choice of Cleveland over New Haven was that the latter was too close to New York, whereas in Cleveland, “there was no Torah institution [mossad Torah] in it or in the nearby communities.”92 The experiment did not go well. There was internal dissension among the yeshiva faculty,93 and the Depression hit hard. By 1932 the yeshiva appealed to the Jews of Cleveland for five thousand dollars to keep its doors open.94 At its end, Rabbi Levenberg’s yeshiva was reportedly down to fourteen students.95 Levenberg’s death finally killed the yeshiva. What undoubtedly helped to cause his premature death was his failed attempt to bring order to the kosher meat industry of Cleveland, detailed in the following section.

Kashrut Kashrut in early twentieth-­century North America seemed to lend itself to conflict. Harold Gastwirth’s study of kosher meat in New York bore the title Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness.96 Timothy D. Lytton titled a chapter in his more recent book on the industry “Rivalry and Racketeering: The Failures of Kosher Meat Supervision, 1850–­1940.”97 There was an inherent conflict of

Figure 1.2 Local 625 Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen sign, in English and Yiddish, undated. (WRHS)

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interest among rabbinical supervisors, slaughterers, inspectors, meatpackers, wholesalers, proprietors of retail meat markets, and consumers. Most important was the nonhierarchical nature of the rabbinate, which meant that with respect to kashrut supervision, each rabbi could and did set up shop for himself and would resist anyone attempting to set themselves up as a rabbi with greater authority. It was a recipe for disaster. And disaster came to Cleveland’s kosher meat industry. Kashrut in Cleveland, in the words of Rabbi Porath, “embittered our communal life for decades” and “constantly brought with it so much desecration [ḥillul ha-­shem] and distress [agmat nefesh] that it seemed that kosher meat and conflict were like Siamese twins that cannot be separated.”98 Isaac Ever, Rabbi Levenberg’s son-­in-­law and biographer, could only agree. He expressed his opinion that never in the history of American Judaism was the problem of kashrut greater than it was in Cleveland.99 Consumers never liked that the costs of certification made kosher meat more expensive. In 1923 an advertisement of the Warshaver Kosher Sausage Manufacturing Company presented the supervision team for its “strictly kosher” sausage and requested public understanding that because of the costs of kashrut, Warshaver’s price was two cents per pound higher than other sausage.100 But public patience with this price differential wore thin, especially in a general social climate opposed to cartels and price fixing. The members of the Kosher Retail Butcher’s Association of Cleveland not infrequently felt the public’s anger.101 Consumer discontent was given public expression in a 1906 strike against the high price of kosher meat, similar to a 1902 women’s strike against the same in New York.102 Price was also the main issue in a Cleveland kosher meat strike in 1928 that ended when Reform rabbi Barnett R. Brickner, acting as impartial arbitrator, brought about a reduction of two cents per pound in the price of kosher meat.103 Discontent at the price of kosher meat was a recurring theme among Cleveland Jews into the late twentieth century.104 Beyond price, there was the issue of trustworthiness. Was the meat bought by the Jewish public in Cleveland really kosher? The answer was rarely an unequivocal yes. Recriminations among kosher butchers and rabbis disparaging their competitors occurred frequently.105 By the 1920s, the idea had spread among several Cleveland rabbis that the city’s kashrut troubles could be solved by uniting all Orthodox rabbis into one organization supported by an Orthodox lay leadership.106 But how? In the mid-­1920s, one attempt was the Shechita Board, which listed Benjamin Gittelson as its “Chief Rabbi” and Benjamin Botwin as its chairman.107 Another attempt in the late 1920s was made by Israel Porath, who presented himself as the “Chairman, Union of Orthodox Rabbis of Cleveland, Ohio.”108 In describing his frustration as well as his vision of the way forward, Rabbi Porath stated, “The Orthodox rabbis of the city have worked indefatigable [sic] for the last four months . . . and it was all in vain, for the only reason, that

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Cleveland does not have a ‘Vaad haKehilloth’ Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations or an organized Kehilla, which will take over the business leadership of the arrangement.”109 He further stated that “the voluntary [freivilige] work of the rabbis is not enough to solve the kashrut problem.”110 He foresaw that the answer to the problem might be to strengthen Orthodox participation in Cleveland’s Jewish Community Council.111 Porath’s opinion was seconded in a March 1929 JW editorial, which stated that on the issue of kashrut, Orthodoxy had failed Cleveland Jews.112 Porath was unable to get all Cleveland Orthodox rabbis on board with his plan and had no authority to do more than persuade. To assist him, a delegation of rabbis from outside Cleveland (one of several over the years) was invited in August 1929 to try to forge a compromise that Cleveland’s rabbis themselves had been unable to achieve. One of the members of this delegation, Rabbi Judah Levenberg (soon to move himself and his yeshiva from New Haven to Cleveland), described the kashrut situation as “horrible [shreklikher] chaos.”113 As a result, a conference of rabbis and lay leadership in 1930 led to the founding of the Vaad ha-­Kashrut, a body that would responsibly support kashrut in Cleveland, thus fulfilling Rabbi Porath’s vision.114 However, neither Porath nor Levenberg, who had in the meantime moved to Cleveland, were able to unite all of Cleveland’s Orthodox rabbis. Those opposed to the Vaad ha-­Kashrut took an internal communal feud to a secular court. In January 1930, Judge Homer G. Powell ruled that the rabbis of the Vaad ha-­ Kashrut were not permitted to issue prohibitory decrees against slaughterhouses not under their supervision. What led to this ruling was that Benjamin Cohen, a kosher meat wholesaler affiliated with Swift & Co. Meat Packing, had refused to recognize the authority of the Vaad ha-­Kashrut. He determined to break its power by underselling kosher meat. In response, the Vaad ha-­Kashrut rabbis issued a proclamation against Swift & Co., alleging that meat coming from that plant was not kosher. Another rabbi, Benjamin Botwin, who had been involved with Rabbi Gittelson on the Shechita Board in the 1920s, declared that the rabbis’ ban contradicted Jewish law. The Vaad ha-­Kashrut then picketed the stores owned by Cohen where the allegedly nonkosher meat was being sold. This action sent Cohen to court with a petition for a restraining order, charging that the Vaad ha-­Kashrut was racketeering through limiting production and thus fixing prices.115 Judge Powell’s decision restrained the Vaad ha-­Kashrut from asserting orally or in writing that the Swift & Co. meat sold by Cohen was not kosher.116 Cohen then asked the court for a permanent injunction against the rabbis opposing him. Testifying on his own behalf, Cohen claimed his opponents were in cahoots with “gangsters” in order to “put him and his retail butchers not under supervision out of business.” An attempt to bring about an out-­of-­court settlement failed.117 When the trial resumed, Botwin, a former slaughterer and now

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the chief supervisor in the Swift plant, took the stand. He testified that whatever decisions the rabbis of the Vaad ha-­Kashrut had reached were contrary to Jewish law. Using Talmudic citations, Botwin tried to disprove the claim that rabbis could ban a slaughterer or that supervision over slaughterhouses and butcher shops was required.118 In the end, the publicity given the case in Cleveland and beyond caused the management of Swift to attempt a compromise through a rabbinical reconciliation committee of five, composed of two locals, two out-­of-­towners, and one rabbi from the Union of Orthodox Rabbis.119 In the out-­of-­court settlement, Swift agreed to give the Vaad ha-­Kashrut and its rabbis full recognition. However, Cohen remained opposed to the agreement, declaring he would not recognize the Vaad ha-­Kashrut. The issue continued to divide the community.120 In 1932, the underlying tension broke out again when Rabbi Levenberg attempted to unite the Orthodox leadership of Cleveland and resolve the problem of kashrut under his leadership. This attempt embraced almost all Cleveland Orthodox rabbis, but predictably not everyone joined.121 Levenberg’s organization, the Federation of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (Va’ad ha-­Kehillot), claimed to represent twenty-­one Orthodox congregations in Cleveland and had nearly fifteen thousand members. As a possible resolution, the Va’ad ha-­Kehillot proposed to have its bet din elected by popular vote, in the hope this would give it the mandate required to regulate kashrut. The procedure was possibly inspired by the fact that the State of Ohio popularly elects all judges.122 In this election, over three thousand voters, both women and men, gave Rabbi Levenberg the preponderance of votes (1,770) and only 689 to his nearest rival, Rabbi Krislov.123 Opponents, however, charged that the vote was fraudulent and that Rabbi Levenberg’s partisans had brought in non-­Jews to vote for him.124 In December 1932, Levenberg’s new organization called for the investigation of Cleveland’s kosher butcher shops for alleged price racketeering and other irregularities. It also hoped, in partnership with municipal food inspectors, to regulate sanitation, stabilize prices, and eliminate fraud by creating kosher market licenses. These licenses would be issued by the city and supervised by a committee of rabbis to be appointed by the mayor. A first step in this direction would be an investigation by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office of the newly established Independent Kosher Meat Association.125 This threat unleashed “a wave of racketeering and crime” involving kosher shops, including broken windows and stench bombs. This was capped off by two incidents in which a Jewish poultry market owned by William Danches was bombed, possibly because Danches’s shop charged only five cents for the killing of chickens, undercutting the standard ten-­cent rate. The second time, the explosion reportedly “ripped a hole in the wall of the poultry market and tore down the roof.” Danches told police that he had recently refused to pay two cents on

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each chicken killed at his market to a “racket organization.” By this, he meant the Federation of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, which demanded that there be a two-­cent charge on each chicken slaughtered to help defray supervision expenses, a demand many poultry slaughterers resisted.126 On the basis of the testimonies of William Danches, Mrs. Danches, and Yeshaiah Bauer (a poultry slaughterer),127 police warrants were issued by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office for three men accused by Danches of having threatened him.128 The result was the arrest of Rabbi Levenberg at 3:00 a.m. on a Friday. He was held by police all day before being released. The next Sunday, the rabbi’s arrest was protested by an estimated two thousand five-­hundred people and resulted in an apology from Director of Public Safety Frank J. Merrick and dismissal of the charges against Rabbi Levenberg.129 That did not mark the end of Rabbi Levenberg’s troubles, however. In early April 1933, a brick was thrown through the window of his home. As the JTA reported, “The brick was wrapped in a circular on one side of which was printed: ‘This is only a warning. Steps will follow.’ On the other side was written a protest against the discharge of Herman Weisberger, a shoḥet, from the American Poultry Market.”130 In the meantime, rabbis opposed to Levenberg, led by Phillip Rosenberg, organized a rival Misrad ha-­Rabbonim of Cleveland that became a thorn in Rabbi Levenberg’s side.131 The Misrad, which reportedly included Rabbis Rosenberg, Berger, Eckstein, Shapiro, and Schwartz, was in a fairly strong position because it maintained contracts with Swift & Co. and thus did not feel the need to compromise.132 Those rabbis—­like Porath, Polay, and Krislov, who continued talking to both sides—­became suspect.133 With rabbis fighting among themselves, the sixty-­four members of the Independent Kosher Meat Association did not know whom to obey and resolved not to let any kashrut supervisors (mashgiḥim) into their shops.134 On September 4, 1933, a JW editorial wrote of Cleveland kashrut as lawless (hefker) despite efforts made by the union of the twenty-­nine Orthodox congregations to create order. The editorial mentioned yet another delegation of outside rabbis led by Rabbi Eliezer Silver of Cincinnati.135 In another editorial, in 1934 JW stated that while there had never been a time when disputes over kashrut had not existed, the current level of dissension had not been witnessed in Cleveland or elsewhere among American Jews.136 This chaotic situation lasted for several years. In 1940 Rabbi Porath, who had returned to a leadership position among Cleveland’s Orthodox rabbis after Rabbi Levenberg’s death, reported that Cleveland’s Jews had lived for many years without any supervision (hashgaḥa) of kosher meat. He stated that the “truly kosher” butchers could not meet their competitors’ prices, and consumers were never sure that the meat they were buying was kosher. He further reported that there was not one restaurant in Cleveland that was reliably kosher.137 This is starkly depicted in the report of the Committee of Kashruth of the Jewish Community Council,

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chaired by Rabbi Porath and dated December 20, 1939, which stated, “The actual Kashruth situation remains the same as before, with no supervision of the retail meat markets leaving the way open to misrepresentation and fraud . . . It is now clear that the Orthodox rabbis as a group are not seeking the assistance and cooperation of the Council and . . . some of them are in fact opposing it.”138 However, the situation was changing. In March 1940, Rabbi Porath reported to the Jewish Community Council concerning a new rabbinic organization called the Orthodox Rabbinical Council (Merkaz ha-­Rabbonim). This organization had somehow managed to achieve the unity that had eluded previous Orthodox rabbinical organizations in Cleveland. According to the report, the Merkaz now included all but one Cleveland Orthodox rabbi, and that holdout had agreed to abide by its decisions. As a result, Porath reported that rabbinical inspection of kashrut in the city had recommended the appointment of a full-­time mashgiḥim, which he also advocated.139 In 1941 the Merkaz ha-­Rabbonim created a permanent rabbinical court with sessions in both the Beth Hamidrash Hagodol on East 105th Street and the Educational Alliance on Kinsman Street, thus covering both major Jewish neighborhoods and attesting to the group’s success.140 The establishment of the Merkaz ha-­Rabbonim enabled a partnership between a united Cleveland Orthodox rabbinate and the city’s Jewish Federation that created a stable basis for kashrut lasting several decades. This rabbinate–­federation partnership was an important factor in the Federation’s efforts to stabilize Jewish neighborhoods after the midcentury move to the suburbs. Taylor Road became the central address of the Orthodox, with another concentration of Orthodox institutions on Green Road in Beachwood. The founding of Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland in 1941 by Orthodox Jewish refugees significantly influenced Cleveland Orthodoxy. The most important of all Telshe initiatives was the 1943 founding of Hebrew Academy, the first day school in Cleveland and among the first outside New York. By the late 1970s, the established structure of Cleveland kashrut came under pressure from that section of the Orthodox community that looked to the Yeshiva for guidance and which demanded stricter kashrut standards. In 1993 this resulted in the founding of the Vaad ha-­Kashrut of Cleveland (VKC), a joint venture of the Merkaz ha-­Rabbonim and the Jewish Community Federation. But unlike the rabbinate–­federation partnership that had underpinned the previous Kashruth Board, the VKC was the result of the Federation’s desire to phase out its nearly half-­ century support of kashrut in Cleveland. VKC and Merkaz ha-­Rabbonim both ceased operations in 1998. Replacing the VKC were three kashrut organizations: Cleveland Kosher, Reliable Kashrut, and the Vaad ha-­Rabbonim ha-­Chareidim. Federation statistics show that as of 2011, Orthodox Jews constituted 18 percent of Cleveland’s approximately eighty thousand Jews, up from 14 percent in 1996 and 8.9 percent in 1980. Significantly, Orthodox Jews constitute a full 33 percent of young adults ages eighteen to thirty-­four and will likely be an increasingly important element within the Jewish community for the foreseeable future.

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notes 1. Israel Porath, “Der Tzveyter Hurbn fun Klivlander Orthodoksishe Shuln,” Die Yiddishe Velt (Jewish world, hereafter JW), March 28, 1945, 2. See also Ira Robinson, “The Second Destruction of Cleveland Orthodox Synagogues: Rabbi Israel Porath and Cleveland Jewry at the Crossroads, 1945,” American Jewish Archives 71, no. 1 (2019): 46–­56. 2. Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Cleveland (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1978). 3. Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 62–­134. 4. Sally H. Wertheim and Alan D. Bennett, eds., Remembering: Cleveland’s Jewish Voices (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2011), 196. 5. The later period is addressed in Ira Robinson, “The Evolution of the Orthodox Jewish Community in Cleveland, Ohio, 1940 to the Present,” Studies in Judaism, Humanities, and the Social Sciences 2.2 (Spring 2019), 105–­119. 6. Jacob Katz, “Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,” in Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. 2, ed. Peter H. Medding (Bloomington, Minn.: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1986), 3–­17. 7. Jeffrey Gurock published a comprehensive examination of a smaller Orthodox community: Orthodoxy in Charleston: Brith Sholom Beth Israel and American Jewish History (Charleston, S.C.: College of Charleston Library and Brith Sholom Beth Israel, 2004). Cf. Ira Robinson, Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Immigrant Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896–­1930 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007). 8. Gartner, History, 31. 9. Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 225–­263. 10. Gartner, History, 33–­34, 38–­39. 11. Gartner, 35. 12. Gartner, 38. 13. Gartner, 37. 14. “Mr. Joseph Levy, of Cleveland, Ohio,” Occident and American Jewish Advocate 10, no. 4 (1852), accessed January 25, 2015, http://​www​.jewish​-history​.com/​occident/​volume10/​jul1852/​ cleveland​.html. 15. Email from Zev Eleff, February 11, 2015. See his “Power, Pulpits and Pews: Religious Authority and the Formation of American Judaism, 1816–­1885” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, May 2015), 91–­93. 16. Leon Wiesenfeld, Jewish Life in Cleveland in the 1920s and 1930s: The Memoirs of a Jewish Journalist (Cleveland: Jewish Voice Pictorial, n.d.), 61. 17. Cited in Gartner, History, 110. 18. Gartner, 162. 19. Solomon Goldman, Crisis and Decision (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1938), 162. 20. I. J. Benjamin, Three Years in America, 1859–­1862, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1956), 281. 21. The name of the congregation Anshe Emeth (Men of Truth) is possibly a dialectical comment on the name of the more established Anshe Chesed (Men of Lovingkindness). 22. Gartner, History, 50. 23. Wertheim and Bennett, Remembering, 7. 24. Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Cleveland,” accessed February 10, 015, http://​www​.jewish encyclopedia​.com/​articles/​4420​-cleveland. 25. American Jewish Year Book (hereafter AJYB), vol. 1 (1899–­1900), accessed February 10, 2015, http://​www​.ajcarchives​.org/​AJC​_DATA/​Files/​1899​_1900​_5​_LocalOrgs​.pdf. 26. Gartner, History, 142. 27. Sidney Z. Vincent and Judah Rubinstein, Merging Traditions: Jewish Life in Cleveland (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society and the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, 1978), 223.

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28. Gartner, History, 177. Cf. Ira Robinson, “Anshe Sfard: The Creation of the First Hasidic Congregations in North America,” American Jewish Archives 57 (2005): 53–­66. 29. JW, July 23, 1923, 2; JW, August 29, 1923, 2; Wikipedia, s.v. “Cleveland (Hasidic Dynasty),” accessed March 20, 2018, http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​wiki/​Cleveland​_​(Hasidic​_dynasty). 30. A key issue was finding employment that did not involve working on the Sabbath. Cleveland’s Jewish Sabbath Association was founded to help. Brudno’s cigar factory offered the observant a welcoming atmosphere for observance and Torah discussion. See AJYB, vol. 14 (1912–­1913); Joseph Morgenstern, I Have Considered My Days (New York: Ykuf, 1964), 113–­114; Wertheim and Bennett, Remembering, 87. 31. Gartner, History, 133, 177. 32. Jeffrey Morris, “Congregation Shomre Shabbos,” in Jeffrey Morris, The Haymarket to the Heights (self-­pub., 2014), accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jewishhistorycleveland​ .com/​uploads/​1/​1/​4/​4/​11441299/​shomre​_shabbosjult152013​.pdf; Gartner presents a founding date of 1906 in History, 177. 33. For an Orthodox perspective, see Baruch Litwin, ed., The Sanctity of the Synagogue (New York: Spero Foundation, 1959). 34. Gartner, History, 168–­169. 35. Ira Robinson, “A ‘Jewish Monkey Trial’: The Cleveland Jewish Center and the Emerging Borderline between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism in 1920s North America,” American Jewish Archives Journal 68, no. 2 (2016): 90–­118. 36. Wiesenfeld, Jewish Life, 68. This attempt to found a rival newspaper was disparaged in JW, October 13, 1922. Abraham A. Katz Archives, private collection in Cleveland, Ohio. 37. “Testimony to Establish What Is Orthodoxy Will Be Presented in Courts,” JTA, November  4, 1927, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1927/​11/​04/​archive/​testimony​-to​ -establish​-what​-is​-orthodoxy​-will​-be​-presented​-in​-courts. 38. “Cleveland Center Leaders Reply to Orthodox Charges in Well Known Controversy,” JTA, November 20, 1927, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1927/​11/​20/​archive/​ cleveland​-center​-leaders​-reply​-to​-orthodox​-charges​-in​-well​-known​-controversy. 39. “Cleveland Jewish Center Case Thrown Out of Court by Ruling of Judge Powell,” JTA, January  18, 1928, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1928/​01/​18/​archive/​cleveland​ -jewish​-center​-case​-thrown​-out​-of​-court​-by​-ruling​-of​-judge​-powell. 40. “Changing Orthodox to Conservative Synagogue Trust Breach Court Rules,” JTA, July 22, 1929, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1929/​07/​22/​archive/​changing​-orthodox​-to​ -conservative​-synagogue​-trust​-breach​-court​-rules. 41. “Court Dismisses Appeal on Cleveland Center Case,” JTA, September 30, 1929, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1929/​09/​30/​archive/​court​-dismisses​-appeal​-on​-cleveland​ -center​-case. 42. “Appeal to Supreme Court in Jewish Centre Dispute,” JTA, November 17, 1928, accessed March  20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1929/​11/​17/​archive/​appeal​-to​-supreme​-court​-in​-jewish​ -centre​-dispute; “Supreme Court Rules for Reform Wing in Cleveland Center,” JTA, December 15, 1929, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1929/​12/​15/​archive/​supreme​-court​ -rules​-for​-reform​-wing​-in​-cleveland​-center. 43. Wiesenfeld, Jewish Life, 73–­74. 44. Gartner, History, 225. 45. Gartner, 284–­285. 46. “Our Daily News Letter,” JTA, December 4, 1924, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​ .jta​.org/​1924/​12/​04/​archive/​our​-daily​-news​-letter​-15. 47. Wertheim and Bennett, Remembering, 9. 48. Wiesenfeld, Jewish Life, 63. 49. See Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (ECH), s.v. “Union of Jewish Organizations,” accessed February 12, 2015, http://​ech​.case​.edu/​cgi/​article​.pl​?id​=​UOJO; Vincent and Rubinstein, Merging Traditions, 173; Wertheim and Bennett, Remembering, 9, 321.

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50. Vincent and Rubinstein, Merging Traditions, 221; ECH, s.v. “Orthodox Jewish Children’s Home,” accessed March 20, 2018, http://​ech​.case​.edu/​cgi/​article​.pl​?id​=​OJCH. 51. Isaac H. Ever, Rabbi J. H. Levenberg [Yiddish] (Cleveland: Ivry, 1939), 520ff. 52. On a similar situation in Montreal, see Robinson, Rabbis and Their Community. 53. Wiesenfeld, Jewish Life, 124. 54. Gartner, History, 174. 55. Gartner, 178. On Jung, see Maxine Jacobson, Modern Orthodoxy in American Judaism: The Era of Rabbi Leo Jung (Boston: Academic Studies, 2016). 56. “Ha-­Rav Gitelsohn ‘enenu ki lakaḥ oto ‘elohim,” clipping from JW, n.d., in Abraham A. Katz Archives, Cleveland, Ohio. 57. “Biographical Sketches of Rabbis and Cantors Officiating in the United States,” AJYB, vol.  5 (1903–­1904), accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.ajcarchives​.org/​AJC​_DATA/​Files/​ 1903​_1904​_3​_SpecialArticles​.pdf. 58. Gartner describes Gittelson as Cleveland’s sole productive rabbinic scholar (History, 205). 59. These apparently included Ohave Emuna Anshe Russia, Shaarei Torah, and Agudath Achim. ECH, s.v. “Gittelson, Benjamin,” accessed February 12, 2015, http://​ech​.case​.edu/​ech​ -cgi/​article​.pl​?id​=​GB1. 60. JW, January 3, 1932, clipping in Abraham A. Katz Archives. 61. ECH, s.v. “Margolies, Samuel,” accessed February 12, 2015, http://​ech​.case​.edu/​cgi/​ article​.pl​?id​=​MS9. 62. Gartner, History, 172. 63. ECH, s.v. “Union of Jewish Organizations” accessed February 12, 2015. 64. “Di Union fun Orthodoxish-­‘Idishe Gemeinden fun Amerike,” JW, July 25, 1913, 4. 65. ECH, s.v. “Kehillah,” accessed February 15, 2015, http://​ech​.case​.edu/​cgi/​article​.pl​?id​=​K2. 66. For a wealth of material on Rabbi Porath, see “Rabbi Israel Porath, 1886–­1974,” Cleveland Jewish History, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.clevelandjewishhistory​.net/​ people/​porath​.htm. 67. Wertheim and Bennett, Remembering, 203. 68. Many of Porath’s English-­language sermons, including his inaugural sermon from 1925, are preserved in box 2, folder 7, MS 4753 Rabbi Israel Porath Papers, Series 2, Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS), Cleveland, Ohio. 69. “Visiting Orthodox Rabbis of Three States Welcomed Here,” Jewish Independent (Cleveland), July 29, 1927, clipping, box 1, folder 4, MS 4753, WRHS. 70. On Levenberg, see Ever, Levenberg; Moshe Sherman, “Levenberg, Judah,” in Orthodox Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996), 131–­133. 71. Gartner, History, 189. 72. Orthodox observers noticed that Cleveland Orthodox rabbis had the sort of “normal” relations with local Reform rabbis that did not happen elsewhere. Thus in 1930, Agudas ha-­ Rabbonim criticized Rabbi Levenberg for having published a greeting to Reform rabbi Abba Hillel Silver on the birth of his son (Ever, Levenberg, 179–­180). 73. Ever, 306. 74. Abraham A. Katz, draft speech to the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Abraham A. Katz Archives, 7. 75. The 1921 confirmation program is found in the Abraham A. Katz Archives. 76. Box 2, folder 8, MS 4753, WRHS. Rabbi Porath also presided over a confirmation ceremony in his congregation Oheb Zedek on May 9, 1937. Program preserved in Abraham A. Katz Archives. 77. Box 2, folder 7, MS 4753, WRHS. 78. ECH, s.v. “Cleveland Hebrew Schools,” accessed February 12, 2015, http://​ech​.case​.edu/​ cgi/​article​.pl​?id​=​CHS2. 79. Undated circular, Abraham A. Katz Archives. 80. Gartner, History, 287.

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81. Benjamin Gittelson, Sefer ha-­Poteaḥ veha-­Ḥotem (New York: A. H. Rosenberg, 1898), accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.hebrewbooks​.org/​2336. 82. Israel Porath, “Der Tzveyter Hurbn fun Klivlander Orthodoksishe Shuln,” JW, March 28, 1945, 2. 83. JW, July 27, 1923; JW, September 7, 1923, 11. 84. JW, August 26, 1923, 8. 85. Ira Robinson, “Hasid and Maskil: The Hasidic Tales of an American Yiddish Journalist,” in Steven Engler and Gregory P. Grieve, Historicizing “Tradition” in the Study of Religion (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 286. 86. JW, August 12, 1923, 8. 87. “Yeshiva nayes,” JW, October 12, 1923, 7; Cf. JW, December 26, 1941, 2. 88. Israel Porath, “Introduction,” Mavo’ ha Talmud, vol. 1, Gittin (St. Louis: Quality Printing, 1942), accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.hebrewbooks​.org/​pdfpager​.aspx​?req​=​38100​ &​st​=​&​pgnum​=​2. 89. Israel Porath, “Vos hert zikh in dem Klivlander Ortodoksishn lebn?,” JW, January 21, 1938, 5, box 2, folder 8, MS 4753, WRHS. 90. Yeshiva stationery extant in Abraham A. Katz Archives. 91. Ever, Levenberg, 159–­160; clipping from Jewish Observer, n.d., in Abraham A. Katz Archives. 92. Ever, Levenberg, 178. 93. Sherman, “Levenberg, Judah,” 132. 94. JW, May 22, 1932, clipping in Abraham A. Katz Archives. 95. Ever, Levenberg, 330. 96. Harold Gastwirth, Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness: The Controversy over the Supervision of Jewish Dietary Practice in New York City, 1881–­1940 (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1974). 97. Timothy D. Lytton, Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 9–­34. Gastwirth and Lytton concentrate on New York; for another Jewish community, see Robinson, Rabbis and Their Community. 98. “Vi azoy hot der merkaz ha-­rabbonim bahandelt di kashrus frage letstn yor?,” JW, October 6–­­7, 1940, box 2, folder 8, MS 4753, WRHS. 99. Ever, Levenberg, 211. 100. JW, July 23, 1923, 2. 101. AJYB, vol. 9 (1907–­1908). 102. Gartner, History, 176; Paula Hyman, “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,” American Jewish History 70, no. 1 (September 1980): 91–­105. 103. “Lord Plumer Retires from Service on Half Pay,” JTA, November 16, 1928, accessed March  20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1928/​11/​16/​archive/​lord​-plumer​-retires​-from​-service​-on​ -half​-pay. 104. E.g., “Kosher Prices Here Found neither Highest or Lowest,” Cleveland Jewish News, October 31, 1975, 1. 105. Gartner, History, 177. 106. For a similar example of a proposed solution of the kashrut issue in Montreal in the 1920s, see Robinson, Rabbis and Their Community, 87–­102. 107. AJYB, vol. 26 (1924–­1925), 539. 108. In AJYB, vol. 29 (1927–­1928), 210, the group is called the Orthodox United Rabbinate of Cleveland and claims to have eight members, with Porath as chairman. 109. “The Kosher Meat Problem of Cleveland,” n.d., box 2, folder 8, MS 4753, WRHS. 110. Article in Yiddish, n.d., box 2, folder 8, MS 4753, WRHS. 111. Article in Yiddish. 112. Abraham A. Katz Archives. 113. Ever, Levenberg, 158–­159. 114. Ever, 212ff.

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115. In New York City, the kosher meat industry was notorious for price-­fixing schemes, racketeering, and even murder for hire. Lytton, Kosher, 3. 116. “Court Bars Rabbis from Passing on Unsupervised Kosher Slaughter Houses,” JTA, January  1, 1930, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1930/​01/​30/​archive/​court​-bars​ -rabbis​-from​-passing​-on​-unsupervised​-kosher​-slaughter​-houses. 117. “Kosher Meat Controversy Stirs Jews of Cleveland and Neighboring Towns,” JTA, February 14, 1930, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1930/​02/​14/​archive/​kosher​-meat​ -controversy​-stirs​-jews​-of​-cleveland​-and​-neighboring​-towns. 118. “Cleveland Kashruth Case May End in Few Days,” JTA, February 21, 1930, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1930/​02/​21/​archive/​cleveland​-kashruth​-case​-may​-end​-in​ -few​-days. 119. A writer in Montreal’s Yiddish daily Keneder ‘Adler said that he next expected that the witness would testify against his rabbinical opponents from the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (February 20, 1930, 1); “Cleveland Kashruth Case May Be Settled by Arbitration,” JTA, February 24, 1930, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1930/​02/​24/​archive/​cleveland​ -kashruth​-case​-may​-be​-settled​-by​-arbitration. 120. “Settlement in Cleveland’s Kashruth Case Favorable to Jews Laid to J. T. A.,” JTA, February 26, 1930, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1930/​02/​26/​archive/​settlement​-in​ -clevelands​-kashruth​-case​-favorable​-to​-jews​-laid​-to​-j​-t​-a​-2. 121. Ever, Levenberg, 204–­207, 215–­216. 122. “Article 4, Ohio Constitution,” Ballotpedia, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​judgepedia​ .org/​Article​_IV,​_Ohio​_Constitution. 123. Ever, Levenberg, 292. Cf. JW clipping in Abraham A. Katz Archives, n.d. 124. Ever, Levenberg, 299. 125. “Cleveland Kosher Butcher Shops to Be Investigated for Alleged Racketeering,” JTA, December 29, 1932, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1932/​12/​29/​archive/​cleveland​ -kosher​-butcher​-shops​-to​-be​-investigated​-for​-alleged​-racketeering. For comparison and details on the establishment of the Kashruth Association of Greater New York in 1932, see Lytton, Kosher, 29. 126. Protest circular by poultry slaughterers against the two-­cent levy. Abraham A. Katz Archives. 127. Ever, Levenberg, 221–­242. 128. “Cleveland Jewish Poultry Market Bombed in Racketeering War,” JTA, January 22, 1933, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1933/​01/​22/​archive/​cleveland​-jewish​-poultry​ -market​-bombed​-in​-racketeering​-war. 129. “Racketeering War Leads to Arrest of Yeshiva Dean: Police Apologize, Dismiss Charges,” JTA, January 26, 1933, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1933/​01/​26/​archive/​ racketeering​-war​-leads​-to​-arrest​-of​-yeshiva​-dean​-police​-apologize​-dismiss​-charges. 130. “Life of North American Jewry in Review,” JTA, April 3, 1934, accessed March 20, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1934/​04/​03/​archive/​life​-of​-north​-american​-jewry​-in​-review​-36. 131. Ever, Levenberg, 247–­248. 132. Editorial, JW, November 16, 1934, 4; Ever, Levenberg, 279–­281; cf. Editorial, JW, October 25, 1934. 133. Ever, Levenberg, 282, 285–­288. 134. Advertisement in JW, October 19, 1934, 8; JW, November 18, 1934, 8. 135. Clipping in Abraham A. Katz Archives. 136. JW, November 4, 1934, 4. Cf. “Tsu di shuln, members, un presidentn,” JW, October 5, 1928. 137. “Vi azoy hot der merkaz ha-­rabbonim bahandelt di kashrus frage letstn yor?” 138. Jewish Community Council, Report of the Committee on Kashruth, December 20, 1939, 2, Abraham A. Katz Archives. 139. JW, March 18, 1941. Abraham A. Katz Archives. 140. JW, December 29, 1941, clipping in Abraham A. Katz Archives.

chapter 2

Q

JEWISH PHILANTHROPY IN CLEVELAND TO 1990 David C. Hammack

“Jewish Philanthropy” is not a subject for a definitive history. No single definition of Jewish will satisfy every reader. No single definition of philanthropy is universally accepted. Knowledge of intent or commitment or identity can never be available to an outside observer. Jews give to a wide range of causes both religious and secular, including non-­Jewish religious causes. To some writers, giving only to certain causes can be designated as “Jewish”; to other writers, all giving by persons who have some Jewish heritage counts.1 We can’t hope to be definitive but we can raise questions. What might we mean by philanthropy? Often-­cited definitions include “private money” for “public service,”2 or giving “for the good of mankind” or to solve “fundamental problems.”3 But definitions of this sort do not reflect American law, American practice, or Jewish tradition. For purposes of taxation and general regulation, the legal term in the United States is charity, not philanthropy. And U.S. law applies the charitable tax deduction, like other laws of charity, to gifts for a very wide range of purposes—­“charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary,” and more.4 But what constitutes a “good” purpose? We turn to religion and philosophy for reflections on what is “good.” In a Jewish context, we might begin by noting that the Torah puts an emphasis on giving to support religious institutions essential to the perpetuation of belief and community—­giving to support religious officials and teachers, religious activities and the necessary buildings and cemeteries, and to aid widows and fatherless children. The Torah also calls for aid to strangers. For many, reflection expands these injunctions, leading to calls to act in ways that “repair the world.” Some Jewish traditions emphasize mutual obligation within the Jewish community; others insist on charity for all—­or on justice. 35

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General discussions of “philanthropy” in the U.S. emphasize voluntary giving, not obedience to religious imperatives. American legal tradition explicitly separates religion and government, church and state. In the U.S., the civil government cannot enforce religious observance. Instead, it treats religious observance (including the giving mandated by a religious community) as voluntary because federal, state, and local governments do not demand it. Some writers, both Jewish and gentile, insist that giving is virtuous only if it relieves immediate need. Meeting “need” can include the immediate provision of food, clothing, and shelter; it can mean aid to the sick and care for prisoners and captives; it can mean material support for widows, orphans, and the frail elderly; it can mean assistance for those who have suffered from disasters and conflicts as well as from poverty; and it can also mean burial of the dead. At an extreme, an emphasis on meeting material, physical need can be exclusive—­and can lead to a denial that giving to other religious causes is “charitable.” But this narrow view is counter to Jewish tradition as well as to Christian, Muslim, and other religious traditions that also insist on the importance of giving for religious and educational purposes. There is a long tradition, certainly in Jewish communities, of emphasizing giving to prevent need—­to enable people to provide for themselves. A thousand years ago, Maimonides celebrated such giving. In the best giving, he argued, neither the donor nor the beneficiary knows one another, and the gift enhances the beneficiary’s self-­sufficiency and self-­respect.5 Such giving often involves scholarship, revolving loan, and marriage dowry funds and requires religious or community institutions. Maintaining such funds requires facilities, committed staffs and leaders, and endowments. At least since the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, many European and American writers have treated as “philanthropic” both the kinds of activities Maimonides praised and efforts to reduce need through effective law. Laws to eliminate discrimination and subordination, to provide security of property, to assure universal access to education and health care, to encourage economic growth, and even to promote full employment have all been described as “philanthropic.” Current American law explicitly defines as “charitable” contributions for “lessening neighborhood tensions, eliminating prejudice and discrimination, and defending human and civil rights secured by law.” American arts organizations qualify for charitable legal status by emphasizing their educational value. If we define philanthropy as “making very big gifts,” we reduce our history to a celebration (or a critique) of large gifts by the very wealthy—­an important focus but a narrow one. Cleveland’s Jewish community has produced a remarkable list of very wealthy donors. Cleveland’s Jewish community has also produced many remarkable people who have had more time, talent, and care than money to give, and who have given both generously and with effect. Heeding Maimonides, donors sometimes give anonymously. Complicating any historical account,

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varying measures of inflation make it difficult to compare the financial value of a gift from one time period to another: a 1950 gift of $1,000,000 might be the equivalent in 2018, depending on the measurement selected, of either $10.7 million or $71.2 million.6 A final point: philanthropy can shape and reshape key institutions. The United States, with its tradition of skepticism about the roles of government and its often-­honored commitment to the separation of church and state, has relied extensively on nongovernment institutions, often closely tied to religious traditions. Philanthropy, large and small, has shaped those institutions. This chapter offers three general suggestions about the history of Jewish philanthropy in Cleveland and northeastern Ohio: (1) Cleveland Jewish philanthropy has built a notable set of Jewish institutions, religious, educational, and social; (2) Cleveland Jewish philanthropy has a long record of significant contribution to the growth—­and not only in northeastern Ohio—­of nationally connected secular and nonsectarian institutions in health, higher education, the arts, and many other fields; and (3) from early in the twentieth century, Cleveland Jewish philanthropy has played a significant creative role in encouraging the separation of religious activities from the provision of most health care, education, and welfare services and in promoting the development of nonsectarian institutions alongside those that are specifically Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and—­as the United States becomes more diverse—­those affiliated with Eastern religions as well. More generally, through this restructuring of American philanthropy, Cleveland Jewish philanthropy has promoted mutual respect and cooperation among religious and other communities, primarily within its home region but also in larger national and international arenas.

Building Jewish Institutions Initially, Cleveland’s Jewish philanthropy focused on the religious institutions essential for worship and continuity; over time, it built a notable set of Jewish institutions, religious and communal.7 The famous Alsbacher Document that accompanied one of Cleveland’s first substantial groups of Jewish immigrants noted that they were “traveling to a land of freedom where the opportunity will be presented to live without compulsory religious education.” Their teacher, in Lower Franconia in the Kingdom of Bavaria, exhorted them to “resist and withstand this tempting freedom and do not turn away from the religion of our fathers . . . Don’t tear yourself away from the laws in which your fathers and mothers searched for assurance and found it.”8 These instructions defined Cleveland Jewish philanthropy before the Civil War. It was indeed true that religious communities in the United States could not compel participation, that neither the federal nor state governments licensed religious leaders or religious texts, and that those who wished to purchase land or build a

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house of worship did not need government permission.9 But because religious activity in America did not receive direct support from government, it required not only devotion and cooperation—­gifts of talent and time—­but also gifts of resources. Cleveland’s Jewish community organized its first congregation in 1839, started a cemetery in 1840, separated into two congregations in 1841, built a day school by 1844, and reunited into a single congregation in 1846. An 1850 redivision into two congregations—­Anshe Chesed (later Fairmount Temple) and Tifereth Israel (The Temple)—­proved permanent. The earliest Cleveland synagogues had started by following the traditional religious practices of the European communities they had left, practices that came to be described as Orthodox. But as early as 1856, Cleveland rabbi Isidor Kalisch joined Cincinnati colleagues Isaac Mayer Wise and Wolf Rothenheim in publishing a prayer book that “furthered the movement toward religious reforms.”10 Through a process of debate, argument, and persuasion, both of Cleveland’s first two congregations became active supporters of Reform by the 1870s. In 1874 Cleveland hosted the first “council” of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.11 From its beginnings, Clevelanders had a close relationship to Reform’s Hebrew Union College. According to a prominent historian of American synagogues, at Tifereth Israel, Rabbi Moses J. Gries—­an early Hebrew Union graduate—­became in the 1890s “the leading figure of the temple-­center movement.” As Gries put it in 1894, he intended for his Temple to encourage “an association for the betterment of ourselves and our fellows.” The synagogue was to be “a shining center . . . for culture, education, helpfulness, and human upliftment.”12 Through contributions of personal commitment as well as money, local donors clearly did much to make Cleveland an important center of Reform Judaism. Yet several nineteenth-­century Cleveland congregations continued their commitments to tradition.13 B’nai Jeshurun, launched as a traditional congregation by Hungarian immigrants in 1866, introduced organ music and became less traditional from the late 1870s onward. In 1904 those of its members who preferred traditional practices split off to create Oheb Zedek (now Taylor Road Synagogue). By the late 1920s, B’nai Jeshurun could be described as “perhaps the largest conservative congregation in America.”14 Anshe Emeth, founded by immigrants from Poland in 1857 and incorporated in 1869 was, under Rabbi Samuel Margolies in the 1920s, “the leading Orthodox congregation of Cleveland.”15 Later, it was known as Park Synagogue, and as Conservative. Cleveland’s third Conservative synagogue, Shaarey Tikvah, dates from the 1940 arrival of a group of refugees from Germany.16 Local historian Jeffrey S. Morris has also traced the histories of Cleveland’s Orthodox synagogues and has shown how several congregations merged over many years into Kehillat Yaakov (Cedar Road), Taylor Road Synagogue, and Heights Jewish Center. He adds that Beth Israel–­The West Temple, Green Road Synagogue, and several other Orthodox congregations date from before—­often

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long before—­1940 and, like a number of congregations founded later, continue to thrive. Kehillat Yaakov emphasizes that the founders of its predecessor congregations came to Cleveland from Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Austria, and Spain.17 According to a comprehensive overview of 1910, Cleveland had “about twenty Orthodox Jewish Congregations, mainly Hungarian, Russian, and Polish.”18 The photographs that Morris provides make it clear that many Orthodox congregations managed to maintain religious life despite a severe lack of resources, not to say poverty. Philanthropy directed toward Jewish religious purposes thus has advanced distinctive movements including competing approaches to Orthodoxy and Reform as well as Conservativism. Smaller movements have also manifested themselves in Cleveland: a 2014 list included congregations labeled as “Egalitarian/Traditional,” “Independent,” “Secular/Humanist,” and “Reconstructionist.”19 Among Jews, as among all religious Americans, freedom of worship came with freedom to adhere to distinctive views and to build barriers as well as bridges. Core funding for synagogues, schools, and their staffs came from synagogue members themselves. As congregation histories emphasize, members paid for most of the expenses; plaques in many buildings testify to gifts that were large, sustained, and especially timely.20 Gifts also came in the form of service, as those who led prayers or taught in the schools donated their time or took minimal pay. Outsiders also supported congregations. In 1844 Cleveland’s earliest property developers—­non-­Jews—­contributed land for the first synagogue, just as they had made land available for the first Christian churches.21 In 1854 Judah Touro, a New Orleans merchant, left bequests for many institutions across the United States, including three thousand dollars to Tifereth Israel. Used to pay for building and equipping a synagogue, this would be the equivalent today of more than one million dollars.22 By the middle third of the twentieth century, several of Cleveland’s largest Jewish congregations had built impressive synagogues capable of accommodating thousands of worshipers and including many classrooms, offices, and other facilities. As Jeffrey Morris’s detailed account makes clear, it was not only the largest synagogues that received gifts—­many smaller congregations also built new buildings and also purchased and remodeled small churches, commercial buildings, and houses for their use.23 Cleveland’s Jewish philanthropy built institutions for social services and health care as well as for religious observance and education. In this, they continued their European tradition—­little more than a hundred years before the first Jews left German lands for Cleveland, a German Christian (one who dismissed the particulars of Jewish belief) had written that he had seen that Jews “possess many beautiful virtues, especially compassion, charity, moderation.” Indeed, “they far, far surpass Christians in that they give generously to the poor and destitute.”24 Jewish leaders in Cleveland as elsewhere “endeavor[ed] to take care of their own poor,” as Rabbi Moses Gries put it in 1910.25

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Initially, Cleveland’s Jewish communities organized mutual benefit and charitable organizations as well as synagogues and schools. A chapter of the order B’nai B’rith (both a mutual benefit and a charitable society), a Hebrew Benevolent Society, and a Jewish Ladies Benevolent Society had all appeared before the Civil War. Other mutual benefit and relief societies were added as new groups of immigrants arrived including a Hungarian Aid Society in 1863 and from the 1880s, funds and shelters to aid refugees from Russia.26 Mutual benefit organizations, loan societies, and landsmanshaftn (through which immigrants from one place in Europe aided one another) all thrived, though we don’t have a good study of their activities in Cleveland and can’t assess the degree to which philanthropic gifts supplemented the organizations’ basis in mutual insurance and careful investment.27 By the early twentieth century, Cleveland’s Jewish community boasted several large institutions that have since been well studied. Each of these relied heavily on donations even as it also accepted fees. The Jewish Orphan Asylum (now Bellefaire JCB, for Jewish Children’s Bureau) and the Montefiore home for the elderly (now simply “Montefiore,” with a wide range of facilities and programs) were among the first; like these, the later Council Educational Alliance (a predecessor of the Jewish Community Center) and Mt. Sinai Hospital also had Reform connections. Cleveland’s notable Orthodox communities created their own orphanage and home for the elderly. Like the synagogues, these institutions relied heavily on gifts of time and money from Clevelanders. The city had an effective Jewish Community Federation after 1903; initially focused on Reform institutions, by the 1920s, it was seeking to embrace Orthodox charities as well. The orphan asylum and the Montefiore home each drew board members and gifts—­and served beneficiaries—­from the wider region as well as from metropolitan Cleveland. As a young man, Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, raised with New York as well as Cleveland ties, helped create Cleveland’s early B’nai B’rith chapter and Hebrew Benevolent Society.28 As the national B’nai B’rith leader during the Civil War, Peixotto traveled widely, building lodges in the Midwest and, after the war, also in the South. In 1867, as part of his campaign to restore good relations between Northern and Southern Jewish communities, he persuaded B’nai B’rith to build an orphan asylum to serve Jewish communities—­and especially the families of Jewish war veterans—­throughout the entire area between the Alleghenies to the Rocky Mountains, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.29 In the years after the Civil War, North–­South cooperation of this kind was rare. B’nai B’rith located its orphanage in Cleveland but for decades derived much of its support from the order’s numerous state chapters. At least one non-­Jewish Clevelander also contributed.30 Cleveland usually provided the treasurer, but the board chair often came from Chicago. According to a 1910 report, over the preceding forty years, a total of $2.5 million had gone to building and maintaining the orphanage. It had housed as many as three thousand children, recommended

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through many B’nai B’rith chapters and admitted by a vote of the board. In 1887 the children who lived at the orphanage had been born in nineteen different states, and there were many who had been born in areas under the control of Russia (39), Austria-­Hungary (24), Germany (7), or the United Kingdom (7). Cities sending the largest numbers included Chicago (76), St. Louis (32), Cincinnati (31), Memphis (15), Detroit and Indianapolis (12 each), Milwaukee (11), and Denver (7).31 Many of the children placed in the orphanage had at least one living parent or close relative; often, these relatives paid some of the cost of children’s room and board.32 Some male orphanage graduates became “rabbis, physicians, lawyers,” others “machinists, electricians, printers”; girls became nurses, “milliners, dressmakers, and quite a large number stenographers” and, no doubt, teachers as well. Others emerged into a tougher struggle with life. In the decades between Reconstruction and World War I, the Plain Dealer routinely reported, in very positive terms, on the quarterly and annual meetings of the orphanage board.33 In 1910 the orphanage was nationally prominent, and former staffers had gone on to lead similar institutions in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Rochester, and San Francisco.34 As its 1884 name suggests, the Sir Moses Montefiore Kesher Shel Barzel Home for the Aged and Infirm Israelites had a similar history. Sponsored by Mid­ western chapters of the Kesher Shel Barzel association and endorsed with a grant (the 2018 equivalent of about $163,000) by the British philanthropist honored in its name, the home drew support and residents from far beyond Cleveland. In many years, a resident of Chicago chaired its board, which overlapped with that of the orphanage and often met on the same day. In the late nineteenth century, it developed its initial location on East Fifty-­Fifth Street; it then moved to larger premises in Cleveland Heights in 1919, and in 1991, to a still-­larger campus in Beachwood. The rapidly growing Orthodox community, working through its own organizations and associations and often unwilling to engage with the institutions of its Reform counterpart, built social facilities to supplement its synagogues and schools as soon as it could gather the necessary funds. The Hebrew Orthodox old age home, Bet Moshav Zekenim, opened in 1906 with half-­a-­dozen beds and expanded to 46 in 1911. In 1921 it moved into a new 80-­bed location in Glenville and doubled to 160 beds in 1928, expanded again in 1948, and two years later took the name Jewish Orthodox Home for the Aged. In 1920 the Orthodox Jewish Orphan Asylum constituted a response to “the connection between Americanization and Jewish education” at the Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum.35 Initially limited to accommodations for eleven, by the late 1920s, the Orthodox children’s home could house fifty. Cleveland’s Jewish community was also giving to Jewish institutions in other cities. Cleveland’s Reform congregations had close ties to Cincinnati’s Reform

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Hebrew Union College from the institution’s earliest days. In 1913 Clevelanders played significant roles in building the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives in Denver.36 Like the national support for the Jewish Orphan Asylum and for the Montefiore Home for the Elderly, these efforts created opportunities to reinforce ties among Jewish communities and their leaders, even as they demonstrated ways to meet needs. All this added up to substantial philanthropic support for Jewish religious and social life. Yet it seems clear that the rapid growth of the population of immigrant and impoverished Jews meant that need outstripped philanthropic capacity. In the early twentieth century, Cleveland’s Jewish orphanages accommodated about five hundred and fifty; the homes for the elderly, about one hundred. Appropriate for a Jewish community of a few tens of thousands in the 1890s, these facilities could not begin to cope with the needs of a population that by 1920 came close to one hundred thousand people. At this point, material and physical need, the example of Jewish innovations in such leading Jewish communities as New York and Chicago, and the development of the professions of social work, education, and health care all suggested a shift from residential institutions to the provision of services. Cleveland’s Jewish community responded with a wide range of services for people who needed aid but could not be housed in orphanages, long-­term care hospitals, and homes for the aged. Often designed by organizations led by women, these services were intended to support family life, not to raise incomes. In 1886 a grassroots and philanthropic effort had brought to Cleveland a religious school designed, based on a model just established in Chicago, to supplement the efforts of small congregations in helping families maintain Jewish traditions. Formally named the Sir Moses Montefiore Hebrew School but, echoing Eastern European practice, commonly called the Talmud Torah, its after-­school classes provided language and religious education for the “children of poor parents.”37 By 1920 it had nine hundred students in two locations; under the nationally respected leadership of Abraham Friedland, its enrollment rose in the next decade to two thousand. In another educational effort, three women’s charities merged in 1894 into the Cleveland Section of the National Council of Jewish Women. One of the Cleveland Section’s first projects was the Council Educational Alliance, which offered a wide range of English language, vocational, and cultural opportunities under the initial leadership of a former director of New York City’s Educational Alliance. In the 1900s, the council added both the Martha House (a residency for young working women) and the Camp Wise fresh air experiences for children.38 Over time these separate agencies merged into the Jewish Community Center. From the 1890s onward, Cleveland Jewish philanthropy also followed the examples of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago by creating facilities for modern medicine.39 The Young Ladies Hebrew Association initiated a free clinic on East Fifty-­Fifth Street in 1892, then raised six hundred thousand

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Figure 2.1  Sabbath service, Camp Wise, mid-twentieth century. (WRHS)

dollars (the equivalent today of nearly $100 million) to open Mt. Sinai Hospital near the growing campus of Western Reserve University in 1916.40 Mt. Sinai provided patient care not only for Jews but for everyone. Facing the exclusion of Jewish doctors from most non-­Jewish hospitals, Mt. Sinai—­like Jewish hospitals in other American cities—­mounted high-­quality residency programs for young doctors and gave well trained Jewish doctors an excellent hospital in which to practice. It supported significant research and innovation in several medical specialties. And it became the chief safety net and emergency room hospital in Cleveland’s East Side. In 1936 a comprehensive review of “Jewish Community Organizations” observed that like “Mt. Sinai in New York City, Michael Reese in Chicago, [and] Beth Israel in Boston,” Cleveland’s Mt. Sinai Hospital was “among the foremost in the country.”41 This achievement required big gifts, many small contributions, mutual support, and fees. To enable patients to pay their fees, Mt. Sinai actively supported the ideals of self-­help and self-­sufficiency from its beginnings. In the 1920s, it encouraged a very young manager, John Mannix, to develop a “prepaid medical insurance” plan. Working later at University Hospitals and eventually in insurance, Mannix made nationally significant contributions to the Blue Cross health insurance movement.42

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In 1903 Cleveland also adopted the plan, already implemented in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Detroit, of creating a single entity, the Federation for Jewish Charities. Under this plan, each charity retained its own identity, its own board, and some of its own finances through gifts and fees. Appeals to the general public in the form of “bazaars, balls, and general collections for charitable purposes,” however, “would now be made only through the Federation.”43 The Federation grew slowly but steadily. An unusually thorough survey of 1927 reported that Cleveland at that time had a Jewish population just under one hundred thousand—­making it perhaps one of the twenty largest Jewish communities in the world. Serving this population were at least thirty-­five synagogues, a comprehensive Bureau of Jewish Education, a large hospital, a very large orphanage, and facilities for the elderly as well as for youth recreation. In proportion to population, these equaled or surpassed—­in capacity and reputation—­their counterparts in America’s other large centers of Jewish settlement, including Boston, Detroit, Newark, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, with considerably larger Jewish populations, had more seminaries and more specialized institutions; New York dominated in national and international organizations.44 Cleveland’s Jewish Welfare Federation put strong emphasis on health and the aged, but in 1928 its director argued that “our reason for being must be ethnic culture, and not only the maimed, the sick, and the blind.”45 Well before the mid-twentieth century, Cleveland’s Jewish community was also widely known for the relatively large amounts it was raising per capita and for the quality of the leaders who rose through its ranks and went on to lead federations in other cities. Referring to community centers and federations in the mid-twentieth century, Daniel Judah Elazar wrote that “Cleveland was considered the incubator of most of the senior Jewish civil service in the United States.”46 Sidney Vincent, the assistant director and then executive director of the Cleveland federation from 1951 to 1975, recalled that “Cleveland’s fund-­raising on a per capita basis annually ranked first or second nationally, with only Detroit a close competitor” and that “its production of outstanding professionals to serve elsewhere was matched on the lay level by its provision of more presidents of national organizations than any other city, not excepting New York.”47 In 1955 Federation executive director Henry Zucker launched an “endowment trust within and for the benefit of the federation.”48 This step countered conventional wisdom in Jewish federations that endowments would conflict with annual campaigns and with capital campaigns for large institutions. But by the 1950s, a few Cleveland Jews had created foundations, and some had established permanent endowments within the Cleveland Foundation. Henry Zucker had often participated in meetings at the Russell Sage Foundation, which was one of the first general purpose foundations in America and a frequent collaborator with New York’s Rockefeller Foundation and Commonwealth Fund as well as

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Chicago’s Rosenwald Fund. (No doubt he was also familiar with the endowments held at the New York Community Trust for the support of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and with the funds held by the New York Foundation.)49 To win wide acceptance for a policy of encouraging endowments for the Jewish Federation and for individual institutions—­especially important after the large changes imposed on philanthropy by the Tax Reform Act of 1969—­Zucker, Cleveland attorney Norman Sugarman (who also worked with the Cleveland Foundation and with the National Association of Community Foundations), and others worked hard to persuade the Council of Jewish Federations (now Jewish Federations of North America)—­as well as many non-­Jewish charities and their government regulators—­to support the building of endowments. An authoritative 1977 report on giving in Cleveland noted their local success, stating that “about 20 foundations in the Jewish community meet every other month for lunch to exchange information.” In 1985 the Council of Federations honored Sugarman for his national efforts, which by then had helped federation endowment assets nationwide grow to two billion dollars.50 In Cleveland, as everywhere, Jewish philanthropic efforts have always extended to Jewish communities in other parts of the world, especially communities under siege. In the early 1870s, Benjamin Peixotto, who retained Cleveland ties as he built a thriving law practice in San Francisco, advised the Cleveland community about needs he uncovered as an official representative of the U.S. government for mobilizing protection of Jews against anti-­Semitic attacks in Romania.51 During the 1880s, responses to pogroms in the Russian Empire both in money sent abroad and in aid to refugees who came to Cleveland were reported by the Plain Dealer.52 Like other Jewish communities in the United States, Cleveland also contributed to the relief of those displaced by World War I. Between the wars and after, Cleveland-­based leaders—­not least Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of The Temple–­Tifereth Israel—­also engaged deeply in debates over Zionism and in raising funds for Jewish efforts in Palestine.53 During and immediately after the war and the Holocaust, Cleveland’s Jewish community was deeply active in the rescue and resettlement of Jews.54 After Israel’s launch as an independent nation, Cleveland’s Jewish community took an increasingly prominent part in underwriting Israeli schools, hospitals, and social services, through contributions in money and also in personal commitment and expertise.55 According to a careful 1977 report, of the $16.4 million the Cleveland federation raised that year, $11.4 million went “overseas.”56 The Cleveland community also played notable roles in helping Jewish refugees leave both the Soviet Union and Ethiopia.57 These efforts continue today. They await detailed historical study, but Cleveland attorney S. Lee Kohrman described an influential perspective of the late 1990s—­at a point when the Cleveland federation moved to give several million dollars directly to agencies operating in Israel rather than through the then existing central fundraising agencies. In Kohrman’s

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words, “We wanted to spend our money wisely using various criteria . . . that we could have a real impact, that our money could be reasonably transformational and we could spend it in large pieces, that the money we would be giving would be welcomed by a service organization to help deal with something they felt passionate about that was very high on their list of priorities, that the program would have a high likelihood of inspiring Clevelanders to participate.”58

Shaping Society at Large American conditions encourage both freedom of religion and cooperation within religious communities, making it possible to reinforce distinctiveness and difference. Emphasis on difference can lead to hostility and conflict. Under extreme conditions, such as those that long prevailed in the South after the Civil War and Reconstruction, people who retreat into closed-­off cultural or religious communities can become persuaded that those who are not “of ” them and with them are against them, threaten them, and must be opposed.59 From 1900 onward, many in Cleveland’s Jewish community moved, with some effect, to find ways to counter this tendency by encouraging mutual tolerance and even respect. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver expressed this prominent Cleveland approach succinctly: “Universalism and nationalism rightly conceived are never antithetical.”60 As an excellent dissertation by historian Brian Ross makes clear, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews joined Protestants and Catholics in inventing, in Cleveland, nationally notable initiatives for configuring charities in a way that promoted interfaith collaboration. The key event was the appointment of Martin Marks, who had led an effective 1903 effort to create the Jewish Community Federation, to lead the Committee on Benevolent Institutions of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. Because the chamber had charged its committee to respond to Catholic objections to Protestant proselytizing, Marks, an experienced Jewish leader associated with neither side in the Protestant–­Catholic confrontation, made a desirable committee chair. Under Marks’s leadership, the Committee on Benevolent Organizations produced a remarkable change in the arrangements of Cleveland’s institutions. Protestants agreed to separate their denominational structures from the control of most social service organizations that sought to engage the entire community. The chamber of commerce would support a new community chest to run a workplace-­based annual campaign to raise funds for Catholic and Jewish as well as Protestant health care and social service organizations. Organizations of all three faith groups agreed in turn to avoid mounting their own fundraising drives during the months set aside for the community chest. A chamber of commerce committee would review and assign a priority to capital fund drives for any Cleveland charity; individual firms would thus avoid the expense of evaluating requests for funds and the onus that would follow denials. Without chamber

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endorsement, most organizations would find it difficult to raise funds from corporations or major donors. A new Federation for Community Planning would distribute the money raised by the community chest and annually evaluate the work of each charity. Protestant groups at the same time set up a separate council of churches to manage their common religious concerns and their relations with one another. The Jewish Federation was already in place; Catholic charities emerged to fill out the pattern. To raise, hold, invest, and distribute endowed funds for larger projects important to all, the Cleveland Foundation was established at the same time, under a charter that excluded it from holding funds for religious purposes.61 In these ways, Cleveland Jews played a national part in creating the Protestant/ Catholic/Jewish and religious/nonsectarian divisions that came in the 1920s to organize much of America’s civil society, structuring along faith community lines the entities that provide most support for families as well as many job training, health care, and education services—­while also adding private, nonprofit structures to facilitate cooperation across religious lines. This new general pattern of faith community–­based nonprofit organizations made the United States a more comfortable place for all faith community–­based efforts to advance health, education, and welfare, especially the efforts of religious communities that lacked local majorities. The new pattern helped Protestants find ways to separate religious activity from their leading colleges, universities, hospitals, and community-­level social service activities. It also helped Catholics secure the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which confirmed the right of parents to control their children’s education (subject to very general state supervision) and thus to use Catholic (or other nonpublic) elementary and secondary schools if they chose.62 In seeking to account for the vigor of Jewish community and philanthropic life in Cleveland, Daniel Elazar has pointed to the early settlement of the area by “Yankees from New England” who brought a “strong sense of communal responsibility.” Elazar also emphasized the “cultural climate” as being marked by “a strong commitment to the associational pluralism that is characteristic of the Great Lakes section—­the awareness that every person must be linked to a group by formal association.”63 But as the story of Martin Marks and the creation of the core institutions of Cleveland pluralism make clear, the city’s Jewish community was surely the cocreator—­with the city’s “Yankees” and indeed its Catholics—­of the institutions that sustained its pluralistic “cultural climate.” There is much more for future detailed research to explore under these topics, not least the question of the degree to which Jews in Cleveland, even as they gave to their own religious and communal institutions, also supported both the city’s most prominent nonsectarian institutions and public policies that expanded material opportunity for all. At the same time, it must be added, the Protestant/ Catholic/Jewish structure raised barriers to the inclusion of African Americans.

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There is at least some evidence that late nineteenth-­century Jewish immigrants helped persuade Cleveland’s city fathers to make notable improvements in the city’s public facilities. More than one criticized Cleveland’s appearance in the last decades of the nineteenth century as inferior to that of provincial towns in the Austro-­Hungarian Empire—­let alone Vienna, Budapest, Prague, or Kraków. And by the time of World War I, according to Frederick C. Howe, a Protestant journalist turned Progressive reformer, Morris Black, the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Hungary, helped use “illustrated stories of the grouping of public buildings in Vienna, Paris, Budapest, Dresden, and Munich” to persuade the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce to back Daniel Burnham’s ambitious plan to raise impressive public buildings around the mall in downtown Cleveland.64 It can also be argued that Jews made important contributions to creating high-­quality public elementary and secondary schools and public libraries in Cleveland, as elsewhere in the United States. It is true that the initial impulse for public schools came from Protestants, that Protestants in many places exerted considerable influence on public schools, that Jews often protested the dominance of Christian assumptions in public schools, and that Jewish day schools have received considerable Jewish philanthropy.65 But through the end of the twentieth century, in places where Jews were numerous (especially in the bigger cities and in selected suburbs), Jews supported nonsectarian public schools by sending their children to them, by voting in favor of school taxes, and by providing them with a disproportionate share of good teachers.66 On at least some occasions, Cleveland Jews pushed to make the public schools more inclusive. In the 1930s, Alfred Benesch, long a key member of the Cleveland Board of Education, supported persistent and persuasive calls from African American leaders that more African American teachers be hired to teach both in the schools whose students were overwhelmingly black—­and in other schools as well.67 Yet questions relating to public policy are complex and contested. As chairman of the Cuyahoga County Republican Committee for more than twenty years, Maurice Maschke cultivated African American votes with patronage and recognition and is likely to have played a behind-­the-­scenes role in Cleveland’s effort to stop the local distribution of Henry Ford’s anti-­Semitic Dearborn Independent in the mid-­1920s.68 But he was not noted as a Progressive. Attorney Jordan Band, an engaged Progressive of a later generation, worked for fair employment practices in Cleveland during the Truman administration, campaigned for fair housing through the 1980s, and helped raise Cleveland money to support the civil rights efforts in Alabama and Mississippi—­though Cleveland’s neighborhoods remained segregated.69 Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld backed up his fervent support for racial integration, including school integration in Cleveland, with a willingness to expose himself to vicious attacks in Mississippi during a civil rights campaign. But by the late 1950s, when Lelyveld came to lead then suburban Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, movement to the suburbs was well under way, and very few

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Jewish students were still attending the Cleveland Public Schools. The Heights Area Project and related Jewish federation initiatives attracted national attention as efforts to discourage Jewish flight from an inner-­ring suburb; they had real but modest success in slowing suburbanization, but they did not prevent the eventual movement of the Jewish population—­and of Jewish institutions—­farther east.70 Perhaps no more in Cleveland than elsewhere, Jews supported B’nai B’rith, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and other efforts to reduce religious, ethnic, and racial discrimination. By endowing the Anisfield-­Wolf Book Awards in 1934, Edith Anisfield Wolf added a distinctive element to this cause. Her gift funded a substantial prize for “the most sound and significant book published in the previous year on the general subject of racial relations in the contemporary world.”71 Initially, a committee organized by the Saturday Review of Literature selected the winner. Since the 1960s, the Cleveland Foundation has managed the award as well as the money; currently, the award goes to several authors whose books “have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures,” as judged by a national panel of distinguished scholars and writers. The list of winners includes a large proportion of the most influential books on these topics.72 In 1979 Charles S. Liebman of the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies argued that a key aim of American Jewish philanthropy since the early twentieth century had been to raise the standing of the Jewish community and improve the acceptance of Jewish professionals by funding excellence and making excellent health care and other services—­including access to arts education and arts experiences—­available to everyone.73 These aims were certainly important in Cleveland, where Jewish philanthropists embraced giving both to make Jewish institutions such as the Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum and Mt. Sinai Hospital excellent and to keep Mt. Sinai open to all regardless of religion and (so far as possible) regardless of ability to pay. Cleveland Jewish philanthropists also embraced giving to non-­Jewish institutions. Notably, these institutions—­the Cleveland Foundation, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Orchestra, University Hospitals, schools that came together in the 1960s to constitute Case Western Reserve University—­date from the period of the reorganization of Cleveland’s nonprofit organizations along Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and nonsectarian lines. As we have seen, Jews played a key part in this reorganization. There is no catalog of Jewish support for Cleveland’s most prominent general institutions, but there are suggestive indications. In a time when Jewish doctors could not get appointments at other hospitals, Jewish support for non-­Jewish hospitals and medical schools was understandably rare. But Jewish donors did provide some support to the city’s other elite institutions.74

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Figure 2.2  Campaign committee for Mt. Sinai Hospital announces that “Moses Cleveland” would record the campaign’s progress at the Cleveland Trust Company at East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue and that a radio set stationed there would tune in with the noonday meetings at the chamber of commerce during the week of the campaign for a new dispensary, nurses’ home, and laboratory, April 1925. (WRHS)

From its creation in 1942 to the end of its planned life of thirty-­five years, the Louis D. Beaumont Foundation was Cleveland’s largest private foundation. Derived from a department store and investment fortune, it gave to Jewish and secular institutions alike in Cleveland, St. Louis, and Denver, including Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Orchestra.75 To judge from mentions in the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, before the

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1980s, just a few Cleveland Jews donated to the Cleveland Museum of Art or to the Cleveland Orchestra,76 and only one or two served as trustees. As the presence by 1960 of Freiberger Library and Beaumont Hall indicated, Jewish donors were more engaged with Western Reserve University. This pre-­1970 pattern of limited giving to the most prominent secular institutions was common. A thorough analysis of the boards of arts organizations in six cities (Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis–­St. Paul as well as Cleveland) provides clear evidence. Across the six cities, in 1931 and 1961 Jews constituted just 4 percent and 5 percent, respectively, of art museum trustees and only 4 percent and 15 percent, respectively, of orchestra trustees. But by 1991, they accounted for 37 percent of art museum trustees and 34 percent of orchestra trustees. Similar patterns appeared for trusteeship secular hospitals (none in 1931, 2 percent in 1961, 37 percent in 1991); community foundations (3.3 percent in 1931, none in 1961, 21 percent in 1991); and leading private universities (4 percent in 1931, 3 percent in 1961, 15 percent in 1991).77 Jewish giving for non-­Jewish purposes seems to have received little publicity in the community at large before the 1940s or later. Bob Gries quotes his grandfather, Nathan Dauby, as writing that he had always “avoided publicity” and that “If I have made any contribution to the welfare of the Community of Cleveland, I would prefer not to have it publicized.” Dauby added, “It would take away the pleasure of doing things if I could not continue to do them behind the scenes.”78 It is possible that Dauby’s reticence also reflected the cool reception Jewish donors often received. Shortly after his 1958 arrival in Cleveland, Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld did speak out against religious discrimination at the Cleveland City Club. “In Cleveland the five o’clock shadow is deep and complete,” he said. “The after-­dark social dividing lines constitute an iron curtain breached only in atypical academic or artistic or political and social work circles.” And he related all this, as the Plain Dealer reported, to “incidents where persons meriting promotion lost out because of the prejudice of employers and the unfriendly pressure of prejudiced fellow workers.”79 In Science, Jews, and Secular Culture, the distinguished intellectual historian David Hollinger asks whether Jews found their way into prominence in the academy and the professions by the 1980s “because of a prior de-­Christianization well advanced among intellectuals of Anglo-­Protestant origin, or because these Jews, themselves, had helped by their very presence and by their pressure against the old exclusionary system to de-­Christianize the space they were gradually entering.”80 His answer is that the two sources of change worked together. There is no doubt that by the 1960s, many Protestants questioned past biases; the wide popularity of Will Herberg’s Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955) and E. Digby Baltzell’s The Protestant Establishment (1964) offers a significant kind of evidence.81 The case of Cleveland philanthropy suggests that the process had a longer development. We might say that underwriting the “pressures” exerted by Jewish intellectuals can

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be found the persistent, philanthropic effort of Jewish community and business leaders to engage their non-­Jewish neighbors in the reconfiguration of institutional patterns.

notes 1. A rich trove of published scholarship, dissertation research, and well-­documented websites has made it possible to write about Jewish philanthropy in Cleveland since the first arrival of Jews in 1839. Comprehensive information about philanthropy is never easy to collect, and that is certainly true for the most recent Jewish philanthropy in Cleveland, hence the decision to end at about 1990. 2. Merrimon Cuninggim, Private Money and Public Service: The Role of Foundations in American Society (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1972). 3. See David C. Hammack and Helmut K. Anheier, A Versatile American Institution: The Changing Ideals and Realities of Philanthropic Foundations (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2013). 4. “Exempt Purposes,” Internal Revenue Service, accessed March 19, 2018, https://​www​ .irs​.gov/​charities​-non​-profits/​charitable​-organizations/​exempt​-purposes​-internal​-revenue​ -code​-section​-501​-c​-3. 5. On the position of Maimonides in the commercial society of the eastern Mediterranean in the 1100s, see Mark R. Cohen, “Maimonides and Charity in the Light of the Geniza Documents,” in Georges Tamer, The Trias of Maimonides: Jewish, Arabic, and Ancient Culture of Knowledge / Die Trias des Maimonides: Jüdische, arabische und antike Wissenskultur (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 65–­81. 6. Estimates taken from https://​www​.measuringworth​.com/​dollarvaluetoday/​?amount​=​1​ %2C000​%2C000​+​&​from​=​1950. 7. Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Cleveland, 2nd ed. (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society, 1987). 8. Translation quoted in Allan Peskin, This Tempting Freedom: The Early Years of Cleveland Judaism and Anshe Chesed Congregation (Cleveland: Anshe Chesed, 1973), 3, accessed March 18, 2018, http://​images​.ulib​.csuohio​.edu/​cdm/​ref/​collection/​general/​id/​6348. 9. On European restrictions, see Nancy F. Schwartz and Stanley Lasky, “Jewish Cleveland before the Civil War,” American Jewish History 82, no. 1/4 (1994): 97–­122; for Bavaria and the Russian Empire, see Arthur A. Goren, New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The Kehillah Experiment, 1908–­1922 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). Jeffrey Morris, The Haymarket to the Heights (self-­pub., 2014), accessed October 16, 2016, https://​www​ .jewishhistorycleveland​.com/. This source provides detail on Cleveland’s Orthodox and other synagogues. 10. Schwartz and Lasky, “Jewish Cleveland,” 108–­109. Allan Peskin’s argument that “the Reform impulse came late to Cleveland” (This Tempting Freedom, 19) holds if we emphasize the sustained orientation toward tradition of the two oldest congregations, Anshe Chesed and Tifereth Israel. 11. Peskin, This Tempting Freedom, 24. As early as 1861, both of the earliest congregations had installed an organ, and Tifereth Israel was seating families together rather than separating men and women; Schwartz and Lasky, “Jewish Cleveland,” 107. 12. David Kaufman, Shul with a Pool: The “Synagogue-­Center” in American Jewish History (University Press of New England, 1999), 37; quote from Moses J. Gries, “The Jewish Community of Cleveland,” in Samuel Peter Orth, A History of Cleveland, Ohio (Cleveland: S. J. Clarke, 1910), 1:37–­38. 13. Sources for the following include Gries, 377–­393; “Our History,” Beth Israel–­The West Temple, accessed March 18, 2018, http://​www​.thewesttemple​.com/​about​-us/​our​-history3;

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and relevant articles in Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, http://​ech​.case​.edu/. See also Morris, Haymarket. 14. B’nai Jeshurun, accessed October 16, 2016, https://​www​.bnaijeshurun​.org/​about​-us​-our​ -congregation​-our​-history. 15. Kaufman, Shul with a Pool, 216. 16. “Shaarey Tikvah to Celebrate Anniversary,” Cleveland Jewish News, accessed October  16, 2016, http://​www​.clevelandjewishnews​.com/​news/​local​_news/​shaarey​-tikvah​-to​ -celebrate​-th​-anniversary/​article​_21bd38e0​-6c32​-11e5​-8029​-db3fa75eaa17​.html. 17. Cedar Road Synagogue, http://​www​.cedarroadsynagogue​.org/​pages/​history​.html. 18. Gries, “Jewish Community,” 380. 19. Cleveland Jewish Genealogy Society, accessed October 16, 2016, http://​clevelandjgs​.org/​ cong​.htm. 20. See Morris, Haymarket. 21. “Leonard Case’s Great Gift,” Cleveland Jewish History, accessed August 16, 2016, http://​www​.clevelandjewishhistory​.net/​syn/​great​-gift​.htm​#philosemitism. 22. Gries, “Jewish Community,” 378; Measuring Worth, accessed March 19, 2018, https://​ www​.measuringworth​.com/​calculators/​uscompare/. 23. For photographs, see “Cleveland’s Old Still-­Standing Synagogues,” Cleveland Jewish History, accessed March 19, 2018, http://​www​.clevelandjewishhistory​.net/​syn/​old​-synagogues​.htm; and “The ‘Big Four,’” in Morris, Haymarket, accessed March 19, 2018, http://​jewishcleveland​ .weebly​.com/​the​-big​-four​.html. 24. Johann Christoph Wagenseil (d. 1705), quoted in Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–­1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 231. 25. Gries, “Jewish Community,” 381. 26. Gries, 38; Plain Dealer, January 13, 1882; October 12, 1891; Morris, Haymarket. 27. A model study of landsmanshaftn is Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880–­1939 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001). Cleveland Jews from Hungary launched the Hungarian Aid Society in 1863; it was still doing well at its fiftieth anniversary. Robert Perlman, Bridging Three Worlds: Hungarian-­Jewish Americans, 1848–­1914 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), 144. See also Laura Tuennerman-­Kaplan, Helping Others, Helping Ourselves: Power, Giving, and Community Identity in Cleveland, Ohio, 1880–­1930 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001). 28. Schwartz and Lasky, “Jewish Cleveland,” 110. 29. On Peixotto, see the memorial voted on by the Cleveland B’nai B’rth lodge printed in the Plain Dealer, September 27, 1890; also Henry Samuel Morais, Eminent Israelites of the Nineteenth Century: A Series of Biographical Sketches (E. Stern, 1880), 268. 30. Upon the death of John Huntington in 1893, the orphanage board voted on a memorial thanking the pioneer oil refiner for his gift to the institution; Plain Dealer, February 3, 1893. 31. Jewish Orphan Asylum, I.O.B.B. Districts 2, 6, and 7, “Annual Report of the Superintendent,” July 2, 1887, in Menorah 3 (1887): 68–­70. 32. Marian J. Morton, “Homes for Poverty’s Children: Cleveland’s Orphanages, 1851–­1933,” Ohio History Journal 98 (1989): 5–­22. 33. For an example, see “The Jewish Orphan Asylum,” Plain Dealer, April 12, 1886, 8 (noting a $3,000 gift from St. Louis). See also Gary Edward Polster, Inside Looking Out: The Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum, 1868–­1924 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990). 34. Gries, “Jewish Community,” 383. 35. See the relevant articles in Encyclopedia of Cleveland History; the quotation is from Kaufman, Shul with a Pool, 95. 36. “Assemble in City in Aid of Health,” Plain Dealer, December 29, 1913, 3. The Louis D. Beaumont Foundation, based on a fortune derived from May Company department stores in St. Louis, Denver, Los Angeles, and Cleveland and long led by Louis D. Beaumont, was for several decades directed from Cleveland by Nathan L. Dauby and others. From the 1930s to its preplanned dissolution in 1977, it made substantial gifts to major Jewish and non-­Jewish

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hospitals and to universities, colleges, art museums, and orchestras in the four cities. See, e.g., Jewish Hospital of St. Louis 14, no. 7 (September 1965): 1, 12, accessed March 19, 2018, http://​ docplayer​.net/​18250273​-Beaumont​-foundation​-sponsors​-many​-hospital​-research​-projects​ -joint​-injections​-method​-helps​-some​-arthritics​-450​-000​-grant​-awarded​-hospital​.html. 37. Plain Dealer, May 16, 1886. Kaufman notes a slightly earlier school in Chicago in Shul with a Pool, 133. 38. Kaufman, Shul with a Pool, 113. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History identifies the original organizations as the Ladies Benevolent Society, the Ladies Sewing Society, and the Personal Services Society. 39. Cf. David Rosner, A Once Charitable Enterprise: Health Care in Brooklyn, 1890–­1915 (Harvard University Press, 1978). 40. Estimate taken from https://​www​.measuringworth​.com/​calculators/​uscompare/​ relativevalue​.php. 41. Maurice J. Karpf, “Jewish Community Organization in the United States,” American Jewish Year Book 39 (1937–­1938): 94. 42. Robert Cunningham III and Robert M. Cunningham Jr., The Blues: A History of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield System (Northern Illinois University Press, 1997), 14–­17. See Encyclopedia of Cleveland History and the website of the Mt. Sinai Foundation. 43. Joseph Jacobs, “The Federation Movement in American Jewish Philanthropy,” American Jewish Year Book 17 (1915): 160. 44. H. S. Linfield, “The Communal Organization of the Jews in the United States, 1927,” American Jewish Year Book 31 (1929–­1930): 99–­254. 45. Quoted in Marc Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern American (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 36. 46. Daniel Judah Elazar, Community and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of American Jewry, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1995), 349. 47. Sidney Z. Vincent, Personal and Professional: Memoirs of a Life in Community Service (Cleveland: Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, 1982), 103. 48. Robert S. Merriman, “Cleveland: Faint Halo around a Solid Tradition of Giving,” Research Papers sponsored by the Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs, vol. 2, pt. 1 (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 1977), 990. 49. For the New York and Chicago foundations, see Hammack and Anheier, A Versatile American Institution. In “How Americans Give: The Financialization of American Jewish Philanthropy,” American Historical Review (December 2017): 159–­189, Lila Corwin Berman offers an extended discussion of Sugarman’s work relating to Jewish philanthropy. Unfortunately, this discussion fails to take into account the larger history of Jewish endowments and foundations, the challenges posed by the Tax Reform Act of 1969, or the fact that Sugarman did much of his work on funds and endowments for non-­Jewish charities, including community foundations. 50. Merriman, “Faint Halo,” 991; additional information provided by Alan D. Gross and Paul Feinberg of the Cleveland Federation, November 2016 and August 2018. 51. Plain Dealer, November 21, 1870. Peixotto visit to Cleveland en route to Romania; [untitled], Plain Dealer, March 22, 1872, 2; “The Jews of Roumania,” Plain Dealer, May 15, 1872, 1. 52. Plain Dealer, January 13, 1882; “Russian Refugees,” Plain Dealer, October 12, 1891, 5; “Russian Refugees Will Be Educated and Taught American Citizenship, Religious Instruction Will Be Ignored Entirely,” Plain Dealer, November 27, 1891, 5; “Helping Jewish Refugees,” Plain Dealer, May 10, 1892, 4; “Pleads for Cash and Not Protest,” Plain Dealer, November 14, 1905, 3. 53. For Silver’s fundraising, see, e.g., the essays by Arthur Goren and Mark A. Raider in Mark A. Raider, Jonathan D. Sarna, and Ronald W. Zweig, eds., Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism (Routledge, 2012). 54. Sylvia Bernice Fleck Abrams, “Searching for a Policy: Attitudes and Policies of Non-­ governmental Agencies toward the Adjustment of Jewish Immigrants of the Holocaust Era, 1933–­1953, as Reflected in Cleveland, Ohio” (PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University,

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1988), partly published as Abrams, “Policies toward Communal Integration of Jewish Immigrants of the Holocaust in the United States During 1942–­49,” in Jewish Assimilation, Acculturation, and Accommodation, ed. Menahem Mor (Fordham University Press, 1992), 2:141. 55. See, e.g., Theodore Sasson, The New American Zionism (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 74. 56. Merriman, “Faint Halo,” 992. 57. For an informative paper on Cleveland’s engagement with the Soviet Jewish movement, see Rachel Davidson, “Resettlement of Russian Speaking Jews to Cleveland,” Jewish Federation of Cleveland, August 6, 2013, accessed March 19, 2018, http://​www​.clevelandjewishhistory​ .net/​sj/​sovietjews​-incleveland​.pdf. On Cleveland and Jewish emigration from Ethiopia, see Mark I. Rosen, Mission, Meaning, and Money (New York: iUniverse, 2010). 58. Quoted in Rosen, Mission, Meaning, and Money, 61. Another example is the Negev Foundation, set up in Cleveland to provide funds directly to “help the Negev Desert develop into a flourishing, economically productive, habitable region.” In its first twenty years, it provided “over ten million dollars in support of Negev development.” Negev Foundation, accessed March 19, 2018, http://​www​.negev​.org/​About/​About​_Us​.htm. 59. For a review of the literature on religious institutions and racial divisions in the American South after the Civil War, see David C. Hammack, “Nonprofit Organizations, Philanthropy, and Civil Society,” in A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, ed. Christopher McKnight Nichols and Nancy C. Unger (Malden, Mass.: John Wiley & Sons, 2017). 60. Quoted in Arthur A. Goren, “Between Ideal and Reality: Abba Hillel Silver’s Zionist Vision,” Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture 17 (1996): 71. 61. See “Million in Week, Aim of Campaign,” quoting Martin Marks as president of the “Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthropy,” Plain Dealer, February 6, 1914, 1, 3. The best account of these events is offered by Brian Ross, “The New Philanthropy: The Reorganization of Charity in Turn of the Century Cleveland” (PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1989). 62. For Pierce v. Society of Sisters, see the brief excerpted in David C. Hammack, ed., Making the Nonprofit Sector in the United States: A Reader (Indiana University Press, 1998). See also Kevin M. Schultz, Tri-­faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise (Oxford University Press, 2011). Cleveland anticipated by forty years the move that Schultz describes as occurring after the end of World War II. 63. Elazar, Community and Polity, 347. 64. Frederic C. Howe, a journalist and lawyer, recalled the story in The Confessions of a Reformer (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1988; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), 80–­81. 65. Lloyd P. Jorgenson, The State and the Non-­public School, 1825–­1925 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987); John Webb Pratt, Religion, Politics, and Diversity: The Church-­State Theme in New York History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967). A recent overview is Melissa R. Klapper, “The History of Jewish Education in America, 1700–­2000,” in The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America, by Marc Lee Raphael (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 189–­216. 66. Cleveland Jews also made important contributions to the collections of the Cleveland Public Library and of nearby state university libraries; see Encyclopedia of Cleveland History entries for “Libraries,” “Ethnic,” “Paul Louis Feiss,” “Robert Hays Gries,” “Emil Joseph,” and “Edith Anisfield Wolf.” Cf. Joel Perlmann, Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880–­1935 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 67. Regennia N. Williams, “‘Race Women’ and Reform: Cleveland, Ohio, 1900–­1940,” (paper presented to the Ohio Academy of History, 2002), accessed March 18, 2018, http://​ www​.ohioacademyofhistory​.org/​wp​-content/​uploads/​2013/​04/​2002Williams​.pdf. 68. Victoria Woeste, Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle against Hate Speech (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).

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69. Author conversations with Jordan Band in 1990; W. Dennis Keating, “Open Housing in Metropolitan Cleveland,” in Cleveland: A Metropolitan Reader, ed. W. Dennis Keating and Norman Krumholz (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1995), 300. 70. See the account of the Heights Area Project in Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, which also describes the civil rights activities of the following Jewish Clevelanders: Ruth Einstein, Max R. Friedman, Eleanor Gerson, Myron E. Glass, Dorothy D. Kates, Lewis Polster, Rudolph Rosenthal, Elma Schever, Gilbert J. Seldin, and Max Wohl. Also see W. Dennis Keating, The Suburban Racial Dilemma: Housing and Neighborhoods (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010); Marc Lee Raphael, “Jewish Responses to the Integration of a Suburb: Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 1960–­1980,” accessed March 18, 2018, http://​americanjewisharchives​.org/​ publications/​jopurnal/​PDF/​1992​_44​_02​_00​_raphael​.pdf; and David P. Varady, “Neighborhood Stabilization in Jewish Communities: A Comparative Analysis,” Contemporary Jewry 6, no. 1 (March 1982): 18–­35. Jews also contributed significantly to the related campaign to preserve racial integration in Shaker Heights, which also had some success in maintaining the integration of housing; see the 1997 film by Stuart Math, Shaker Heights: The Struggle for Integration. See David C. Hammack, “The Making of a Documentary in Urban History, Reflections on Advising a TV Film,” Urban History Newsletter, no. 22 (October 1999): 1–­5; for the film, see http://​www​.stuartmathfilms​.com/​det​_struggle​.html. 71. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Mrs. Wolf Establishes Fund for Best Racial Study Book,” August  1, 1934, accessed March 19, 2018, http://​www​.jta​.org/​1934/​08/​01/​archive/​mrs​-wolf​ -establishes​-fund​-for​-best​-racial​-study​-book. 72. Anisfield-­Wolf Book Awards, accessed March 19, 2018, https://​www​.anisfield​-wolf​.org/ ​about/​the​-awards/. 73. Charles S. Liebman, “Leadership and Decision-­Making in a Jewish Federation: The New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies,” American Jewish Yearbook 79 (1979): 3–­76. 74. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History reports that clothing manufacturer John Anisfield made significant donations not only to Jewish charities but also to the Association for Crippled Children and that he served on the Committee on Benevolent Institutions of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. His daughter, Edith Anisfield Wolf, left her books to the Cleveland Public Library, her home to the Cleveland Welfare Federation, and her money to the Cleveland Foundation. Another Jew listed in this source as an important donor to the Cleveland Public Library is Robert Hays Gries. 75. The fullest account of the Beaumont Foundation is found in Bob Gries, Five Generations: 175 Years of Love for Cleveland (Cleveland: self-­pub., 2014). The Beaumont Foundation and later the Dauby Charity Fund adopted Julius Rosenwald’s view that donors should give to current causes rather than establish permanent foundations. 76. Donors to the Cleveland Museum of Art: Louis D. Beaumont, Paul L. Feiss, Robert Hays Gries and Lucille Dauby Gries, Edgar A. Hahn, Salmon P. Halle, and Samuel D. Wise; Donors to the Cleveland Orchestra: Louis D. Beaumont and the Louis D. Beaumont Foundation, Paul L. Feiss, Lucille Dauby Gries, Edgar Hahn, and Bertha Beitman Herzog. Edgar A. Hahn served as a trustee of the Musical Arts Association (parent of the Cleveland Orchestra), the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Beaumont Foundation. 77. Rikki Abzug and Joseph Galaskiewicz, “Nonprofit Boards: Crucibles of Expertise or Symbols of Local Identities?,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2001): 63. The author’s separate analysis of this study’s data confirms that the pattern applied to Cleveland. Also see Francie Ostrower, Trustees of Culture: Power, Wealth, and Status on Elite Arts Boards (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 78. Gries, Five Generations, 115. 79. Cleveland attorney Paul Feinberg recalls that his father was, in the 1950s, the area director of the American Jewish Committee, whose projects included persuading insurance companies and banks to discontinue their practice of hiring few or no Jews. For Rabbi Lelyveld’s statement, see “Rabbi Decries Prejudice Infection,” Plain Dealer, February 7, 1960, 19-­A. Rabbi

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Lelyveld played a recording of a similar speech for the author during a visit to the rabbi’s home in March 1960. 80. David A. Hollinger, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid-­twentieth-­century American Intellectual History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 27. 81. Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (New York: Doubleday, 1955); E. Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964).

chapter 3

Q

ABRAHAM HAYYIM FRIEDLAND AND THE CONTEXT, STRUCTURES, AND CONTENT OF JEWISH EDUCATION Sylvia F. Abrams and Lifsa Schachter

The 1920s and 1930s saw the emergence of a professional system of Jewish education in the United States with the creation of central bureaus and teacher training programs, the rise of professional leadership, the beginning of innovative curricula, and the growth of community-­sponsored schools. Cleveland, through the work of Abraham Hayyim Friedland, was at the forefront of these changes. A study of Friedland’s values and educational innovations is key to understanding how a group of leaders—­optimistic about the future of American Judaism and seeing Hebrew as crucial to its future and to Zionism—­shaped the direction of the educational institutions of American Jewry for decades. Friedland, known as Chet Aleph (the initials of his Hebrew personal names), came to Cleveland in 1921 to serve as superintendent of Cleveland Hebrew Schools, the Jewish community’s burgeoning network of supplementary religious schools. Three years later, he became the founding director of the Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education.1 He served in these dual capacities, even while seriously ill, until his death in 1939. Friedland personified the philosophy that Hebrew education was synonymous with Jewish education. He was an innovative educator, a gifted poet, and a national leader of both the Zionist and the Hebraist movements in America. Though Friedland was a beloved transformational leader, his personal 58

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Figure 3.1  Chet Aleph Friedland with his Hebrew signature, from a testimonial dinner program, June 1936. (WRHS)

vision and professional agenda often led to conflict with other communal leaders in the organizations he headed. This chapter examines Friedland’s years in Cleveland, from 1921 until his death in 1939, with an emphasis on the development of his educational vision, the structures he established, his innovative approaches, and his legacy as a communal, national, and literary leader.

Friedland’s Cleveland Years: 1921–­1 939 Friedland came to America from Gorodok, Lithuania, in 1905. He had a reputation as an ilui (a prodigy in Talmudic studies) and as a published Hebrew and Yiddish poet. Editors would approach him with a topic and he would produce a poem

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extemporaneously. His reputation followed him to America, where he studied both in a public high school and at the Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva (later Yeshiva University). Friedland belonged to the Zionist youth movement Ahiever (My Hebrew Brother), and he was one of the first members of the Herzl Zionist Club, Noar Ivri (Hebrew Youth), and Mefitsei Sfat Ever u-Sifruteha (Spreaders of the Hebrew Language and Its Literature). Teaching in local supplementary schools, he entertained children with original stories, songs, and his novel approach. Friedland established the first Hebrew journal for children in the monthly Zionist magazine ha-­Yehudi ha-­Tzair (The young Jew) and began to publish “Sihot Pedagogiot” (Pedagogic conversations) in the journal Hed ha-­Moreh (The teacher’s voice), laying the foundation for Hebrew pedagogy in the United States.2 At Columbia University and its Teachers College, he learned of the work of John Dewey and was a student of the psychologist Edward Thorndike and the pedagogue William Heard Kilpatrick.3 Friedland also became familiar with trends in Judaism at the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he came under the influence of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. Friedland was part of a close group of colleagues with literary ambitions. Friedland and his cohort, all passionate Zionists, anchored their idealism not in settling the Land of Israel but in the revitalization of the Hebrew language. Friedland initially wrote poetry in his native Yiddish, but professionally, he came down firmly on the side of Hebrew. Friedland and his colleagues shared a background of Jewish study in Europe, a commitment to a national-­cultural view of Jewish history and peoplehood, a belief in Hebrew as the foundation of Jewish identity, and a strong Zionist orientation. They were both nationalists and Hebraists (le’umim and ivrim, respectively) and preferred to be called Hebrews, not Jews. While largely unsuccessful in their most lofty goals, the group transformed American Jewish education.4 This was especially true for the communal institutions and the teachers’ colleges. Friedland never became one of the Benderly Boys, the pioneering American Jewish educators gathered around Dr. Samson Benderly and the New York Bureau of Jewish Education. However, he nonetheless shared with them essential beliefs about American Jewish integration, cultural Zionism, communal responsibility, and progressivism.5 Friedland’s gifts and vision can be seen in the development of New York’s Beit Sefer Le’umi (the National School), only the second school for Jewish girls in America, founded in 1910.6 He became its principal in 1911 at the age of nineteen. Later he married a teacher in the school, and she, Yonina, became a partner in his work.7 The school earned a reputation as a model for pedagogy and Zionist and Hebraist orientation. Friedland believed in empowering students, in developing leadership, in finding the child’s strengths, in learning through the arts, and in the importance of music and laughter in the classroom. Determined to capture the children’s unstructured after-­school time, Friedland sponsored extracurricular clubs, theater groups, newspapers, choirs, and dance troupes. He also

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saw the school in the spirit of women’s vocational schools then being developed: the school’s female graduates prepared for careers in Jewish education. Success, however, soon led to conflict with new board members, and Friedland decided to leave New York. Prior to Friedland’s arrival in Cleveland, local efforts to support Hebrew floundered because of insufficient support.8 The first Talmud Torah, the Sir Moses Montefiore Free Hebrew School, was established circa 1885 and emphasized traditional religious studies.9 In 1904 Joseph Flock and Aaron Garber founded the Flock-­Garber Cheder to emphasize Hebrew language and nationalism. In 1907 the two schools combined. The name remained Talmud Torah until 1913, when it was changed to Cleveland Hebrew School and Institute.10 In 1920, just before Friedland’s arrival, the organization educated nine hundred students on East Fifty-­Fifth Street and at a Glenville branch. Other supporters of Hebrew included the three Garber brothers, Moses, Aaron, and Bernard—­stalwarts of the organization ha-­Ivri ha-­Tzair (The Young Hebrew, in existence from 1911 to 1917) who later became ardent supporters of Friedland’s Hebrew-­centered vision.11 Most Cleveland Jews sent their children to public schools. None of the schools in Cleveland combined Jewish and secular studies. The preferred method of Jewish education for most immigrant families, especially for boys, was the supplementary afternoon school aimed at preventing assimilation through teaching Jewish religious practices. At the time, the city’s two Reform temples ran Sunday schools; the Conservative synagogues held weekend and afternoon classes where Hebrew was taught; the Orthodox sponsored a supplementary school, Yeshivah Adath B’nai Yisrael, educating boys traditionally; and the I. L. Peretz Workmen’s Circle School taught Yiddish and a socialist orientation to Judaism. In addition, the National Council of Jewish Women began opening Sunday schools for unaffiliated, mostly poor girls. There were also other small schools, including one associated with the Communist movement. Friedland arrived in Cleveland in 1921 to become the superintendent of Cleveland Hebrew Schools after an extensive search.12 He quickly began to replicate the innovations he developed in Beit Sefer Le’umi, but he also extended his creative canvas. His educational work can be divided into the structural and the pedagogic. Almost all of Friedland’s initiatives were forecast in his letter of acceptance. Friedland accepted the position with conditions—­namely, the establishment of a chain of schools (including a high school), a Hebrew theater, a Hebrew college, a teachers’ seminary, and funds for a library, in addition to his $5,550 salary and moving expenses. An additional condition was the creation of a “family atmosphere” among students, parents, teachers, and directors.13 Offered the post in August 1920, Friedland did not start in Cleveland until nine months later; communal leaders had contacted a substitute candidate, since Friedland had made so many excuses about why he could not leave New York. His rocky arrival portended his stormy tenure. The Cleveland Hebrew Schools board, aware

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that their charismatic visionary was an independent thinker, was inspired by his first speech to them.14 Friedland had asserted that eight to ten thousand Jewish children were receiving no Jewish education and that he planned to grow the Cleveland Hebrew Schools to 1,400 students in six months. He planned to provide religious instruction using phonograph records of famous cantors to teach students prayers. In typical fashion, he asked the board to donate the recordings. The challenges facing Friedland were formidable. The Sunday schools affiliated with the Reform movement were the most prestigious Jewish educational institutions, with enrollments four to five times higher than that of the supplementary schools.15 In his August report, Friedland estimated there were twelve thousand children receiving no Jewish education at all. He planned to open branches throughout the city to educate them.16 Friedland urged the Federation of Jewish Charities of Cleveland Board of Trustees to provide more stable funding, since no more than eight thousand of eighteen thousand potential students were enrolled in any form of Jewish education.17 On December 1, 1924, nine Cleveland Hebrew Schools branches conducted seventy-­nine classes for 1,974 students.18 Enrollment doubled over the next decade. The 1923 federation survey recommending the establishment of a Bureau of Jewish Education greatly affected Friedland’s position. The recommendation was implemented following committee meetings in April and July 1924. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of The Temple–­Tifereth Israel was its acting chairman and later president. From the beginning, the organizing committee determined that the new bureau should not primarily be a financial organization but rather should function as a “Federation of Jewish Educational Institutions.”19 The committee did not immediately turn to Friedland for the position of Director of Jewish Education, even though Rabbi Silver knew him from childhood in New York. The committee reported in October that all their inquiries in other cities had resulted in the same recommendation: “In their estimation the Community had in Mr. Friedland a man eminently capable of directing the development of Jewish education.”20 They added that the community also required someone familiar with raising money. Rabbi Silver made a recruitment trip to New York. Only then did Silver agree to appoint Friedland and hire an executive director for administration. Friedland outlined how he understood the Bureau of Jewish Education would function—­with two departments: a financial department supervised by a financial or administrative secretary and an educational department headed by the educational director. The committee subsequently hired Alfred H. Sachs for the fiscal role.21 Sachs was willing to work for an annual salary of four thousand dollars until he proved himself.22 Samuel Goldhamer, the federation’s executive director, conducted the actual negotiations, an early indication of which department held the final authority in Jewish education matters.23 Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver was president of the bureau until his resignation in 1932, after which he continued

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to serve on the bureau’s board. Rabbi Barnett Brickner followed him, serving until 1940. The presence of several charismatic professional and communal leaders in the same organization led to numerous clashes around finances, administration, and differing educational goals. Friedland had ongoing battles with rabbis who saw his orientation as diminishing students’ religious identity and practice. He was not helped by his outspokenness with adversaries. The absence of clear professional and communal boundaries, the quarrels among those of differing Zionist orientations, and the consequences of the Great Depression further complicated the atmosphere. The boundary between the new bureau and the Cleveland Hebrew Schools was especially porous because Friedland made use of both in his initiatives. There was concern throughout his tenure about how he balanced his two roles.24 Pressured financially in 1935, the two organizations combined offices in one location, and concerns intensified.25 The bureau’s most immediate task was to stabilize the organization’s finances.26 The financial model adopted included a fundraising campaign separate from the annual Federation of Jewish Charities fund drive. Supporters were accustomed to taking out paid subscriptions to the school; these individuals were persuaded to assign their subscriptions to the newly formed bureau, which would then allocate funds from its budget to the Hebrew Schools. Donors were confused about how their donations to the bureau would benefit their schools. Alfred Sachs was charged with staffing the fundraising efforts. Cleveland was “the only city where money was raised directly for a centralized Jewish educational system under a budget independent of the Federation.”27 Sachs’s communal role as secretary of the Cleveland District of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) complicated his relationships with community leaders. The community also began to question this method of fundraising.28 Sachs left his position at the end of 1928, but his financial expertise later became invaluable to the bureau, where he served as a community leader. Because there was no funding to replace Sachs, Rabbi Silver oversaw financial operations. Financial difficulties did not stop Friedland, always indifferent to fiscal realities, from recommending the opening of a Cleveland Hebrew Schools branch in suburban Cleveland Heights in 1931. That same year, the bureau became a federation beneficiary agency. Its fundraising role was eliminated.29 While the new bureau struggled financially, Friedland worked to establish the structures to fulfill his vision. Friedland, either through his own staff or with the federation’s help, conducted numerous student surveys.30 He planned to develop educational materials, high school classes and adolescent clubs, study classes and additional Sunday schools, education through home study groups for children who lived where there were insufficient numbers for a class, a teacher training institute, collections in public libraries, and adult education courses in Jewish subjects. This was in addition to advising the system of schools, conducting educational surveys, and coordinating the educational

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activities of the community.31 One of the bureau’s first challenges involved coaxing the diverse Jewish education entities, including the Council of Jewish Women, to accept its supervision. By 1926 the bureau had reorganized the Religious Schools of the Council of Jewish Women, increased their number from two to seven, found housing for five facilities, developed their curriculum, and placed the entire system under professional supervision. Aaron Garber thought that “the Bureau caused Cleveland to become over Sunday-­schooled by artificially forcing a community Sunday school program on a clientele that is either unreceptive or indifferent.”32 The Religious Schools of the Council of Jewish Women became known as the United Jewish Religious Schools (UJRS) and eventually were merged into the Cleveland Hebrew Schools as their Sunday department. This tension between supporting intensive Hebrew education or Sunday programs continued well beyond Friedland’s era. Establishing a community high school was both a communal goal and early goal of Friedland. In 1921 he planned to begin high school classes and to announce classes for teachers in what he called, even then, a “teachers institute.”33 In 1923 a National Council of Jewish Social Service survey urged the development of extension education for unaffiliated youth between the ages of fifteen and twenty.34 Friedland urged the Cleveland Hebrew Schools board to fund subsidies for Hebrew school graduates to continue their studies.35 In 1926 the board again discussed opening a high school, finally obtained a building, and informed the bureau of its opening.36 A school was opened in 1926. Friedland intended the school to be a Hebrew teachers institute but left the proper name to be determined later.37 Friedland also urged opening classes for junior high students to those without any prior Jewish education.38 Mordecai Medini, an educator recruited by Friedland, saw the opening of a high school as an outcome of the informal presence of graduates of Hebrew schools, who wanted to continue learning Hebrew and were beginning to teach. It was also a response to the need to provide a continuing source of teachers for students in the Cleveland Hebrew Schools and to the Hebrew departments opening in the Reform synagogues in response to the success of Cleveland Hebrew Schools.39 Introducing Hebrew as a foreign language in the Cleveland public high schools also became a goal of the bureau’s Hebraists. Cleveland Board of Education member Alfred A. Benesch was well positioned to act as an intermediary with the public schools. Ezra Shapiro, board president of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools, and Rabbi Brickner, bureau board president, worked together with Benesch to further the campaign for Hebrew in public high schools. Reform Jews, whom Benesch felt were anti-­Hebrew, began to call the federation’s offices.40 Benesch wrote to Friedland, “We may be compelled by our Jews to admit that Hebrew is not worthy of being on a par with other languages, contrary to the opinion of enlightened Goyim.”41 The Jewish Community Council, formed in 1934, ultimately thwarted the campaign. The bureau board did not understand why their plans had to be

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reviewed by this relatively new entity.42 The council’s opposition delayed the introduction of Hebrew into the public high schools until 1952.43 The Jewish Teachers Institute was created from several preexisting institutions, including the Beit Midrash L’Morim (Hebrew Teachers’ Seminary), opened in 1919, and the Jewish Normal School of Cleveland. The latter had been conducted under the volunteer leadership of rabbis Barnett Brickner, Solomon Goldman, Abraham Nowak, Abba Hillel Silver, and Louis Wolsey. When it came under bureau supervision, paid professional staff was added and the hours of instruction increased.44 In its first term, the Jewish Teachers Institute registered sixty-­five students.45 There were separate departments for religious school teachers and for those preparing to teach in Hebrew.46 The institute expanded its mission in 1933, changing its name to the Cleveland Institute of Jewish Studies. By 1935 so many of its students had moved further east that the institute began alternating classes: one semester at Euclid Avenue Temple and the next at Temple on the Heights. Known as the Cleveland Institute of Jewish Studies of the Bureau of Jewish Education, its official address was the bureau’s office on East 105th Street. Its administrative committee consisted of Nathan Brilliant, Rabbi Leon Feuer, and Friedland. It had its own registrar and officers.47 At its first commencement exercises in 1936, Friedland was listed as the dean of the Hebrew Teachers’ Seminary.48 Friedland worked with congregations to place the new institute’s graduates in afternoon programs, but ideologically, he did not support financial subsidies for placing teachers in the I. L. Peretz Workmen’s Circle schools or Yeshivah Adath B’nai Israel.49 According to a younger colleague, Friedland referred to the latter institution as the “last of the Mohicans,” not seeing the relevance of Orthodox boys’ religious education.50 Both organizations requested representation on the bureau board and a financial allocation.51 Workmen’s Circle maintained that there was “not one single system of Jewish education which may be applicable to the entire community.”52 These institutions only received federation funding in 1938, after Friedland’s hospitalization. Quarrels about Zionism, reflecting the differing views of leaders such as Silver and Friedland, were widespread and disruptive. While such disagreements generally remained behind closed doors, in 1934 a disagreement became public and embroiled the community.53 Friedland considered an article Rabbi Silver published in the Jewish Daily Bulletin discussing Hebrew education in the United States a personal attack on the entire system of Hebrew education in Cleveland. Friedland, Nathan Brilliant, and Alfred Sachs sent a telegram to their educational associates urging a vigorous response.54 Upon learning of the telegram, Rabbi Silver tendered his resignation to the bureau board, objecting to serving as long as Friedland was an employee. He further alleged that Friedland, in an unauthorized communication, had failed to separate his role as educator from his Zionist interests by protesting an invitation for Silver to speak at a Palestine rally.55 Silver sent copies of his resignation letter with the telegram to prominent Jewish

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Figure 3.2  First Graduation of Hebrew Teachers’ Seminary, June 10, 1936. Chet Aleph Friedland at center, with Mordecai Medini on the right and P. Lamdin on the left. From top center, clockwise: M. Kogen, Lillian Kohn (Leah Cohen), Jack Kounin (Yakov), Esther Gressel-­Fallenberg, Harold (Tzvi) Schwartz, Eva (Khana) Boman Tishkoff, Abraham Friedman, and Celia (Shulamit) Epstein.

community members.56 He stated that Friedland was malicious and vindictive and “unworthy to occupy the position of Director of a religious educational organization.”57 The bureau refused to accept his resignation. In response, Friedland asserted that Rabbi Silver had mistakenly repeated untruths in describing the country’s Bureaus of Jewish Education and Hebrew schools as secular, antireligious institutions. He asked if the Hebrew schools were not as religious as Rabbi Silver’s own school.58 In order to quell the disagreement, Rabbi Brickner, E. M. Baker, and Ezra Shapiro held two conferences with Friedland and Silver, after which Rabbi Silver agreed to withdraw his resignation and the personal attacks. The two issued a mutual letter of regret on Zionist matters.59 The heart of the conflict was not over substance, since Silver was an early advocate of adding Hebrew to the Reform synagogue’s curriculum and Friedland offered optional junior congregation Sabbath services at some Cleveland Hebrew Schools branches. Yet they apparently never fully repaired their

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relationship. Rabbi Silver’s name is conspicuously missing from a testimonial dinner for Friedland in 1936.

Friedland’s Educational Innovations Friedland had two platforms from which to promote his agenda. At the bureau, he experimented with using the community as a space for Jewish education, while Cleveland Hebrew Schools served as a laboratory to develop educational materials that were quickly adopted both locally and nationally. Friedland experimented with approaches to reading Hebrew and collaborated with others on a variety of primers. Alan Mintz, considered America’s foremost Hebrew literature scholar, asserts that the underlying goal of Friedland’s writing for children was to make the learning of Hebrew more pleasure than punishment.60 Friedland’s most noteworthy literary contribution for children was Sippurim Yafim (Nice stories), the illustrated series of independent readers that eventually included 115 stories in separate booklets.61 Friedland saw independent readers as the key to Zionist Hebrew identification. He wanted Hebrew reading to become habitual, believing reading for pleasure led to success in language learning. He wanted to shorten the period until pleasurable independent reading was possible and wrote stories of forty to fifty words that would truly engage children. This was an innovation in the teaching of any language.62 According to Shlomo Haramati, an expert on teaching Hebrew reading, English language basal readers never matched Friedland’s creative stories; it was the imagination of the stories that overcame the linguistic difficulties.63 Initially, Friedland self-­published, cutting stencils and churning the readers out on mimeograph machines. Eventually, the readers acquired professional illustrators and typesetters and were published and distributed by the bureau. Using basic biblical vocabulary in his readers, Friedland also developed the first Hebrew word lists for Bible study (from which later word lists were developed), an indication of his devotion to sacred Hebrew texts. Friedland established a rich Hebrew library for children and adults at the main branch of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools to encourage independent reading.64 He edited and abridged the works of leading Hebrew writers and published them as the Hebrew Students Library. He also edited booklets for adults—­reissued into the 1940s—­of Hebrew literary greats such as Ahad Ha’am and Zalman Schneur.65 He translated classical world literature and became a respected participant in Cleveland literary circles. Friedland’s educational publications also included Shiron L’vatei sefer (Songbook for schools), one of the first with Hebrew lyrics.66 His songs spread throughout America and were seen as folk songs, not attributed to him.67 Friedland’s interest in pioneering new methods included his introduction of dance and music to teach Hebrew grammar long before research made the link between movement, song, and memory. Over one hundred original songs

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covered all forms for teaching grammar through body movements.68 While in Cleveland during his 1926 visit to America, Chaim Nachman Bialik witnessed these songs and dances and complimented them as a very worthy approach to teaching grammar.69 As late as the 1980s, elderly retired teachers, when asked about Friedland, would spontaneously sing and repeat the accompanying body movements.70 Friedland promoted his Hebrew-­centric, Zionist outlook throughout the entire community, including in women’s groups, all types of synagogues, and general cultural organizations. He was a highly sought-­after public speaker in both public and professional settings. He introduced both the Jewish and general public to modern Hebraists. After returning from the 1925 opening of Hebrew University in Palestine, he gave more than fifty talks about links between the Bible and the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.71 Friedland prepared the entire Cleveland community for the visits of great literary figures, many of whom came because of his presence in Cleveland.72 The most memorable visit was that of Bialik, the greatest Hebrew poet of the day. Bialik came in 1926 for the dedication of the Hebrew Cultural Garden—­the second cultural garden established in Cleveland and the first dedicated to a specific group. His speech and presence at the tree planting were highlights of the dedication. Friedland provided educational materials and arranged for a gathering of 1,200 children to meet Bialik at the Liberty Theater and then march to the garden dedication. He was the poet’s translator in his meetings with city manager William R. Hopkins.73 Cleveland Hebrew Schools teachers were included in community events, as a way of strengthening their knowledge and commitment to Zionism. They were guests when the Hebrew poet Saul Tchernichovsky and Goldie Myerson (later Golda Meir) spoke.74 Friedland made use of public spaces for films and sing-­alongs. These gatherings were recruitment tools, informal ways to promote Zionism and disseminate news from Palestine. Each program included a lecture on the holiday with glass slides to aid singing, a Bible film or newsreel about Palestine, and then a comedy film. Programs were run simultaneously at public schools or in movie theaters in Jewish neighborhoods.75 Teachers staffed these programs, and Friedland supervised one site himself. Admission was free to neighborhood children. Parents were also invited. The back covers of the free holiday materials all announced, “Every Jewish child attending a Public School should also attend a Jewish school.”76 In the 1930s, Friedland saw the potential of electronic technology. In 1931, in his role as cultural adviser of the Jewish Cultural Institute on Radio, he inaugurated a radio series for adults on WJAY.77 Libbie Braverman, chairman of the radio programs of the bureau’s Extension Committee, wrote holiday-­themed broadcasts beamed over WTAM. Friedland usually appeared on each broadcast to offer background about a holiday before a radio play.78 In a letter to

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Braverman about preparations for a Hanukkah broadcast, he playfully writes, “Please . . . tell me that things are all right, or else you may find my corpse by the light of the Chanukah candles with hornets hung around my skull.”79 Theater also provided Friedland and his colleagues with another venue to promote modern Hebrew. The Cleveland Hebrew Schools board endorsed the production of a play at Music Hall.80 In April 1930, the Zohar Hebrew Dramatic Studio, chaired by Friedland, performed The Footsteps of the Messiah as part of the Plain Dealer Theatre of the Nations at Music Hall, which was part of the Public Auditorium, a major downtown performance space.81 While Friedland had adversaries opposed to his style, for those who worked with him, the secret of Friedland’s educational success and his ability to attract and influence people came from his love of life and his joyfulness. Medini wrote, “Warmth and youthfulness, joy and playfulness, simmered within him and emanated from him.”82 Less formally, Friedland met with like-­minded adults every Friday afternoon at a local restaurant to hold forth on Hebrew and Zionism.83 Friedland’s Tacoma Avenue home was packed with both books and guests, including young friends of his daughter Aviva.84 On Saturday afternoons, Friedland hosted gatherings called Ongay Shabbat. Teachers were honored to be invited.

Friedland’s Communal, National, and Literary Legacy Friedland attended the 1921 national Zionist convention in Cleveland and became active in the Cleveland Zionist District, where his friendships with Rabbi Brickner, Ezra Shapiro, and Leonard Sachs were strengthened and his disagreements with Rabbi Silver were exacerbated. He participated in Hadassah, Young Judea, Habonim, and the Jewish National Fund, among other organizations, encouraging vigorous debate about the issues dividing American Zionists and the importance of Hebrew in the Zionist world view.85 Friedland was also a leader in the (national) Council for Jewish Education (CJE), the first national organization of Jewish educational professionals, founded in 1926. Its members included all bureau directors, Jewish teacher college heads, and select researchers, writers, and superintendents of community-­wide schools. The original members included many of the Benderly Boys, with whom Friedland collaborated. By 1933 Friedland was Cleveland Zionist District president.86 Significantly involved in Zionist disagreements about the relative weight to give to rescuing refugees from Nazism versus restoration of the Land of Israel, he sided with those who believed “that Zionism was more than a movement of settlement and a political machine.”87 Deeply troubled by the rise of Nazism, Friedland was asked in 1933 to direct the Cleveland chapter of the American Palestine Campaign of the Jewish Agency for Palestine to help resettle German Jews. Seeing Hebrew as central to Zionism, he often displayed Sippurim Yafim at Zionist meetings, even though they had no overt Zionist content.88 Friedland, along with other Zionist

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educators, created syllabi and textbooks “to influence students by associating Palestine with teaching Hebrew.”89 Friedland personified the Hebrew movement in Cleveland. Until shortly before his death, there was no formal organization promoting Hebrew in Cleveland, although Friedland was in constant contact with Histadrut Ivrit, the national Hebrew organization founded in 1916. It was as though the abundant activities created by Friedland and his devotees obviated the need for one. During Friedland’s final illness, fearing he would feel displaced, his disciples secretly organized a branch in order to prepare for a time after. However, they need not have worried. When Friedland learned about it, he rejoiced and participated in its first public event, a picnic with over one hundred participants.90 In 1939, even though his colleagues knew he was terminally ill, he was elected national president of the organization and, for the six remaining months of his life, remained active in its affairs.91 Additional evidence of his national stature was his appointment to serve on the committee to design the Palestine pavilion for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.92 A lifelong writer and translator, Friedland loved poetry in all languages. According to Moshe Feinstein, Friedland’s greatness as an educator stemmed from neither his methods nor his philosophy but rather “the spirit of poetry that throbbed within him.”93 Known for his children’s poetry and songs, he did not publish for adults until the end of his life.94 Consequently, it was thought that he started to write serious poetry only after his cancer diagnosis. But his poetry was always read and known by those who followed the genre.95 Friedland’s verse for adults used the sonnet form almost exclusively. Dying of cancer, he made use of lucid periods between painkillers in a frantic desire to prepare the sonnets for publication.96 Friedland confronted his death heroically, as in his poem “Yamim s’furim yesh li” (I have only a limited number of days). According to Mintz, the deathbed poems thrust Friedland into prominence. The intricate form and topics, largely remote from his previous concerns, led to mixed reviews. Nevertheless, Mintz concludes that while not all the sonnets were masterpieces, many of them display “a compellingly different poetic voice.” In Mintz’s estimation, Friedland’s poetry and writings for children were another matter: “Teachers would come to Friedland’s office and ask for something they could use for a holiday or pageant; and exploiting his improvisational talents, on the spot Friedland would dash off a Hebrew playlet for Hanukkah or a Hebrew folk song about the Sabbath.” This work amounted to “a kind of Hebrew educational samizdat of children’s literature.”97 As the Depression deepened, budgetary and salary cuts left Friedland the only professional at the bureau. He single-­handedly kept the agency afloat; his efforts even attracted the notice of the well-­known historian Oscar I. Janowsky.98 As Friedland’s achievements gained attention, his health seriously declined. The Cleveland Hebrew Schools board, aware of his difficulties, loaned him five hundred dollars

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for medical expenses.99 Friedland had confided to his friend Louis Hurwich that he had not been paid by the bureau in two years.100 In failing health, he juggled local roles as Cleveland Hebrew Schools superintendent, dean of the Teachers Institute, and director of the Bureau of Jewish Education; remained active as a national Jewish leader; and even expanded creatively. Because of his personal charisma, he attracted a number of outstanding scholars to staff college programs and to serve as Cleveland Hebrew Schools branch principals. In 1936, after one of Friedland’s hospitalizations, the community honored him with a testimonial dinner. The tribute committee consisted of Saul Tchernichovsky, Dr. Alexander Dushkin, Dr. Joseph Klausner, Goldie Myerson (Golda Meir), and Maurice Samuel; education colleagues; Zionists from all over North America; and a distinguished local group chaired by Rabbi Barnett Brickner.101 The evening was seemingly an opportunity to acknowledge Friedland’s contributions while he was well enough to be present. Friedland’s many devoted admirers extolled his warmth, wit, and willingness to collaborate. There was no mention of the known conflicts; it is probable that his illness and early death spared him additional bitter fights. News of Friedland’s death in 1939 led to fundraising for a Friedland Foundation and an outpouring of tributes from fellow educators and Hebrew literati. Many of them appeared in the memorial book Sefer Zikaron, published by Histadrut Ivrit in 1940 and edited by Menachem Ribalow, editor of Hadoar. The anthology included eulogies from professional colleagues, original poems, lamentations from the foremost Hebrew poets in America and Palestine, and literary analyses of Friedland’s poetry and prose. Emanuel Gamoran, director of the Department of Education at the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, wrote, “We have lost the greatest Jewish educator of our generation in this country.”102 Tzvi Scharfstein, Jewish educator and author, called Friedland the reviver of Hebrew education in the United States. There were those who saw him as legendary, never to be forgotten.103 A new building for the bureau, at 2030 South Taylor Road, was dedicated in 1953 and named Bet Friedland. Though Friedland’s peers held him in enormous esteem and he had done transformative work as an educator, he was less successful as a bureau head and manager than others in similar positions elsewhere. Friedland antagonized those who opposed him and ran up large debts. Jonathan Krasner has written that Friedland’s problems “were exacerbated by Cleveland Jewry’s migration pattern. Jewish suburbanization occurred earlier and more completely in Cleveland than in other cities.”104 Nonetheless, Jewish education in Cleveland continued to thrive due to Friedland’s creative input and the community’s strong commitment to education. Following Friedland’s death, the community’s educational structures were soon reorganized.105 Implementation of the 1936 Berkson Report, postponed because of Friedland’s illness, was finally considered. George J. Klein, chairman of the Administrative

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Committee of the Cleveland Hebrew School, became president of the bureau board—­a rabbi never again served as its leader.106 Medini took over as superintendent of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools, and Dr. Azriel Eisenberg was invited to become bureau director.107 Eisenberg was one of the Benderly Boys who recognized the larger move toward congregational education and worked more collaboratively with the synagogues.108 His appointment separated school leadership from that of the bureau (effectively putting to rest charges that the bureau showed too much favoritism to Cleveland Hebrew Schools) and led to more cooperative relationships between the bureau and the synagogues. In later decades, the voice of the organized Jewish community devolved to denominational movements and to the federations, working against Friedland’s vision. Jews integrated into American society, and children’s after-­school hours became heavily programmed. Supplementary schools increasingly struggled to maintain midweek classes. The availability of classical texts translated into English and the distancing of many Jews from Israel diminished interest in Hebrew. While the study of Hebrew language and culture largely moved to day schools, especially those with a Zionist outlook, Friedland’s core belief in Hebrew to promote Jewish values and identity was rejected. According to Daniel Elazar, “In the end, the national-­cultural approach [to Jewish education] did not survive. The pioneer educators succeeded in developing one or two generations of successors. . . . The way of American Jewish life militated against the national-­ cultural approach for the majority of American Jews.”109 Friedland’s legacy is found in the teachers he trained, the materials he created, and the structures he built. Some of the women he trained taught into the 1980s. His widow, Yonina, ran the Lakeview Branch of Cleveland Hebrew Schools, where she also taught until 1959.110 The ongoing distribution of Sippurim Yafim until the 1970s also continued Friedland’s legacy.111 Nathan Brilliant sought funds for their republication. Emanuel Gamoran, Azriel Eisenberg, and Jacob Kabakoff selected and reedited a number of books in the series, published in the 1960s in anthology format. The stories’ plots were considered timeless. The language was modernized to reflect Israeli Hebrew, and new illustrations were commissioned. Efforts to republish the songbook, familiarly referred to as Hashiron, were made throughout the 1950s by national Jewish educational movements. The structures Friedland created fared better.112 The Cleveland Hebrew Schools high school department became independent in the 1960s and became known as Akiva. It functions today as the most Hebrew-­oriented and vibrant address for Cleveland’s high school students outside of the day school. Cleveland Hebrew Schools continued to offer a Hebraic Zionist approach to education for nine decades in branches that opened in the suburbs. It served Jewish families committed to a more intensive Hebraic education until the 1980s, when leadership families increasingly chose day school options. The organization also faced synagogue pressure for a more religiously centered Jewish education. After years

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of dwindling enrollments and failed attempts to redefine its mission, Cleveland Hebrew Schools closed in 2009. In 1952 the Cleveland Institute of Jewish Studies of the Bureau of Jewish Education became independent of the bureau and was renamed the Institute for Jewish Studies. In 1963 the institute’s name changed to the College of Jewish Studies under the leadership of Jacob Kabakoff. The college was accredited by the Ohio Board of Regents and the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools in the 1980s and was later renamed the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies. After the Jewish Community Federation and the Congregational Plenum (a consortium of synagogue rabbis and presidents) created the Continuity Commission and invested new funds and energy in Jewish education in the 1990s, the college intensified its programs in order to provide leadership for Jewish educational institutions and to train Hebrew teachers, directors, and family and informal educators. Changing demographics and the emergence of Judaic studies and Jewish education programs in secular universities challenged the college’s ability to maintain its degree-­granting programs. The college attempted to meet the challenge presented by the growth of alternative programs for serious adult learning through a variety of initiatives, but the adult learning community also dwindled. In 2012 the college was absorbed into Case Western Reserve University as Siegal Lifelong Learning. The Bureau of Jewish Education underwent several changes in strategic direction in the postwar period. As teaching in Jewish settings became a part-­time profession, the bureau struggled to maintain standards and salaries. It operated a bus system to facilitate the arrival of students from far-­flung suburbs to their respective synagogues and schools. However, the most significant change was the shift toward greater financial and educational support of congregational education, after congregational leaders organized themselves as a plenum to exercise greater influence in educational and communal affairs in the 1970s. The bureau maintained Friedland’s commitment to Hebrew education by attracting staff who developed nationally utilized Hebrew language materials such as B’yad Halashon, an innovative approach to language acquisition at that time, and Darkonim (Passports to the Hebrew Language), a widely used primer series for adults. Hebrew language consultants were brought in regularly from Israel through the Jewish Agency’s teacher exchange. Special intensive training programs such as Aishet Chayil and Moreshet, in collaboration with the college, trained new cohorts of Hebrew teachers to continue their positions. The bureau also promoted Zionist activities and, in the 1960s, became one of the earliest providers of Israel trips for youth. In 1993 the agency’s name was changed to the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland (JECC). The original bureau division between fiscal and educational management persisted, expressed in the bureau’s double leadership. Although currently the JECC has one head, the ties to the federation’s

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fiscal control have been intensified. The JECC remains a well-­regarded advocate for Jewish education locally, nationally, and internationally. This is part of Friedland’s enduring legacy. Nevertheless, by the late twentieth century, contrary to the expectations of his close colleagues at the time of his death, Friedland had been almost entirely forgotten. His death at a relatively young age contributed to this, but more significantly, his national-­cultural approach to Jewish education had few champions in succeeding generations. In response to the perceived threat of large numbers of Jews opting out of Jewish life, the Cleveland community established the Joint Federation / Congregational Plenum Commission on Jewish Continuity in the 1980s.113 In 1993 this group charged the JECC (the renamed bureau) with the responsibility for introducing and maintaining structures to strengthen Jewish education. This led to the introduction of many educational innovations, including, but not limited to, the restoration of full-­time educational positions for informal and family education; the reintroduction of robust in-­service education for teachers and informal educators featuring noted Judaic and Hebrew language scholars; the training of youth group leaders to reach unaffiliated teens; and funds to enrich congregational education with retreats and music and art specialists, mirroring Friedland’s earlier work.114 These changes were seen as pioneering, new, and modern. Few remembered that at an earlier time, under the creative and passionate leadership of Chet Aleph Friedland, these approaches had been hallmarks of Jewish education in Cleveland.

notes 1. Friedland is usually described as the founding director of the Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education. The constitution of the bureau provided for an executive director whose function was financial only and an education director who could be a director of Hebrew education or a director of religious education. In 1925, Friedland’s title was Director of Hebrew Education. After 1928 he used the title Education Director. Even as the only professional on staff, Friedland did not change his title (as adopted on March 24, 1925, box 3, folder 46, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, Series 2, Western Reserve Historical Society [WRHS], Cleveland, Ohio). 2. Alan Mintz, “A Sanctuary in the Wilderness: The Beginnings of the Hebrew Movement in America,” in Hebrew in America: Perspectives and Prospects, ed. Alan Mintz (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1993). 3. Alan Mintz, Sanctuary in the Wilderness: A Critical Introduction to American Hebrew Poetry (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012), 207. 4. Mintz, “Hebrew Movement,” 29. 5. Baila Shargel, review of The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education, by Jonathan B. Krasner, October 2011, H-Judaic (Jewish Studies Network [JSN]). 6. For the most comprehensive description of the school, see Louis Hurwich, “Shnai Batei Sefer L’Mofet,” Shvilei HaChinuch 16, no. 4 (1955): 195–­212. 7. Hurwich, “Shnai Batei,” 199. 8. Shmuel Yismach, “ha-­Tnua ha-­Ivrit b’Klivland,” Hadoar 18, no. 36 (1939): 240.

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9. Talmud Torah and Hebrew School are often used interchangeably, though this obscures a difference in orientation: Talmud Torah means “Torah study,” emphasizing religious practice and texts, while Hebrew School suggests the nationalist and Hebraic goals of Zionist-­oriented schools. 10. Finding Aid, MS 4620 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records, WRHS. 11. Daniel Persky, “Klivland ha-­Ivrit,” Hadoar, 236. 12. Minutes, Board of Education, July 11, 1920, 40; July 26, 1940, 42; August 20, 1920, p. 45, box 1, folder 7, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, Series 2, WRHS. 13. Minutes, Board of Education, September 7, 1920, p. 51, box 1, folder 7, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, Series 2, WRHS. 14. Minutes, Board of Education, June 28, 1921, box 1, folder 7, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, Series 2, WRHS. 15. Aryeh Leib Hurwich, Zikhronot M’hanekh Ivri (Jerusalem: Boston Bureau of Jewish Education with M. Neuman, 1959), 3:302. 16. Minutes, Board of Education, September 7, 1920, p. 51, box 1, folder 7, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, Series 2, WRHS. 17. “Jewish Education, Extracts from Minutes,” box 3, folder 47, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 18. Enrollment reports of Cleveland Hebrew School Branches in the 1920s, box 12, folder 339, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS. 19. “Jewish Education, Extracts from Minutes,” July 20, 1924, 3; October 9, 1924, p. 4, box 3, folder 47, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 20. “Jewish Education, Extracts from Minutes,” box 3, folder 47, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 21. Samuel Rocker, publisher of Cleveland’s Yiddish newspaper, Die Yiddishe Velt (The Jewish world), recommended Sachs, its business manager (October 34, 1924, p. 5, box 3, folder 47, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS). 22. “Jewish Education, Extracts from Minutes,” box 3, folder 47, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 23. Samuel Goldhamer to Rabbi Abba Silver, November 24, 1924, folder 345, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers, WRHS. 24. Minutes, Meeting of the Joint Jewish Education Committee, October 19, 1928, box 3, folder 47, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS (hereafter cited as Minutes, Joint Jewish Education Committee). 25. Administrative Board Meeting, August 19, 1935, box 1, folder 1, MS 4620 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records, WRHS. 26. “Major Recommendations from the Survey Report of Jewish Education Submitted to the Federation of Jewish Charities by the National Conference of Jewish Social Service,” box 3, folder 46, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 27. “How Jewish Education Is Supported in Various Communities,” 2, box 3, folder 46, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 28. Alfred Sachs to Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, March 2, 1928, box 6, folder 358, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers, Reel 16, Series 1, WRHS. See also David I. Cedarbaum, “The Story of Jewish Education in the United States in 1927 in Figures (A Preliminary Statistical Survey),” (New York: Department of Information, Bureau of Jewish Education, May 1928), box 3, folder 46, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 29. Louis Bing to Silver, March 31, 1931, folder 362, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers; J. M. Rogoff to Silver, July 9, 1932, folder 363, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers; Minutes, Education Board Meeting, July 20, 1932, pp. 291–­293, box 1, folder 8, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, WRHS; “Cleveland Hebrew Schools Are Still Closed,” September 30, 1932, folder 68, MS 4620 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records, WRHS.

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30. “Jewish Educational Survey in Cleveland,” Education Board Meeting, February 18, 1924, p. 7, box 1, folder 8, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, WRHS; Sachs to R. G. Jones, superintendent of Cleveland Public Schools, June 9, 1925, box 3, folder 46, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS; Jones to Sachs, July 1, 1925, box 3, folder 46, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS; Discussion of 1929 Jewish Welfare Board Study in Administrative Committee, January 25, 1929, p. 159, box 1, folder 8, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, WRHS; Survey of Jewish School Population in the City of Cleveland (1934), box 11, folder 182, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 31. Friedland to Silver, August 21, 1924, folder 354, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers, WRHS. 32. Minutes, Joint Jewish Education Committee, June 22, 1928, box 3, folder 47, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 33. Minutes, Board of Directors of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools, August 10, 1921, box 1, folder 7, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, WRHS (hereafter cited as Minutes, Board of Directors). 34. Minutes, Board of Jewish Education, “Exhibit A, Major Recommendations from the Survey Report on Jewish Education,” July 28, 1928, box 3, folder 47, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 35. Minutes, Board of Directors, September 18, 1925, p. 21, box 1, folder 8, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, WRHS. The context implies that graduates at that time had completed the eighth grade. 36. Minutes, Board of Directors, January 7, 1926, p. 45, box 1, folder 8, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, WRHS. 37. Minutes, Board Meeting Cleveland Hebrew School, July 10, 1926, p. 53, box 1, folder 8, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, WRHS. 38. Minutes, Board Meeting Cleveland Hebrew School & Institute, March 23, 1926, p. 71, box 1, folder 8, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, WRHS. 39. Mordecai Medini, “Chet Aleph Friedland: Zikhronot u-R’shamim,” Hadoar, 242. 40. Nathan Loeser to Samuel Goldhamer, November 8, 1938, box 4, folder 51, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 41. Benesch to Friedland, November 22, 1938, box 9, folder 212, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS. He uses the Yiddish goyim to refer to non-­Jews. 42. James M. Senor, “The Jewish Community Council of Cleveland: A Study Covering Six Years of Its Formation and Operation, 1934–­1940” (master’s thesis, unpublished, 1949), p. 43, box 6, folder 90, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 43. Nathan Brilliant to Judah Lapson, April 3, 1952, box 9, folder 212, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS. 44. “Statement of Facts,” hand-­dated July 7, 1927, box 3, folder 45, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 45. “Directors and Students of Hebrew Teachers Institute to Hold First Annual Outing,” Jewish Independent, June 20, 1926, box 6, folder 67, MS 4620 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records, WRHS. 46. Friedland to Silver, May 9, 1928, folder 358, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers, WRHS. 47. Nathan Brilliant, A. H. Friedland, and Rudolph Rosenthal to a friend, January 30, 1935, folder 364, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers, WRHS. 48. “First Commencement Exercises of Hebrew Teachers’ Seminary to be Held,” box 6, folder 68, MS 4620 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records, WRHS. 49. A. H. Friedland, handwritten draft of article for Jewish Independent and Jewish Observer, December  8, 1931, p. 21, box 8, folder 120, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS. 50. Irving Rabinsky, interview with authors, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, August 6, 2012.

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51. Max Herman, president of Yeshivah Adath B’nai Israel to Jewish Community Federation, March 7, 1938, box 4, folder 50, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 52. M. Pollack and M. Weintraub, District Committee secretaries of the Workmen’s Circle to the Implementation Committee of the Jewish Welfare Federation, February 28, 1938, box 4, folder 50, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records, WRHS. 53. “Moves for New Zionist District: Silver’s Plan for Meeting Brings Protest from Friedland,” Plain Dealer, February 8, 1935; “Lay Zionist Split to Pageant ‘Flop’: Speakers at Temple also Rap Anti-­Silver Drive, Plan New District,” Plain Dealer, February 13, 1935. 54. Copy of telegram, folder 364, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers, WRHS. 55. Silver to B. H. Sinks, January 21, 1935, folder 364, MS 3787, WRHS. 56. Silver copied Eugene E. Wolf, Isador Grossman, Sydney N. Weitz, Edward Schweid, Mrs. Mabel Fischer, Nathan Loesser, Mrs. S. Vactor, and Mr. Henry Rocker. See folder 364, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers, WRHS. 57. Silver to Rabbi Barnett B. Brickner, February 20, 1935, folder 364, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Papers, WRHS. 58. “The Nature of Rabbi Silver’s Indictment,” container 6, folder 1, MS 574 Abraham Friedland Papers, American Jewish Archives (AJA), Cincinnati, Ohio. 59. Memorandum of two conferences held on March 7 and 17, 1935, container 6, folder 1, MS 5741, AJA. 60. Mintz, Sanctuary in the Wilderness, 209. 61. Sippurim Yafim, Bureau of Jewish Education, folder 335, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS. This folder contains lists of Sippurim Yafim titles, correspondence about publication, and distribution and sales information. 62. Shlomo Haramati, Bene ‘Aliya (Tel Aviv: Y. Golan, 1993), 183, 184. The simple stories of Michael West were based on 750 words. 63. Haramati, 184, 189. Haramati believed that Friedland did not realize his linguistic goals. His investigations reveal that the books would be difficult for anyone with fewer than four hundred words. 64. Medini, Hadoar, 241. This library was named for Aaron Garber when it moved to the Cleveland Heights building of the Bureau of Jewish Education. It became Cleveland’s main Hebraic and Judaic library. Deeded to the Cleveland College of Jewish Studies in the late 1970s when the college sought accreditation, the Garber library closed in 2014. 65. Photos of book covers provided by Adelle Gloger during interview, September 6, 2012, Beachwood, Ohio. 66. Published by Educational Stationery House in New York, 1929. 67. Medini, Hadoar, 154. 68. Shlomo Haramati, Bene ‘Aliya, 208. 69. Medini, Hadoar, 242. 70. Personal experience of Lifsa Schachter, Pepper Pike, Ohio. 71. “Tours Palestine Guided by Bible,” Plain Dealer, June 25, 1925; Emanuel Gamoran, American Jewish Year Book 42 (1940): 149. 72. Mintz, Sanctuary in the Wilderness, 209. 73. “Hebrew ‘Poets’ Plot for Park,” Plain Dealer, March 20, 1926; “Poet Plants Zion Corner in Park: Chaim Bialik, Greatest Modern Hebrew Poet Welcomed to City,” Plain Dealer, May 6, 1926; Alice Garber Wyner, interview with authors, November 14, 2012. 74. “Hebrew School Teachers Guests of Judea Directors,” February 1, 1929, box 5, folder 68, MS 4620 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records, WRHS. 75. Locations included the Hazeldell School and the Doan, Kinsman, Waldorf, Hawthorne, Ritz, and Heights Theaters. Neighborhood Holiday Celebrations, 1926–­1927, box 12, folder 301, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS.

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76. Neighborhood Holiday Celebrations, 1926–­1927, box 12, folder 301, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS. 77. “A. H. Friedland to Inaugurate Jewish Cultural Radio Series,” Jewish Review and Observer, October 9, 1931. 78. Radio Broadcasts, 1936–­1940, box 12, folder 315, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS. 79. A. H. Friedland to Libbie I. Braverman, November 1, 1936, box 8, folder 180, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS. 80. Minutes, Board of Directors, January 2, 1930, p. 215, box 1, folder 8, MS 5359 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records and Photographs, WRHS. 81. “Their Flying Needles Make Symbolic Hebrew Costume,” Plain Dealer, April 17, 1930. 82. Medini, Hadoar, 241, translated by Lifsa Schachter. 83. Larry Kaufman, “Remembering Chet Aleph,” January 10, 2010, blog of Reform Judaism, accessed March 18, 2018, http://​blogs​.rj​.org/​blog/​2010/​01/​14/​remembering​_chet​_aleph/; Enid Kushner, interview with authors, December 24, 2012. 84. Personal conversation with former student of Friedland; Regina Rosen Rackoff, interview with author Sylvia Abrams, September 11, 2012, Beachwood, Ohio. As a high school student, Rackoff read French poetry to Friedland when he was ill at the request of his daughter. 85. Michael Shields, “A. H. Friedland: American Hebraist and Jewish Educator” (master’s thesis, Hebrew Union College–­Jewish Institute of Religion, 2008), 18. 86. “Zionist Board to Meet,” Plain Dealer, December 11, 1933, 7. 87. Aaron Berman, Nazism, the Jews and American Zionism, 1933–­1948 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 30. 88. “Zionist President to Speak Sept. 18,” Plain Dealer, August 27, 1932; “Zionist Region to Convene Sept. 17,” Plain Dealer, September 10, 1932. 89. Mark A. Raider, The Emergence of American Zionism (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 53. 90. Ismach, Hadoar, 240. 91. Menachem Ribalow, ed., Sefer Zikaron (New York: Histadrut Ivrit, 1940), 8–­9. 92. “Invitation to the National Emergency Conference,” American Palestine Campaign of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, December 4, 1933, box 1, folder 3, MS 5741, AJA, quoted in Shields, A. H. Friedland, 23. 93. Moshe Feinstein in Sefer Zikaron, 43. Friedland hired Feinstein, his colleague and brother-­in-­law, to work with him in Beit Sefer Le’umi; shortly after Friedland left, Feinstein also left to found Herzliya School in Manhattan. He is also a featured poet in Mintz’s work, Sanctuary in the Wilderness. 94. Mintz, Sanctuary in the Wilderness, 206. 95. Mordecai Halevy, Ishe Hinukh (Haifa: Hug Yedidim, 1972), 142. 96. Medini, Hadoar, 241. 97. Mintz, Sanctuary in the Wilderness, 209. 98. R. Haramati, Mehanekh bi-­rei tekufah (Tel Aviv: Y. Golan, 2002), 113, and Oscar I. Janowsky, “The Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education: A Case Study, 1924–­1953,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 54, no. 3 (March 1965): 331–­332. 99. Minutes, Administrative Board Meeting, November 4, 1935, p. 119, box 1, folder 1, MS 4620 Cleveland Hebrew Schools Records, WRHS. 100. Hurwich, Zichronot M’hanekh, 203. There is often a difference in perspective between sources originating with community leadership and those from professionals. 101. Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, box 1, folder 3, MS 4653, WRHS. 102. Emanuel Gamoran, “Chet Aleph Friedland ha-­M’hanekh,” Hadoar 18, no. 36 (1939): 646. 103. See Sh. Faigin, Anshei Sefer (New York: Ohel, 1949), 261; and M. ha-­Levy, Ishei Chinukh b’Yahadut Amerika (Haifa: Hug Yedidim, 1971), 147.

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104. Johnathan B. Krasner, The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 131–­132. 105. Found in “1939 Graphic Outline of Plan for Reorganization for the Cleveland Jewish Educational System and a Suggestion for the Reorganization of the Jewish Educational Program in Cleveland,” box 4, folder 51, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, WRHS. 106. Report regarding reorganization of Jewish education, 1939, box 8, folder 173, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS; report of meeting at home of Rabbi Brickner, February 18, 1940, box 8, folder 173, MS 3832 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS. 107. Correspondence regarding search for a bureau director, 1940, box 1, folder 19, MS 3957 Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner Papers, WRHS. 108. Janowsky, “Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education,” 336. 109. Daniel J. Elazar, “The National-­Cultural Movement in Hebrew Education in the Mississippi Valley,” in Mintz, “Hebrew Movement,” 149, 150. 110. The absence of reference to Yonina Friedland after early acknowledgment of her work in New York is puzzling; she is not mentioned in records, correspondence, or condolences. 111. R. Haramati, Mehanekh b’Re’i, 115. 112. The authors participated in these changes in their roles as professional Jewish educators at the Bureau of Jewish Education; its successor, the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland; and the Cleveland College of Jewish Studies, later the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies. 113. Report of the Joint Federation / Congregational, unprocessed collection, Plenum Commission on Jewish Continuity, December 1988, Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, WRHS. 114. Report of the Joint Federation / Congregational Plenum Commission on Jewish Continuity, December 1988, Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, 6, 7, 8. These initiatives were introduced during the 1990s and continue as of 2018.

chapter 4

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EVERYMAN VS. SUPERMAN harvey pekar, comics, and cleveland Samantha Baskind I’m sort of Cleveland Heights’ answer to the beloved literary character, Tevye the Milkman (from “Fiddler on the Roof ”). —­Harvey Pekar, in Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, drawn drinking milk from the container

Superman, a heroic outsider, fights for truth, justice, and the American way, garnering legions of fans and spawning countless imitators. Harvey Pekar (1939–­2010), the ultimate everyman who embodied the role of the beleaguered outsider, fought to achieve a small portion of the American way. Pekar’s unique, solitary voice conveys the struggles of working-­class life, while Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman is a lone caped crusader. Both protagonists—­Superman and Pekar himself—­tackled injustice and other societal ills: Superman with his physical strength, and Pekar with his mighty observations. Siegel, Shuster, nor Pekar profited financially from their creations, but they achieved name recognition for their comics and far-­reaching acclaim along with even wider exposure from subsequent movies made about their “characters.” It is well known that the brainchild of two Jews from Cleveland debuted in DC Comics’s June 1938 issue of Action Comics. Dubbed Superman, the world’s first superhero inspired a new genre of comics that only grows bigger by the day. Almost forty years later, in 1976 another Jew from Cleveland propelled the comics genre—­this time in its postmodern, self-­referential incarnation—­with the publication of the initial issue of American Splendor. It is striking that all three creators were Jewish, the children of immigrants, and stem from Cleveland. While Siegel and Shuster’s backgrounds have received more than their fair share of attention, and the story of Superman’s creation has often been documented from perspectives 80

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Jewish and otherwise, Pekar’s background and unabashedly Cleveland-­centered stories could use additional examination.1 To that end, this chapter will ask: How does Pekar’s quotidian, comic persona connect with Cleveland, the city he loved? What role does his Jewish identity play in his sequential art? And finally, what does the posthumous celebration of Pekar’s life say about Cleveland?2 In 1976 Pekar self-­published and distributed the first issue of American Splendor, which appeared annually until 2008 (thirty-­nine issues total) and for which he wrote autobiographical accounts and short vignettes drawn in divergent styles by a variety of esteemed artists, including R. Crumb, an underground comics indie luminary. Crumb, who affectionately characterized his collaborator as “a driven, compulsive, mad Jew,” encouraged Pekar to write comics when Pekar presented the cartoonist with a series of crude stick figures and a promising script.3 While Superman was introduced by the vivid account “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!,” the ironically titled American Splendor is prefaced by the less spectacular tag line, “From off the streets of Cleveland comes.” Each issue, bound between brightly colored paper covers in true comic book fashion and printed on newsprint in black and white, chronicled the mundane aspects of the life of the curmudgeonly, disheveled Pekar: money difficulties, car problems, and health issues, including his chronic depression, among other woes. His experiences as a file clerk for the Veterans Affairs hospital, where Pekar worked for thirty-­six years among an oddball cast of characters (e.g., Toby Radloff, the “Genuine Nerd,” who went on to achieve some of his own celebrity as a personality on MTV), provide a recurring subject in American Splendor, always committed to psychological realism. Pekar’s peculiarities—­stinginess, disappointment, and pervasive pessimism—­are conveyed through his angst-­ridden, brutally honest voice. That voice, along with the voices of others who appear in the comic series, finds perfect pitch through compelling dialogue, carefully crafted accents, and linguistic cadences. While Superman offers pure escapism, Pekar offers a world from which one might want to escape. Around a decade after the unassuming comic book debuted, Pekar achieved a fair amount of fame. The eighties saw three theatrical adaptations of American Splendor: at the Independent Eye in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (1985); at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC (1987); and at the Hollywood Theater in Los Angeles (1990). An anthologized release of several issues of American Splendor (1986), followed by other compilations, engendered a larger fan base and an American Book Award in 1987. As his profile grew, Pekar appeared six times on Late Night with David Letterman and once on The Late Show. By 1993 American Splendor had achieved a large enough following to be picked up by a major comics publisher, Dark Horse Comics, which distributed it until 2002 (Vertigo published the comic 2002–­2008). A 1996 interview with Pekar began with the interviewer, Joel Greenlee, reprimanding readers: “For those of you who are unaware of Harvey Pekar and his groundbreaking comic, American Splendor . . . shame on you! Not

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only is it the best thing to come out of Cleveland since the traffic light, but it serves as inspiration for a whole slew of comic artists.”4 For the still uninitiated, Pekar reached larger consciousness with the release of a film adaptation titled American Splendor (2003), in part a creative documentary about Pekar’s life, starring Paul Giamatti as Pekar and Hope Davis as his wife, Joyce Brabner, with the real-­life Harvey injected into some scenes and narrating at times.5 Cleveland’s self-­effacing file clerk walked the red carpet at the Sundance Film Festival, where the film won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film. The film also won Best Adapted Screenplay from the Writer’s Guild of America. True to character, a disheveled, irritable Pekar attended these events with Brabner. He also attended the Academy Awards when the film was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Interviewed on the red carpet, Pekar said, “It’s all bullshit.” Despite the success of the film and acclaim for his comics (as well as admiration for his jazz criticism), Pekar remained essentially pessimistic: “I’m so obsessive-­compulsive that I haven’t accepted the fact that in the minds of many people, I’ve made it. I’m always worried about where the next dollar is coming from and all that. I’m always ‘catastrophising’—­thinking the worst. That’s the way I operate, and it’s kind of pathetic I guess. I know I should feel a lot more comfortable and better about myself than I do.”6 Pekar’s comics, eschewing fantasy and the pervasive superhero genre, which he saw as formulaic, pioneered the graphic memoir—­a genre taken to its heights by another Jew in 1986, with Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize–­winning Holocaust graphic narrative, Maus (second volume published in 1991).7 The bulk of this chapter focuses on four book-­length graphic narratives that Pekar wrote close to his death and that reached a larger audience than American Splendor, but first I want to address some instances of Jewishness in his comics series and related work. Indeed, references to Pekar’s religious and cultural heritage pepper American Splendor. Two American Splendor anecdotes about Jews and a recurring character stand out. One of Pekar’s most reproduced stories, drawn by R. Crumb, is titled “Standing behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines” (1978).8 It wittily, if stereotypically, captures Pekar’s frustration at standing behind elderly Jewish women at grocery store checkout lines, questioning prices and proffering coupons, to the dismay of hurrying customers waiting in line to check out. Pekar remarks, “I’m a Yid myself, an’ the women in my family are like that,” but he still vents his frustration at the hunched-­over woman in front of him, who talks to the cashier with a thick Eastern European accent. A cranky, bug-­eyed Pekar censures such haggling, calling old Jewish ladies “really pennywise.” This story was refashioned in a hybrid live and comics form in the film version of American Splendor. In another example, also drawn by Crumb, Pekar learns about Cleveland’s old Jewish rag peddlers, mostly Eastern European immigrants, in a two-­page slice-­of-­ life story titled “Pa-­ayper-­Reggs!!” (1987). Pekar briefly transports the reader to Sixty-­First and Woodland, the heart of old Jewish Cleveland, on the city’s East Side.

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Pekar is only tangentially interested in the actual work of the peddlers, who, with horse and wagon, partook in the grueling trade of peddling ideally as a steppingstone to the less rigorous and more financially stable life of a storekeeper. Eventually, peddlers were less prevalent in the crowded Woodland district as it became crowded with “Mom and Pop” businesses, especially grocery stores, restaurants, tailors, and kosher butcher shops. Even more than the daily strife of peddling, Pekar portrays the pastimes of the late nineteenth-­century peddlers and the nuances of their dialect. The majority of the two-­page comic takes place at Turk’s Delicatessen, where a group of bearded, traditionally dressed peddlers drink chocolate phosphates and eat corned beef and salami sandwiches. In one panel, a Hebrew sign hangs on the deli’s wall alongside an advertisement for brisket. With the distinctive, colorful scene set, the jovial peddlers play pinochle and gamble on the horses.9 A Jewish character—­the Viennese immigrant Dr. Gesundheit—­appears in American Splendor stories with a Jewish angle: “Miracle Rabbis” (#7, 1982, artist R. Crumb) and “Rabbi’s Vife” (#8, 1983, artist Drew Friedman). Dr. Gesundheit, cheekily named after the German word for health and also a popular response to someone who has sneezed, provides a foil for Pekar, who somewhat unkindly makes fun of the elderly physician’s substandard joke-­telling skills, which are partly marred by Gesundheit’s heavy accent. Dr. Gesundheit appears on the cover of issue five (1980) but not within the covers. An arrow points to the rumpled doctor, with the Yiddish word tummler (entertainer) used sarcastically by Pekar, who says, “There isn’t room for him inside this book, but watch for him in the next one: He’s a tummler if ever there was one!!” These early American Splendor episodes reveal something about Pekar’s Jewish identity. Always proudly Jewish, Pekar was culturally connected to Eastern European Jewry and was at heart a Yiddishist who identified with the Workmen’s Circle crowd, a large Cleveland community in his younger years but which had dwindled by the end of the twentieth century. Although not a traditional temple-­goer, Pekar occasionally attended programs sponsored by the Jewish Secular Community, a humanist and socially conscious group that gathers on the Sabbath and holidays in celebration of a shared Jewish heritage rather than operating from a religious perspective. Of interest, the first issue of American Splendor published by Dark Horse Comics (#17, 1993) was Pekar’s most openly Jewish one to date. The cover has a young Pekar sitting at a kitchen table, eating Wheaties while his mother stands behind him washing dishes. Pekar complains that the milk might have gone bad, to which his mother responds, “It’s good for you, Herschel,” using his Yiddish name, which Pekar sometimes adopted as an alter ego. It is as if being picked up by a reputable publisher, rather than self-­publishing, gave Pekar the imprimatur he needed to explicitly and consistently disclose aspects of his heritage. Drawn by Joe Sacco, Pekar’s script “Before I Was Born,” the second story in the issue, delves into how his parents met in Poland, with Jews in traditional

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dress peppering the story.10 Directly following, “Austere Youth,” drawn by Frank Stack, takes place in 1945 and concerns the African American influx into Pekar’s neighborhood, prompting his parents’ desire to move, even as his mother, Dora, admonishes, “Herschel, the Negro people have been treated terribly in this country, worse than the Jews. The Negroes and Jews should work together.”11 Yet his father, Saul, also explains, “There aren’t enough Jewish people living here anymore. You should grow up in a Jewish atmosphere.” Another story in the issue, drawn by Jim Woodring and titled “Sheiboneth Beis Hamikdosh,” speaks to Saul Pekar’s love of cantorial music.12 “Hitherto Untold,” a collaboration with artists Gary Dumm and John Stats (and at eleven pages, one of Pekar’s longer scripts) conveys a conversation between Pekar and his great-­aunt Shifra.13 Precipitated by a visit to a synagogue, which he refers to by the Yiddish word shul, Pekar asks Shifra if he can see the autobiography that she wrote in eighth grade. There he reads about her life in Poland, the rise of anti-­Semitism, and her immigration to the United States, thanks to relatives in Cleveland. Hitler appears in the story—­drawn in precise lines—­when Shifra’s autobiography relays her brother’s desire to kill the Führer. A few words are in order about Pekar’s working method, alluded to at the beginning of this chapter apropos his origins as a comics maker when he presented a rudimentary script accompanied by stick figures to R. Crumb. Once Pekar became practiced at writing comics, he adopted a more sophisticated storyboard form accompanied by further written directions, although still populated by stick figures. Over the years, he collaborated with a stable of artists working in diverse styles, some specifically chosen for a style that Pekar found relevant to his story and others because of their availability or Pekar’s affinity for their work. Naturally, this led to a number of different “Harveys.” Crumb’s version of Harvey, for instance, appears caricatured and cartoonlike as opposed to Gary Dumm’s pared-­down Harvey. Of course, the speech bubbles, narrative captions, and font differ from artist to artist as well. Comics critic Joseph Witek observes, “Since Pekar does not draw his own stories, the visual component of his character is continually being interpreted by his artist-­collaborators, and these versions of Harvey overlay the fictional personae he adopts for himself.”14 Pekar dubs himself a “casting director,” noting that he “can get guys that collectively can do things that no one person could do, with all the styles I have to draw from.”15 “Violence” (#10, 1985), a five-­page American Splendor story drawn by Val Mayerik about the writer’s street fighting past, his encounters with crime, and ultimately a mugging he and his wife endured in their own neighborhood, offers a representative example. Mayerik proved the perfect collaborator because of his experience picturing fights as a Marvel artist, and indeed, three panels in the story look as if they could appear in a Marvel comic. Artists who work for Marvel, known for its superhero comics (Captain America, Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four, among others), draw in a consistent, easily recognizable style

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characterized by explosive energy and cinematic vibrancy, thereby establishing cohesiveness between issues and stories—­which Pekar exploits by choosing Mayerik to draw “Violence.” “Violence” necessitated a reference to superheroes, a genre Pekar purposefully shied away from, even if one tinged with irony. He viewed the superhero genre as contrary to his attempts to imbue the medium with a more serious, realistic tone. As Pekar put it, “I want to write literature that pushes people into their lives rather than helping them escape from them. Most comic books are vehicles for escapism, which I think is unfortunate. I think that the so-­called average person often exhibits a great deal of heroism in getting through an ordinary day, and yet the reading public takes this heroism for granted. They’d rather read about Superman than themselves.”16 On one occasion, Pekar’s distaste of superhero comics commingled his Jewishness and Clevelandness. In “What Superman Means to Me” (written in 1988; published in 1989 in an independent magazine), drawn by Gary Dumm and R. Crumb, Pekar crafted a telling story in three pages.17 The title cheekily appears in Superman’s shield, beside Pekar as he sits at a table at Comic Con. Comics fans, ignoring Pekar, Are interested in autographs from Stan Lee (Jewish and born as Stanley Lieber), the creator of Spider-Man, among other super­ heroes. To add insult to injury, a man approaches Pekar to ask for donations for a Superman statue. Frustrated, on the concluding page Pekar appears in a thought bubble emanating from his own head (drawn by Dumm), wherein Crumb shows the frantic writer railing against an elderly Superman (fig. 4.1). Underscored by Yiddish, Pekar says to the overweight, nearly unrecognizable (save for his cape and the iconic “S” on his bulging stomach) superhero, “Chazzer! Choleria! Fake! A rich Jewish superhero like you—­hogs the whole comic book field—­won’t do a thing for a serious Yiddische writer like me!!!” Superman wittily replies from a Jewish perspective—­one given to him by Pekar, who explained, “I portrayed Superman as Jewish because his creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster [sic], were, like me, Cleveland Jews.”18 This schlubby “Jewish” Superman, conceived in Crumb’s signature exaggerated, cartoon style, retorts, “Oy, rachmones, Harvey, please! I ain’t got time t’ help ev’rybody, do I?? I gotta fight big goyische villains like Luthor . . . We got the Jewish welfare fund for guys like you.” Pekar helpfully includes a glossary within the thought bubble of translations for some of the Yiddish words deployed. This story expresses Pekar’s frustrations as a comics writer, his connection to Cleveland’s Jewish past and comics past, and his attraction to—­and acknowledgment of—­the expressiveness of the Yiddish language. Near the end of his life, Pekar wrote a story about a different superhero— the Thing, from Fantastic Four.19 “Harvey Pekar Meets the Thing” (2010), a four-­ page story in color by Marvel artist Ty Templeton, has Pekar playing off The Thing’s somewhat recently revealed Jewish background. Born Benjamin Jacob Grimm, The Thing returned to his roots on New York’s Lower East Side in 2002; there he even recites the shema, the start of a verse that affirms a monotheistic

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Figure 4.1  “What Superman Means to Me,” written by Harvey Pekar, with art by R. Crumb and Gary Dumm © The Harvey Pekar Estate.

God and the profession of faith recited in all Jewish services. A 2006 Fantastic Four issue contains a Jewish storyline where a rabbi persuades The Thing to finally have his bar mitzvah. The rabbi reasoned that thirteen years had passed since the man Ben Grimm was transformed into the boulderlike Thing and had thereby started a new life. In Pekar’s incarnation, published in the second issue of Strange Tales, The Thing stems from Cleveland. Pekar bumps into The Thing on the street, asking the creature, “Are you Ben Grimm that I went to Hebrew school with years ago?” Portrayed in close-­up, The Thing smiles and replies that he is glad Pekar remembers him. The two kibbitz, and The Thing kvetches about his arthritis—­understandably, it would be challenging on the knees to walk around as an enormous boulder. Knowing that a sit-­down job would be easier on his knees, The Thing asks Pekar for assistance finding employment. Considering Pekar had retired from his civil service position in 2001, the sore superhero hopes that perhaps Pekar can help him secure the writer’s old day job. Of course, the health insurance would be a bonus too—­it was one of the reasons Pekar continued to work for the Veterans Affairs hospital into his sixties, in addition to the job’s steady pay (before and after American Splendor, Pekar supplemented his

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income by writing jazz and book reviews). In this certainly strange tale, Pekar explores his working-­class existence and his place in a “Jewish” comics universe, once again, on the streets of Cleveland. It was during the waning years of Pekar’s life that he allowed his Jewish identity to fully take precedence. That fertile period saw the publication of four independent graphic narratives on Jewish themes: The Quitter (2005), Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land (2011), Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland (2012), and Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me (2012), the last three posthumously published following Pekar’s untimely death.20 Reaching print almost thirty years after the release of the first issue of American Splendor, Pekar’s book-­length memoir The Quitter offers a linear account in his most personal confessional. The Quitter addresses Pekar’s Jewish origins in depth while aiming more broadly to chronicle the slice-­of-­life experiences that led to the creation of American Splendor along with the young writer’s growing negativity. Drawn by Dean Haspiel in bold, crisp lines and shadowy gradations of black and white, The Quitter opens with Pekar’s matter-­of-­fact statement as he breaks the fourth wall: “I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on October 8, 1939, five weeks after World War II started. For what that’s worth to anyone” (unpaged). Setting the story in Cleveland at the outset is not just Pekar’s way of announcing his birthplace; considering the importance of Cleveland in his work and Pekar’s palpable fondness for his hometown, he is acting—­once again—­as an advocate of the struggling community in which he was raised. Later, Pekar’s desire to rectify the perception of Cleveland as the “mistake by the lake” blatantly serves as the purpose of his 2012 homage to the city he lived in and loved for seventy years. The first sixteen pages of The Quitter cover Pekar’s childhood through his bar mitzvah, which took place in an Orthodox synagogue. His parents’ immigrant story dominates the second page. A horizontal panel extends the width of the page, showing his parents’ journey from Poland to Cleveland, Ohio, followed by their establishment of a grocery store in the small working-­class community of Mount Pleasant, an ethnically mixed neighborhood populated by Jews and Italians. Anchored by Kinsman Avenue, the neighborhood boasted vital Jewish institutions, including Orthodox synagogues, the Kinsman Jewish Center, and the headquarters of the Workmen’s Circle, a once-­influential national organization that initially functioned as an aid society for immigrants and then, in a redrafted mission, became dedicated to social justice and Yiddish culture. Explored in less depth in “Austere Youth,” the Pekar family lived in Mount Pleasant until the 1950s, when the population became predominantly black and many Jewish families moved east to the suburbs. Saul, who studied the Talmud in his free time and enjoyed listening to cantorial music, and Dora, a staunch Communist committed to social justice, sent their son from the age of six to Hebrew school, which he attended four days a week until his bar mitzvah. One panel shows Pekar, wearing

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a kippah and tallit, standing at the bima and reading from the Torah, with the ark and a large window behind him both decorated with a Star of David. As depicted in “Austere Youth,” a pivotal moment in Pekar’s childhood was when his parents, eager to live in a Jewish neighborhood, moved to Shaker Heights. A horizontal panel in The Quitter portrays moving day, with Saul Pekar picking up Harvey in an old truck (fig. 4.2). Inside a speech balloon that sits at almost the center of the panel, accentuating its presence, the elder Pekar calls for Herschel—­the name asterisked and accompanied by an addendum that conspicuously identifies Herschel as Pekar’s Yiddish name. The entire page concerns the move and suggests the younger Pekar’s embarrassment at his father’s old-­ fashioned clothes and accent. Crucially, Pekar was not alone in his efforts to distance himself from the culture of his immigrant parents, even as he still retained a bond to his Judaism, especially as he aged. As author, critic, and cultural historian Alfred Kazin wrote in his introduction to The Commentary Reader, an anthology of two decades of writing from the journal Commentary, “Jews don’t believe in original sin, but they certainly believe in the original love that they once knew in the shtetl, in the kitchen, in the Jewish household.”21 The Quitter and Pekar’s three subsequent full-­length graphic novels demonstrate that Cleveland’s own comics writer also returned to Judaism more fully as he aged, typifying the Yiddish phrase pintele Yid, translated literally as “the little point of a Jew” and colloquially understood as a “Jewish spark.” This is to say that however far one strays, one remains a Jew at heart; no matter how assimilated a Jew may be, the mystically inclined believe that an essence of Jewishness lives within a Jewish soul, and that spark or remnant can be activated at any time. By the age of sixteen, Pekar had established himself as a street fighter—­a way, he felt, to earn respectability in his community. A particularly sly page of The Quitter presents the high schooler and jazz fan Pekar’s musing about what direction his life will take; in the upper right panel, a clean-­cut Pekar enthusiastically reacts to a letter from Ira Gitler, a well-­known jazz critic of Jewish origin who served as a mentor to the aspiring writer. Underneath this panel, Pekar recalls his job as an usher at the Heights Arts Theater; the film advertised on the marquee is Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), starring Paul Newman as boxer Rocky Graziano. Here Pekar cleverly references the star of the film and one of Cleveland’s most famous progeny, Paul Newman, a Jew who was raised in Shaker Heights. The film’s theme, the true-­to-­life story of middleweight boxer Rocky Graziano, refers to Pekar’s predilection for street fighting, while the title of the movie blatantly alludes to the writer’s own insecurities and desire to be accepted. To be sure, the larger theme of The Quitter tackles Pekar’s struggles with committing to any activity in which he encounters a roadblock, including dropping out of Western Reserve University after earning a C+ on an exam—­hence the book’s apt title. At nineteen years old, Pekar receives notice that an article he wrote for a jazz magazine has been accepted for publication. Pekar—­who had been working

Figure 4.2  The Quitter, written by Harvey Pekar, with art by Dean Haspiel © The Harvey Pekar Estate.

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among other jobs as a playground attendant at a local elementary school—­is thrilled. In a fully horizontal panel (Haspiel’s favored technique for highlighting events in Pekar’s life), the artist pictures the elated teenager in close-­up, his face peering over the letter of acceptance. Two panels later, seen from behind as he walks past a West Side deli, the ever-­deprecating Pekar muses on his success despite his Jewishness and Clevelandness: “It was funny, because I wasn’t your Phi Beta Kappa type or ethereal poet. I was a schlub from Kinsman.” In the scene, Pekar conflates his Jewish background and his Cleveland roots; he points out that he grew up in a once-­thriving Jewish neighborhood in the heart of the city, and he punctuates this identity with his use of an exclusively Jewish language to convey personality as he throws in the Yiddish word schlub (awkward or worthless). Here and elsewhere, The Quitter provides insight into Pekar’s psychic formation and emerging peculiarities, the predominant subject of his adulthood as chronicled in American Splendor. At the same time, it broadly transmits a common first-­generation immigrant experience. Cleveland further figures into the story with several panels depicting the city’s environs, but Judaism does not remain center stage after Pekar recounts his childhood, save for a quick observation about a job he held at Carling’s Brewery, once located at East Ninety-­Third Street and Quincy Avenue. Pekar recollects that a number of workers at the plant were Jewish (he worked at the plant in 1959); in that panel, the twenty-­year-­old Pekar and a fellow worker playfully greet each other by their Jewish nicknames, “Hymie” and “Schlomie.” Ending with Pekar near the present day, long past his street-­fighting persona, the memoir features the film version of American Splendor winning a prize at Sundance and reproductions of American Splendor covers. Although still exuding anxiety, Pekar demonstrates that he has moved beyond his days as a quitter. The Quitter closes on a note of success, and the year after its publication brought another success—­in 2006 Pekar won the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award. Pekar’s graphic narrative Yiddishkeit, a volume coedited with academic Paul Buhle and Hershl Hartman, nostalgically examines the far-­reaching influence of Yiddish from medieval Europe to the current day.22 Cleveland does not play a part in this project save for the book’s impetus, as Pekar’s childhood in a predominantly Jewish community and upbringing by Eastern European, Yiddish-­ speaking immigrants initiated his lifelong fascination with Yiddish language and culture. The anthology mostly comprises comic shorts about major figures, Yiddish film and literature, the place of Yiddish in American culture, and the Yiddish revival, with Pekar contributing a handful of scripts. A paean to his hometown, Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, drawn by Pekar’s longtime collaborator Joseph Remnant, intertwines the city’s history with typical American Splendor slice-­of-­life fodder.23 Historical topics became as important to Pekar as American Splendor in his later years; among others, Ego and Hubris: The Michael Malice Story (2006), Macedonia (2007), and The Beats: A Graphic

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History (2010) preceded Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland.24 In the latter volume, we learn the history of Pekar’s beloved Rust Belt city and a few previously undisclosed tidbits about the author, aside a number of common refrains, such as his family’s move to a Jewish neighborhood and how he met his third wife, Brabner.25 Take one salient episode, unexplored in the past: his second wife, an aspiring academic, wants to pursue a prestigious job out of state (and there were some other issues at play). Pekar tells her that he will not “give up the decent life I’ve set up in Cleveland,” and a divorce ensues.26 Delineated in finely lined black ink, Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland commences with a broad overview of Cleveland history, from its founding to the current time. Information about the region’s early Native American population, the entrance of surveyors and then settlers, the growth of port activity, and the city’s increasing position as an economic powerhouse are mostly told in rectangular captions lining the top of panels rather than through dialogue contained in speech balloons. Apropos the rising immigrant population, Pekar makes a special effort to note, “Jews made up 9 percent of the city’s population. With a Jewish population of 75,000, Cleveland became a major Jewish center.”27 These facts appear above panels depicting Jews first walking into a synagogue wearing kippot, then worshipping within the temple. Soon, though, readers hear about the city’s decline, which began in earnest in the 1950s with the flight to the suburbs, the rise of public housing, and increasing crime. One particularly public example, covered extensively in the national news, occurred in 1966, when violence broke out in the African American community of Hough. Four days of vandalism and arson left four dead and dozens injured, with the National Guard called in to quell the uprising. Remnant shades one panel in especially darkened hues, the sky ominous.28 A fire blazes in the background, and figures, including an alarmed African American man at the front right corner of the panel, run in various directions. A transition occurs a little over forty pages in, when Pekar fully enters the story and his experience of Cleveland—­first as a child and then an adult—­merges with the city’s history. He walks through the city, especially past the highlights: Terminal Tower, the now defunct department store Higbee’s, the Arcade, Claes Oldenberg’s enormous Free Stamp sculpture in Willard Park, the Cultural Gardens, Case Western Reserve University, Severance Hall, and the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. The downtown’s horizon appears in several panels as well, most poignantly as the volume’s final, silent, three-­panel page, which highlights Terminal Tower. Concurrently, Pekar praises less public virtues. Browsing through books in one panel, Pekar extols, “Now, I’ll say one thing about Cleveland, they have a lot of library sales there. You can pick up some rare books for $.50 or $1.00. There was something going on almost every weekend.”29 Earlier in the narrative, Pekar dedicates a little over two admiring pages to Zubal Books, an enormous used bookstore established in 1963 and located on West Twenty-­Fifth Street that boasts over five million volumes. Near the conclusion, Pekar stands in front of the main

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branch of the Cleveland Public Library’s towering, classical facade, downtown on Superior Avenue. As he walks into one of the rooms, toward the arched niches and leaded windows, he extolls: “The Cleveland Public Library has got to be one of the greatest libraries in America.”30 The following panel creates the sense that the reader is staring down a narrow row of book stacks filled with hundreds of volumes, with Pekar tendering the remarkable statistic (and especially so for a city the size of Cleveland): “I was told when I was a kid that the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library had more books in it than any library building but the main one in New York.” A lifelong bibliophile, Pekar also visits Zubal Books and touts Cleveland’s book sales in Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me. As the narrative closes, Pekar continues to look on the bright side while gazing out of the window of his Cleveland Heights home. Pictured from behind, he thinks, “The last couple of winters haven’t been too bad, either. Maybe because of global warming.”31 Still, Pekar muses as he wanders Cleveland’s streets, “Praise is very hard to come by in Cleveland. People here are bitter; I can’t blame ’em. I still haven’t gotten over how we lost the 1954 World Series.”32 Yet he rebounds once again. With snow unsurprisingly falling from the sky and Pekar wrapping his arms around his body to keep warm, he considers, “Well, these days Cleveland isn’t the worst place for me to be. Now everyone’s depressed, not just yours’ truly!”33 On the final page of dialogue, even as he acknowledges the “somber” mood of the city and questions how the unemployment problem will be solved, Pekar invokes a rumor he heard about a medical mart that may be built in Cleveland. In the penultimate panel, Pekar looks up at the snowy heavens and says, “Some say it will bring a BONANZA to our city.”34 With the Terminal Tower rising behind Pekar, in the last panel of the book featuring spoken words, he finishes, “Wouldn’t I love to see that.” After the graphic narrative portion of Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland ends, Jimi Izrael, a Cleveland-­born writer, has penned an epilogue of sorts, titled “A Pal’s Goodbye.” Izrael writes, “Harvey was the secret treasure of a city struggling not to fall into the lake. . . . People say ‘Harvey Pekar was Cleveland,’ and they mean it as a backhanded compliment, at best.”35 I would disagree that Pekar was a secret, for his work and personality are hardly unknown. As far as “Harvey Pekar was Cleveland” serving as a backhanded compliment, I see that as a valid statement—­not an epithet. Harvey Pekar was Cleveland in a very positive way. He brought national attention to Cleveland through his sequential art and his public (not secret) persona. How could he be a secret after selling thousands of comics and tens of thousands of books between hard covers, commanding an esteemed stable of artists, appearing multiple times on television with David Letterman, and inspiring a movie about his life? The man even received a lengthy obituary in the New York Times.36 More appropriate, it seems, are the words in comics writer Alan Moore’s introduction to Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, without an addendum that casts Cleveland, and Pekar, in a negative light: “Cleveland is a part of Harvey Pekar . . . him and his story

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are eternally part of the narrative of Cleveland, with the man and his environment inseparably become one thing.”37 Entertainment Weekly printed some of the tributes that poured out soon after Pekar’s passing. Robert Pulcini, codirector of American Splendor, eulogized, “Harvey Pekar was one of the few originals I’ve met in my life. He deserves to be remembered as the patron saint of Cleveland.”38 Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me, relaying Pekar’s disillusionment with the current state of affairs in Israel, plays out as a conversation between Pekar and the artist he worked with on the project, JT Waldman, in the Cleveland Heights library on Lee Road and while driving through Cleveland.39 Waldman adeptly employs various styles, from clean renderings to expressionistic interpretations, depending on the conversation at hand. Pekar’s musings about his Zionist parents accompany some reiterations about his childhood as covered in The Quitter. When he delves into Jewish history, the Holocaust, Eretz Israel, and the establishment of the State of Israel, along with the turbulent years that followed, Pekar’s antinationalist perspective comes to the forefront, touched on at times in previous stories, including his full-­length cancer memoir, Our Cancer Year (1994), cowritten with Brabner, who holds similar opinions.40 Pekar’s once-­ positive views on Israel changed after the Six-­Day War. He strongly objected to Israeli aggressiveness vis-­à-­vis Arabs living in Israel, perceived the Holocaust as being used to justify what he viewed as Israel’s excessive force, and advocated a two-­state solution. Naturally, Pekar’s opinions provoked controversy, which he anticipated. As early as 1978, Pekar sent a letter to the Plain Dealer criticizing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.41 A letter to the editor titled “Israel Critic Criticized,” from his own cousin, a rabbi in Brooklyn, castigated Pekar. It read, in part, “His article, subtitled, ‘A Jewish dissident asks,’ might well have been subtitled ‘A Jewish ignoramus pontificates.’” In an especially creative seven-­page episode, Pekar and Waldman are talking in a car within variously shaped panels that approximate a winding car ride (fig. 4.3). In a two-­page spread, the pair crosses Detroit Superior Bridge. Each panel conveys conversation as well as motion, culminating with the car driving off the page, drawn separately from the six-­panel configuration that depicts the collaborators’ interchange. Waldman asks Pekar about his ideas for the middle of the book. Pekar replies that he is unsure, in part because he anticipates the response of readers. With a pensive look on his face, Pekar explains, “I’m just tired of people saying I’m a self-­hating Jew because I’m critical of Israel or make fun of old Jewish ladies.”42 Pekar’s trepidation about critical responses comprise the story “Self-­Justification or Anticipating the Critics,” from an early American Splendor issue (1991). There, near a panel reproducing part of “Standing behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines,” he explained, “I’m Jewish, but I’ve been accused of being anti-­Semitic because I don’t idealize them. . . . I guess you could say humankind in general seems kind of absurd to me.”43 No doubt, Pekar shows most of his subjects, Jewish or not, with all their differences and eccentricities.

Figure 4.3  Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me, written by Harvey Pekar, with art by JT Waldman © The Harvey Pekar Estate.

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That conversation continues as Pekar and Waldman get a bite at Gallucci’s Italian market, rendered over two pages in much detail.44 While eating, they drive back to the East Side, passing a stretch of the Cedar-­Fairmount area along the way. Waldman’s drawing, an aerial view that prominently features Cedar-­ Fairmount and the border of Case Western Reserve University, covers an entire silent page without any caption or narration; at the bottom corner, we see the tiny car holding Waldman and Pekar passing by. Pekar was so intent on Waldman portraying Cleveland with verisimilitude that in one panel, toward the end of the story, he asks a librarian at the Cleveland Heights library on Lee Road to help the artist find a book with pictures of Cleveland.45 Because Pekar died before the volume was finished, Brabner provided an epilogue. She remembers her husband’s funeral, for which she planned a service that reflected his Jewish identity (to which he felt strongly connected) rather than any nationalist stance. Musicians from the Workmen’s Circle played at the service, and—­most appropriately considering his life’s work and general philosophy—­the word Cleveland was substituted for Israel as his homeland because the former was, in Brabner’s words, “Harvey’s place of belonging.”46 American Splendor, in its early years, gained Pekar a measure of fame but only among a select group of comics aficionados. It was his guest appearances with David Letterman that brought his comic series—­and also Cleveland—­front and center, for better or for worse. During his first appearance, on October 15, 1986, a nervous Pekar came across as defensive. Letterman asked why, and Pekar replied, “I’m waiting for those Cleveland jokes, you know?” On July 31, 1987, when Letterman asked how things were going on the streets of Cleveland, Pekar responded, “That’s a stupid question . . . you’re trying to bait me.” At the risk of belaboring the obvious, an already-­wary Pekar once again anticipated a barb to his declining city. Letterman mentioned the Cleveland Indians, and Pekar replied as would any Clevelander, “It looks like a bad year. . . . It’s disappointing, we don’t have any pitching.” To which Letterman comments, as if he himself was a Clevelander, “Always next year, wait ‘til next year.” Pekar can only shake his head in dismay and tacit acknowledgment. He wore an “On Strike against NBC” T-shirt to that show, an incendiary act instigated by what Pekar viewed as Letterman’s compliance with General Electric, which owned NBC. Addressing the audience, Pekar suggested that GE should be watched closely, noting that the company was being sued in Ohio because they sold nuclear reactors and that they had a long history of antitrust violations, among other accusations. Letterman called a commercial to cut Pekar off, and when the show returned, he asked Pekar to cease and desist, reminding him, “You’re a guest in my house, so shut up.”47 Memorably, on August 31, 1988, the cantankerous guest again berated his host; at the onset, Pekar brings up General Electric, calling Letterman a cop-­ out for defending the company and tendering an inflammatory comment: Pekar deemed Letterman “a shill.” Visibly angry and uncomfortable, Letterman

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ultimately tells Pekar that he will not be invited back to the show. In a bullying manner, Letterman holds up an issue of American Splendor, calls it a “Mickey Mouse magazine” and Pekar a “dork.” The icing on the cake occurs at the end of the exchange, when Letterman skewers Pekar’s hometown, a cheap shot at the writer: “I’d like to apologize to Cleveland now. . . . You have my deepest, most heartfelt apologies.”48 In 2015, with press coverage strong because of his upcoming retirement, Letterman was interviewed about various guests over the years. Regarding Pekar, Letterman offered another apology, this one sincere: “I loved Harvey. He was a wonderful guest. The kind you don’t see anymore. The only real problem with Harvey was my immaturity.” Cleveland’s favorite irascible everyman received significant posthumous attention, much like the creators of Superman. Monuments have been erected in Cleveland as a celebration of the accomplishments of both Siegel and Shuster as well as Pekar. Native sons Siegel and Shuster are honored at Siegel’s onetime home on Kimberly Avenue in the Glenville neighborhood with a large sign with a shield marked “S” for “Superman.” Just a few blocks away, a fence surrounds the lot where Shuster’s childhood home once stood, adorned by reproductions of the cover and thirteen pages of the Man of Steel’s first story. A small, permanent exhibit showcasing “The World’s Greatest Superhero” is located at the baggage claim area of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, announcing to visitors, “Welcome to Cleveland—­Where the Legend Began.” In 2018, the eightieth anniversary of Superman’s original appearance, a four-­thousand-­pound, ten-­foot-­long stainless steel sculpture of the superhero was set to be unveiled in downtown Cleveland, along with statues of his creators. The project has been temporarily stalled because the original site near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is no longer available, but the project is still in the works. Impetus for this additional Superman tribute in Cleveland may be in part to rival the Superman statue, museum, and annual Superman commemoration in Metro­ polis, Illinois. As of 2013, a specialty Superman license plate became available in Ohio. Superman’s signature “S” appears at the left side of the commemorative plate’s numbers, and underneath the numbers reads the slogan, “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” A sculpture of Pekar by Justin Coulter can be found on the second floor of the Cleveland Heights Public Library branch on Lee Road, where he wrote many of his stories and where Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me takes place. Pekar appears to be walking out of a bronze-­relief comic page based on drawings by Waldman. The sculpture sits on top of a wooden desk with one drawer filled with paper and pencils as an invitation for visitors to make comics. A glass-­covered drawer contains Pekar memorabilia, including a copy of Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland and a DVD of the American Splendor film adaptation. A drawn portrait of Pekar, a photograph of him, and an original drawing from Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me hang nearby. Library patrons who walk around the sculpture

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discover that the back of it is made of slate, again serving as an invitation to write or draw comics. Behind the sculpture, a used bookshop has been named the “Harvey and Friends Bookshop.” The Cleveland Public Library, as the first in its Cleveland Landmark series, issued a limited-­edition library card with Pekar’s likeness, available to patrons for two years (2012–­2014). With manuscript in hand, Pekar walks toward the library’s main branch on a typical Cleveland snowy day—­an image culled from Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland. Near the sixth anniversary of Pekar’s death, a courtyard in the Coventry area of Cleveland Heights was renamed in his honor. Banners with reproductions of scenes from American Splendor drawn by Remnant hang on lampposts surrounding the courtyard. This celebration of Cleveland’s comics “heroes” says something about a beleaguered community that was once home to the Rockefellers. In 1920 Cleveland was the fifth-­largest city in the country, but by the late sixties, with tense race relations, a dwindling population, and the Cuyahoga River catching fire, the national press tarred the city as “the mistake by the lake.” Bereft of sports titles until 2016, when the Cleveland Cavaliers ended a more than fifty-­year drought by winning the NBA championship, Cleveland instead celebrated its comics luminaries in multiple ways. Cleveland, in fact, regularly touts its few celebrities of note, including Drew Carey, Paul Newman, Joel Grey, and Harvey Pekar, the latter of whom was named the twenty-­third most important Clevelander by the Plain Dealer in 2013 and received a front-­page obituary in the paper when he died.49 Carey, to elaborate on another example, garners approbation from his native town, in part as thanks for his consistent commitment to the city; his eponymous sitcom took place in Cleveland, contained numerous Cleveland references, and opened with the song “Cleveland Rocks!” He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Cleveland State University in 2000 and a bobblehead with his likeness was given out to fans at an Indians game in 2010. While Newman and Rockefeller are not monumentalized in the city where they lived a portion of their lives, I would argue in part that Pekar, Siegel, and Shuster are so publicly memorialized by their hometown because they were Joe Shmoes with whom the ordinary Clevelander can relate; we brave brutal winters, pick ourselves up by the bootstraps, and fight for a portion of “the American way.” As R. Crumb put it, apropos Pekar’s comics, in a preface to their book collaboration, Hardly anything actually happens . . . mostly it’s just people talking, or Harvey by himself, panel after panel, haranguing the hapless reader. There’s not much in the way of heroic struggle, the triumph of good over evil, resolution of conflict, people overcoming great odds, stuff like that. It’s kinda, sorta more like real life . . . real life in late twentieth century Cleveland as it lurches along from one day to the next. . . . It is a city that has been ravaged by financiers and industrialists, its population abandoned to their fate, left to freeze their asses off, standing on the dirty slush waiting for a bus that is a long time coming. Somehow they go on living there. And Harvey Pekar is their witness. He is one of them.50

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There is something very much Cleveland in Pekar’s nebbishy, cantankerous Jew (e.g., the negativity usually attributed to Clevelanders), which vastly contrasts with the image of Superman. Yet the creators of these two opposing protagonists—­everyman and Superman—­have something very much in common. Pekar, Siegel, and Shuster were average men who came up with anything but average ideas and successfully chased their improbable dreams. The three unassuming comics makers made it in the metropolis of Cleveland and beyond, and so we also embrace them because they helped put our often-­denigrated Rust Belt city on the map. Harvey Pekar’s pioneering comics told his story from off the streets of Cleveland because for him, all roads led to—­and stayed—­in Cleveland.

notes 1. On Jews in the comics industry and the “Jewishness” of a number of superheroes, see Danny Fingeroth, Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero (New York: Continuum International, 2007); Arie Kaplan, From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2008); and Simcha Weinstein, Up, Up, and Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero (Baltimore: Leviathan, 2006). On Siegel and Shuster and their Cleveland background, see Brad Ricca, Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—­the Creators of Superman (New York: St. Martins, 2013). Specific to Superman’s so-­called “Jewishness,” cartoonist Jules Feiffer (also Jewish) observed in a New York Times article, “Superman was the ultimate assimilationist fantasy. . . . It wasn’t Krypton that Superman came from; it was the planet Minsk or Lodz or Vilna or Warsaw.” Jules Feiffer, “The Minsk Theory of Krypton: Jerry Siegel (1914–­1996),” New York Times Magazine, December 29, 1996, 14–­15. 2. Scholarship on Pekar is unfairly scarce. For the few discussions of his work treated in an incisive, scholarly fashion, see Joseph Witek, “‘You Can Do Anything with Words and Pictures’: Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor,” in Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989), 121–­156, the first in-­depth critical analysis of Pekar’s work, written long before the publication of any of his full-­length graphic narratives; Jason Sperb, “Removing the Experience: Simulacrum as an Autobiographical Act in American Splendor,” Biography 31, no. 1 (2006): 123–­139, about the film version of American Splendor; A. Bredehoft, “Style, Voice, and Authorship in Harvey Pekar’s (Auto)(Bio)Graphical Comics,” College Literature 38, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 97–­110, which discusses the importance of the artists’ individual styles in Pekar’s sequential art; and Christopher McKittrick, “From Off the Streets of Poland: Harvey Pekar on History, Israeli Nationalism, and Exploiting the Holocaust,” in Graphic History: Essays on Graphic Novels and/as History, ed. Richard Iadonisi (London: Cambridge Scholars, 2012): 55–­7 1, focusing on Pekar’s perspective on the Holocaust and Israel but written prior to Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me. 3. R. Crumb, introduction to American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar (New York: Doubleday, 1986), n.p. For more on Pekar and Crumb’s friendship and working relationship, see, among others, “The Young Crumb Story,” American Splendor 4 (1979). 4. Harvey Pekar, interviewed by Joel Greenlee, “Pekar for Beginners,” Brownstone Letters 104, May 23, 1996, reprinted in Michael G. Rhode, ed., Harvey Pekar: Conversations (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 56 (ellipses in original). Rhode’s invaluable book contains a compilation of interviews with Pekar over two-­plus decades.

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5. Naturally, Pekar chronicled the twelve months around the making and release of the film. See the full-­length narrative: Harvey Pekar, American Splendor: Our Movie Year (New York: Ballantine, 2004). 6. Harvey Pekar, interviewed by Michael Roade, “Harvey Pekar at the 2005 Small Expo Press,” International Journal of Comic Art 8, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2006): 160. 7. Pekar objected to Maus, criticizing Spiegelman’s use of animals to tell his father’s Holocaust story and what he believed was Spiegelman’s exploitation of the Holocaust. See Harvey Pekar, “Maus and Other Topics,” Comics Journal 113 (December 1986): 55; and Harvey Pekar, “Blood and Thunder,” Comics Journal 135 (April 1990): 32–­33. Pekar parodies Maus in “The Man Who Came to Dinner—­and Lunch and Breakfast” (1990), drawn by Carole Sobocinski in a manner that approximates Spiegelman’s style. Here Herschel Schnorrer (Yiddish for beggar) appears as a mouse hiding from the Nazis—­from 1942 until 1990. Reprinted in Harvey Pekar, The New American Splendor Anthology (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991). Drawn in a realistic style by Gerry Shamray, the one-­page story “Kaparra,” which Pekar felt was one of his best, concerned a seventeen-­year-­old concentration camp survivor. Reminiscing as an old man, he credits his survival to deeming a sadistic camp guard a kapore (kaparra), a chicken sacrificed on the day before Yom Kippur to be rid of one’s sins. See American Splendor 5 (1980). 8. Originally published in American Splendor 3 (1978), and reprinted in Harvey Pekar and Robert Crumb, American Splendor Presents Bob and Harv’s Comics (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996), 12–­16, and Pekar, Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, n.p. 9. Harvey Pekar, “Pa-­ayper-­Reggs!!,” American Splendor 12 (1987). “The Maggies (Oral History),” about Cleveland’s Jewish linoleum salesmen, prevalent in the 1930s (American Splendor 7, 1982, drawn by R. Crumb) and who also frequented Turk’s Delicatessen, preceded the better-­known “Pa-ayper-Reggs!!” 10. Harvey Pekar, “Before I Was Born,” American Splendor 17 (1993), 3–­5. 11. Pekar, “Austere Youth,” 6–­13. 12. Pekar, “Sheiboneth Beis Hamikdosh,” 18–­19. 13. Pekar, “Hitherto Untold,” 20–­30. 14. Witek, “Words and Pictures,” 137. 15. Harvey Pekar, interview with Joseph Witek, in Witek, “Words and Pictures.” 16. Harvey Pekar, interview with Gary Groth, “Stories about Honesty, Money, and Misogyny,” Comics Journal 97 (April 1985): 46. 17. Harvey Pekar, “What Superman Means to Me,” Snarf 12 (June 1989): 27–­29. 18. Pekar and Crumb, Bob and Harv’s Comics, 84. 19. Harvey Pekar and Ty Templeton, “Harvey Pekar Meets the Thing,” in Strange Tales II (New York: Marvel Worldwide, 2011). 20. On Jewish graphic novels, see Samantha Baskind and Omer-Sherman, eds., The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008); and Derek Parker Royal, ed., Visualizing Jewish Narrative: Jewish Comics and Graphic Novels (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). 21. Alfred Kazin, introduction to The Commentary Reader, ed. Norman Podhoretz (New York: Atheneum, 1966). 22. Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle, eds., Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land (New York: Abrams Comicarts, 2011). 23. Harvey Pekar, Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, drawn by Joseph Remnant (Scarsdale, N.Y.: Zip Comics; Marietta, Ga.: Top Shelf Productions, 2012). 24. Harvey Pekar, Ego and Hubris: The Michael Malice Story, drawn by Gary Dumm (New York: Ballantine, 2006); Harvey Pekar and Heather Roberson, Macedonia, drawn by Ed Piskor (New York: Villard, 2007); and Harvey Pekar et al., The Beats: A Graphic History, drawn by Ed Piskor et al. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009). 25. The 1985 issue (#10) of American Splendor has Pekar washing dishes at the sink, with Brabner watching from the kitchen doorway and the caption, in bold letters, “Harvey’s

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Latest Crapshoot: His Third Marriage to a Sweetie from Delaware and How His Substandard Dishwashing Strains Their Relationship.” 26. Pekar, Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, 85. 27. Pekar, 27. 28. Pekar, 34. 29. Pekar, 93. 30. Pekar, 111. 31. Pekar, 102. 32. Pekar, 112. 33. Pekar, 118. 34. Pekar, 119. 35. Pekar, 123. 36. William Grimes, “Harvey Pekar, ‘American Splendor’ Creator, Dies at 70,” New York Times, July 13, 2010, A23. Cleveland’s Plain Dealer ran the headline “Harvey Pekar, CleveBook Legend, Dies at Age 70.” Most likely, Pekar would have argued that land Comic-­ writer Joanna Connors was exhibiting nepotism by deeming him a “comic-­book legend”—­ even though this assessment extends far beyond the city’s limits. Accessed June 6, 2016, http://​blog​.cleveland​.com/​metro/​2010/​07/​cleveland​_comic​-book​_legend​_ha​.html. Connors’s much more extended obituary for Pekar appeared on the front page of the paper copy of the Plain Dealer under the headline, “He Was Our Bard of the Banal: Author of American Splendor Comics Found Dead in Home; Chronicled Everyday Struggles,” July 13, 2006, A1 and A6. 37. Alan Moore, introduction to Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, 5. 38. Kate Ward, “Harvey Pekar: Friends Remember the ‘American Splendor’ Author,” Entertainment Weekly, July 12, 2010, accessed June 5, 2016, http://​www​.ew​.com/​article/​2010/​07/​12/​ harvey​-pekar​-friends​-remember​-the​-american​-splendor​-author. 39. Harvey Pekar, Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me, drawn by JT Waldman, with an epilogue by Joyce Brabner (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012). 40. Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner, Our Cancer Year, drawn by Frank Stack (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994). This book, which won a Harvey Award for Best Graphic Album of Original Work (the award is named after cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, not Harvey Pekar), addresses Pekar’s diagnosis of non-­Hodgkin’s lymphoma in November 1990 and his subsequent treatment, alongside other, more day-­to-­day events in the couples’ life, including buying a home. 41. Harvey Pekar, “A Jewish Dissident Asks: Must Israel Forever Live Under Siege?,” Plain Dealer, March 30, 1978, 27A. 42. Pekar, Not the Israel, 85. 43. Harvey Pekar and Frank Stack, “Self-Justification or Anticipating the Critics,” American Splendor 16 (1991): 12. 44. Pekar, Not the Israel, 88–89. 45. Pekar, 163. 46. Pekar, 172. 47. For a first-­person account of Pekar’s experience on the show, see “Me ‘n’ Dave Letterman,” Plain Dealer, February 1, 1987, H1. 48. Letterman appears on the cover of issue fourteen of American Splendor (1989), titled the David Letterman Exploitation Issue, chastising Pekar: “You f—­d up a great thing.” Pekar’s story, “The Grand Finale,” chronicles his explosive appearance on the show almost word for word. Issue twelve (1987) also features Letterman and Pekar on the cover and on the pages in between. 49. “Cleveland’s Top 100 Celebrities Countdown,” Cleveland​.com, accessed June 3, 2016, http://​www​.cleveland​.com/​entertainment/​index​.ssf/​2013/​02/​clevelands​_top​_100​_celebrities​ _4​.html. 50. Pekar and Crumb, introduction to Bob and Harv’s Comics, n.p.

chapter 5

Q

ETHNIC IDENTITY AND LOCAL POLITICS abba hillel silver as a community leader and international politician in cleveland, 1940–­1950 Zohar Segev

Abba Hillel Silver’s rise to the rank of a prominent American Jewish leader in the mid-twentieth century marked a conspicuous and most important change in the American Jewish community. Silver was the first to understand the readiness of American Jewry to act as an ethnic group with a political agenda in the American arena, the result of the individual and collective trauma experienced as a result of the Holocaust. This led American Jewry to exert its full power in support of a Jewish state, to be established within the international arrangements that followed World War II.1 During his ethnic political career, Silver created and employed an impressive system of relationships, starting in Cleveland and extending across Ohio and throughout the rest of the United States. We cannot understand Silver’s political activities on the national level without the background of the ethnic politics he conducted in Cleveland. Documents from Silver’s archives reveal the complex dialogue between Silver’s political activities in Cleveland and those on the national level. His nuanced relationship with the Republican senator from Ohio Robert Alfonso Taft is especially fascinating. Their collaboration, so meticulously crafted in Cleveland, shaped events in Washington, London, and Jerusalem—­a classic example of ethnic and community politics that influenced the entire world after the war, during the stormiest moments of modern times. Especially absorbing is the link between Silver’s Jewish activities and his role as initiator of radical social reforms in Ohio in particular and in the United States as a whole. Silver 1 02

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opposed the Cold War and worked for individual rights, social justice, measures against unemployment, and for the rights of workers. He was also responsible for changing the nature of Jewish ethnic activity long after the end of his formal terms as head of multiple Zionist institutions in the United States. Abba Hillel Silver (1893–­1963) came to the United States from Lithuania when he was eleven years old with his mother, sisters, and elder brother. Their father, an Orthodox rabbi, had arrived a few years earlier. The younger son arrived Abraham but took the given names Abba Hillel after high school. Under the influence of his father, a Zionist and Hebrew scholar, Abraham acquired the language as a youth. The elder Silver’s affinity for Zionism expressed itself through the founding of a youth club named after Herzl in 1904 to mark the death of the founder of the Zionist movement.2 After graduating from a New York public high school, and despite his Orthodox family background, Abba Hillel applied to the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in spite its anti-­Zionist world view. Later he would head the Union of Reform Rabbis and have a central role in altering the organization’s anti-­Zionist stance.3 In the course of his studies at Hebrew Union College and his ordination as a rabbi, in 1925 he received a doctorate, studying also at the nearby University of Cincinnati.4 In 1915 he received his first rabbinical call from the congregation at Wheeling, West Virginia. Serving such a long-­ established congregation with a membership of Jews of German origin indicates that Silver had broken through the boundaries of the Orthodox immigrant world and entered the broader circles of American Jewry. So did his marriage. In 1923 he married Virginia Horkheimer from this first congregation, the daughter of wealthy industrialists.5 Historian Jacob Marcus, writing to Silver’s family of the atmosphere in Cincinnati following Silver’s death in 1963, noted the importance of this match.6 He stressed the social and economic differences between the Silver family’s straitened circumstances and those of his wife’s family, prosperous industrialists of German origin. Marcus added that Silver was undoubtedly the greatest and most important rabbi in American Jewish history. He told of the financial hardship during Silver’s student days that obliged him to borrow small sums from his fellow students. Clearly, the possibility of scholarships and living allowances were significant factors in Silver’s decision to study in the Reform movement framework rather than in an Orthodox milieu better suited to his family background.7 Silver entered Jewish communal life in 1917, after his call to the pulpit of Tifereth Israel, a large and very important Reform congregation in Cleveland, Ohio. His exceptional success as a rabbi and a communal leader is evident from his appointment despite great ideological differences with the congregation, which held an anti-­Zionist world view. Cleveland became Silver’s home and his political power base. Silver’s ethnic politics in Cleveland are essential to understand the nature of his activities in Washington, DC, and New York. Indeed, he performed

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his duties as a congregational rabbi even during his most intensive public activity elsewhere on behalf of the Zionist movement. Silver helped found the United Jewish Appeal (where he served as chairman from 1938 to 1943) and headed the Zionist Emergency Committee and the subsequent Emergency Council.8 The emergency committee was established on September 19, 1939, out of both a fear that contact with European centers would be lost and a desire to concentrate political activity in the United States. In fact, the committee functioned mainly as a political pressure group, working to influence the American government to support Zionist goals. In July 1943, its name was changed to the Emergency Council. Silver also represented the World Zionist Organization in the United Nations and was president of the Zionist Organization of America from 1945 to 1947.9 Most historical discourse about Silver stresses the new model of Jewish ethnic politics that he created in the United States, one whose significance goes far beyond his own times. He rode the shock waves of the Holocaust to forge broad sections of the American Jewish public into a political force, waging a titanic struggle in favor of a Jewish state in Palestine by making the Jewish vote a central factor that the American political system had to reckon with, even if the prospect of its use was purely theoretical. That many American Jews were ready to vote out of ethnic considerations in the late 1940s was an exceptional development. Silver changed Jewish ethnic political activity long after he had held office formally in American Zionist institutions. The establishment and function of the Jewish lobby and the dialogue between Israel and the United States to this day are incomprehensible without reference to the dramatic process that Silver led. He truly understood the Holocaust and post-­Holocaust changes in American Jewry, developments among the former Eastern European immigrants, and that Americans in general now accepted Jewish religious and political activities like those that Silver led. Silver’s crystallization of American Jewry’s political activity is particularly important given that he became the successor of Stephen Wise, also a Reform rabbi and one of the most important Zionist leaders in the country. The two men were intense personal and political rivals.10 Wise, active in the Democratic Party, recognized the implications of ethnically aware Jewish political power. However, he differed from Silver in being vigorously opposed to wielding it lest it harm the status of Jews in America. His opposition was also due to his own unique ties with the Democratic Party and, notably, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt—­both of which, he feared, could pay an electoral price for Silver’s political success.

Myth and Reality, Denial and Concealment: Silver, American Zionist Leadership, and the Jewish Vote in the 1940s In February 1941, David Ben-­Gurion, chair of the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem and later Israel’s first prime minister, reported to the agency on his

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recent visit to the United States. Ben-­Gurion stressed President Roosevelt’s opposition to establishing a Jewish state within the international agreements to follow World War II, then stated his own opinion on political steps that might influence Roosevelt’s government to change its position.11 He told the agency that efforts to enlist the help of Jews in key government positions (such as Benjamin Cohen, Roosevelt’s close adviser who later held senior positions in the American war effort, and Justice Felix Frankfurter of the Supreme Court and retired Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, both very important American Zionist leaders) in changing White House policy regarding Palestine were doomed to failure. Their support for the establishment of a Jewish state would be limited and inadequate to overcome President Roosevelt’s opposition. According to Ben-­Gurion, The Jews around him [Roosevelt] include good Zionists—­Ben Cohen, Frankfurter and Brandeis, if they have any influence on Roosevelt I don’t know. I think Cohen has some influence: this man has a very clear head and sees things clearly, his help is necessary and he fills many different roles in the government. Frankfurter is indeed a member of the Supreme Court, but I doubt if they can imbue him [Roosevelt] with belief in Palestine because I’m not sure how much belief they have themselves. Not to forget either the Jewish friends who are not Zionists and maybe oppose Zionism, some of them influential people.12

Ben-­Gurion announced his conclusion: “The way to enlist the American government is winning over the people, winning public opinion.” He then presented the Jewish Agency Executive with a long-­term strategy in which the Jews of the United States would act as an ethnic political group, using the Jewish vote to change the American government’s policy on Palestine.13 Like Ben-­Gurion, many scholars in the United States and Israel emphasized the contribution of American Jewry to the establishment of a Jewish state, particularly in the face of the opposition from Presidents Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.14 This chapter, showing how the Jewish vote was actually brought to bear in the 1944 presidential and congressional elections, broadens the background provided by earlier research and reveals the essential difficulties that Silver and American Zionist leaders faced in activating the Jewish vote in Cleveland and throughout the country as well as how they coped with the complex challenges of ethnic politics in the 1940s. The late 1930s were a time of increasing fears of anti-­Semitism in the United States both homegrown (due to the economic crisis) and foreign (emanating principally from Germany). Nevertheless, there was impressive growth in the readiness to take part in Jewish, and especially in Zionist, activities among broad sectors of American Jewry. From the early 1930s onward, there was a very considerable rise in the sums collected for local philanthropy and in Zionist fund drives. Hadassah membership grew, as did that of other Zionist organizations;

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their social events drew more participants. The worsening situation of German Jewry, the increase in anti-­Semitism elsewhere in Europe, and the widening gap between official British policy and the Zionist movement all combined with fears of anti-­Semitism to increase the sense of Jewish solidarity, expressed in particular in Zionist involvement.15 The developing Allied victory in World War II and the subsequent flow of information about the Holocaust intensified American Jews’ willingness to act on the American scene as an ethnic group with definite political objectives. The individual and communal shock generated by knowledge of the Holocaust led the rank and file and their leaders to exert their full strength toward the establishment of a Jewish state as part of postwar international arrangements. Consequently, Zionism became the most powerful ideological, political, and organizational force among American Jewry. The full significance of American Zionism in the 1940s must be understood in the light of the Jewish community’s identification with the goals of the Zionist movement and, after 1948, with the State of Israel, an identification that went far beyond the limits of official membership in the Zionist Organization of America and Hadassah. The Jews were well aware that through their Zionist activities, they were placing themselves at the most particularistic ethnic edge of the American scene; in this sense, they were in fact pioneering guides for other ethnic groups in the United States.16 Documents of Silver and other American Zionist leaders in the 1940s show that the political use of the Jewish vote—­so simple, so natural to the Zionist establishment in Palestine and the World Zionist Organization—­presented a predicament for Americans. It began with the need to cover up the very fact of its use, and it set the political and social identity of some American Zionist leaders on a collision course with the implications of the ethnic vote in the American political arena. Despite reservations, however, the American Zionist leadership could not avoid gathering together the Jewish vote, which formed a central element in their ability to influence government activities regarding Palestine. The belief that they could sway the Jewish voter was central to the status of these leaders in the American political system. They worked for the Zionist movement and were simultaneously active in national party politics, where they exploited their status as Zionist leaders.

The American Jewish Vote in the Early 1940s The difficulties of running a Jewish lobby in Washington, DC, come to light in the memoirs of Leon I. Feuer, Silver’s assistant in Cleveland and later the director of the Emergency Committee in Washington. Feuer, sent to Washington by Silver, pointed out that Zionist activity in Washington was no different from that of economic, trade union, religious, or other ethnic minority groups: each operated to advance its own interests by trying to influence legislative initiatives and presidential

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acts in its favor. At the same time, Feuer was keenly aware of the perceived difference between the American Zionist movement (operating in effect within the foreign political framework of the world Zionist movement and attempting to influence foreign policy) and other interest groups that sought to influence domestic policy and were not linked to or influenced by alien organizations. That difference was a potential basis for describing American Zionists, connected as they were to a foreign political body, as working against American interests.17 An additional perspective from which one may examine Zionist influence on the Jewish vote is the political viewpoint, especially with regard to the party affinity of Zionist leaders. That they were found on both sides of the political divide was thought to make it more difficult to unite the Jewish vote. For example, Wise was a senior Democrat, while Silver enjoyed a similar position among the Republicans.18 A monolithic, clearly identified Jewish vote could influence the outcome of presidential and congressional elections and could advance the Zionists’ political struggle. At the same time, a monolithic Jewish vote would surely have aroused opposition in the rival party, causing its supporters to become hostile to Zionism. Hesitation over wielding the Jewish vote openly affected the way Zionist leaders in both parties used this means of influencing policy. Then too there were noticeable differences between the generally hesitant overt use of the Jewish vote and the attitude present in internal, usually confidential documents from the archives of American Zionists.19 Ben-­ Gurion and other non-­ American Zionist leaders familiar with the American scene were unanimously in favor of using the vote, the economic strength, the numbers, and the community status of American Jewry in order to bring political pressure to bear on the administration.20 By contrast, Wise and Silver, as prominent American Zionist leaders, took more complex positions, as their concerns extended beyond immediate political gains to the future implications that exploiting the Jewish community would hold both for the Zionist movement and for American Jewry in general. They and their followings were well aware that the American government’s Palestine policy and relations with the Zionist movement affected Jewish voting patterns. They saw the Jewish vote as a potent instrument that could be used for the benefit of the Zionist movement as well as to influence the American political system in general. Unlike Ben-­Gurion, who came out clearly in favor of enlisting that vote, American Zionist leaders knew of the difficulties that could arise from doing so. Hence they tried to conceal its potential without foregoing the political advantages it offered. Wise had been aware of the importance of the Jewish vote even in the mid-­1930s. He believed there were unique Jewish voting patterns and that his political and communal activity as a Jewish leader influenced the way Jews would vote. Thus, in a letter to Justice Frankfurter, Wise averred that he was prepared to devote his full time and effort to Roosevelt’s reelection in 1936. He noted previous occasions when he had come out in Roosevelt’s favor and

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asked Frankfurter whether it was worthwhile to do so again at the Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia. Clearly, his efforts were to be directed at the Jewish community as a Zionist leader whose public acts and pronouncements influenced this community’s voting patterns, particularly in New York, where he lived.21 Wise was not alone in trying to influence the way Jews would vote. So too did Silver, who, though identified with Republican sympathizers, also opposed introducing the Jewish issue in the 1940 election. Following a newspaper article naming forty prominent Jews said to support Republican challenger Wendell Willkie, Silver publicly opposed the article’s mentioning that they were Jewish, since in so doing, he said, the impression might be conceived that there was a Jewish vote and that all Jewish citizens of the United States would vote the same way in the attempt to establish a political bloc. To gainsay this impression, Silver offered resolutions passed by Jewish community institutions in Cleveland. Judging by all recent elections, and particularly the present one, he stated, clearly a Jewish vote does not exist. Like all other American citizens, Jews vote as individuals in accordance with differing views and interests. Any attempt to create a political or ethnic bloc runs contrary to the essence of life in the United States and to the unity of the American people.22 Despite avoiding involvement in the election campaign, Silver—­as a rabbi in Cleveland and as an American citizen—­wished to discuss the election issues of 1944, since issues of faith and race had arisen, such as attacks on the Jewish labor leader Sidney Hillman, who was playing a leading role in Roosevelt’s campaign. Silver said that a political leader may expect attacks from his opponents; however, the propaganda against Hillman was different, highlighting as it did his foreign birth. Pointing to a public figure as an immigrant was un-­American, Silver charged, and was a Nazi act that exploited anti-­Semitic feelings while detracting attention from the main issues. The use of Nazi methods was a bad sign, he warned, and he hoped no irreversible damage had been done to American society and that the issue would die down after the election campaign. Concluding the outspoken sermon, he stressed again that there was no Jewish issue in the campaign and that the Jews of the United States would vote not as Jews but as secular American citizens. Their first goal as such was to prevent intolerant, un-­ American activities against themselves; it was for this reason, he advised, they had to vote as American citizens for the interests of the United States.23 The foregoing statement indicates the extreme caution with which he related to the Jewish vote and Jewish voting patterns. Using Hillman as an example was no coincidence. Silver, like many of his listeners in Cleveland, had been born outside the United States; to relate to this labor leader as an immigrant and not as an American citizen could adversely impact the social status of many American Jews. These concerns may explain the sharp differences in relation to the Jewish vote between the public utterances made by Silver and other American Zionist

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leaders, who downplayed or even denied its existence, and in the use they made of it behind the scenes. From Silver’s sermons in Cleveland, one learns of his fears of growing racist and class-­conscious tendencies. He paid particular attention to a long list of anti-­Semitic assertions regarding American Jewish influence on the American government that caused him to fear that political activism by the Zionist movement or a Jewish lobby in Washington and the use of the Jewish vote could easily become weapons for anti-­Zionists and anti-­Semites and could strengthen these tendencies in American society. He pointed out that racism and class consciousness were directed against other minorities, not only against Jews, and that they constituted a structural problem of American society. The depth of the problem made it hard to combat the fear that Jews might be considered not as citizens with equal rights but as an ethnic group of doubtful loyalty, explaining why Silver and others in the American Zionist establishment tried to conceal the use of the Jewish vote. Exploiting this political tool, at least overtly, might have brought about political achievements for the Zionist movement, but it also had the potential to turn American Jews in general—­and the Zionists in particular—­into a group whose loyalty was of a chiefly ethnic religious nature. As will be shown later, since the Jewish vote and a Jewish lobby in Washington were the only means the Zionists possessed to influence policy on Palestine, the Zionist leadership would soon face serious dilemmas as to the vote issue. Despite all his public denials of exploiting the Jewish vote in the early 1940s, Silver did just that in secret, when, for example, he met with Samuel Rosenman, a judge and close adviser to President Roosevelt as well as his speechwriter. He told the judge that the government’s negative approach to Zionist demands and the State Department’s lack of response to the White Paper was forcing the American Zionist movement into an uncompromising antigovernment campaign. It could easily have been avoided, Silver said, by a change in policy regarding Palestine in the spirit of Zionist demands.24 The contrast between Silver’s declared policy on the Jewish vote issue and what he actually did was manifested also in connection with the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, Sol Bloom.25 Passing pro-­Zionist resolutions in the House and in the Senate was a central goal of Silver’s political activity in the first half of the 1940s, and this required Bloom’s help. Silver, then, did not hesitate to threaten to use the Jewish vote, pressuring Bloom to promise energetic support of a pro-­Zionist resolution in the House. Writing to his associate Louis Segal of the U.S. branch of the Zionist labor organization Poalei Zion, Silver noted that he had learned from the Yiddish press that a dinner had been held in Bloom’s honor during his election campaign with the participation of Segal himself, other Poalei Zion leaders, and much of the Jewish and Zionist leadership of New York. Furthermore, Silver remarked, many participants had contributed to Bloom’s campaign fund. Although he did not

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object to Bloom’s reelection, the Zionist leaders who supported him should have known that Bloom had as yet made no clear promise to employ his full strength and his position to ensure the passage of pro-­Zionist resolutions. Silver accused Bloom of pretense, of a lack of integrity, and of not keeping his promises to the Zionist leaders. Worse, his behavior was causing serious damage to Zionism in preventing the passage of pro-­Zionist resolutions in the House. Bloom, Silver charged, only pretended to support these resolutions, when in fact his interest was that they should fail. The only way to commit Bloom to actual and effective support of Zionist aims was to apply political pressure before the elections. Before they continued to support him, Silver advised, the Zionist leaders should ascertain that Bloom would work after the election to pass the resolutions in the congressional committee he headed.26 Nor was a promise from Bloom sufficient for Silver, who demanded that the resolution be passed by August or by September at latest. It was a tactical error on the part of New York’s Zionist leaders, Silver insisted, to support Bloom before he promised his political support. Moreover, he demanded that Segal and the other Bloom supporters in the Zionist camp send the congressman personal letters setting forth Silver’s demands as soon as possible.27 Despite Silver’s own involvement in the 1944 election, he accused Wise of complicity with the Democratic Party, maintaining that some leaders of the American Zionist movement were more committed to the Democratic Party than to Zionist interests.28 He had received reports on Wise’s heated addresses in support of Roosevelt and on his activation of the press on the president’s behalf. According to Silver, Wise’s activities were contrary to the decision of the Emergency Committee regarding neutrality in the presidential campaign, and he demanded to know whether it was right to support Roosevelt or wrong to support Thomas Dewey. Silver had declined an invitation to address a Republican rally in Madison Square Garden because of his position as head of the Emergency Council.29 As will be shown later, Silver’s responses reflected Zionist response patterns in the various election campaigns. Officially, Silver chose neutrality in the 1944 elections, while behind the scenes he was active on behalf of Republican candidates. It is scarcely conceivable that Silver was unaware of the similarity between his own activity patterns and Wise’s at the time. One may assume that criticism of Wise was motivated by internal Zionist politics as part of the struggle between the two leading Reform rabbis.

Cleveland: Local Politics and the Jewish Vote Silver’s political activity had a special pattern and intensity in Cleveland, finding expression in the political cooperation between Silver and the Republican senator Robert Alfonso Taft (1889–­1953).30 Robert Taft, son of the Republican president William Harold Taft, who had been a lawyer by profession, represented Ohio for

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years. Despite unsuccessful attempts to obtain the Republican nomination for the presidency, Robert was considered very important in the party and as an outstanding opponent of President Roosevelt and his New Deal. Taft was active in shaping national policies and initiated legislation in areas such as housing for the needy and labor relations. Notable in this latter field was the Taft-­Hartley Act of 1947, whose purpose was to establish—­indeed to limit—­the status of the labor unions, the right to strike, and the status of employees vis-­à-­vis their employers. In foreign policy, Taft opposed American international involvement and supported American isolationism. A notable exception was his continuous support for the Zionist movement and for American aid in establishing the State of Israel.31 The close relationship between Silver and Taft during the 1940s was common knowledge and figures in memoirs from that period. However, this visible, self-­ evident layer does not reveal the full significance of the men’s ties. In fact, very important evidence of their close relationship came to light only fifty years later. In 1989 Paul Walter, a Cleveland lawyer close to Silver and Taft, wrote to Silver’s son Daniel about the Silver-­Taft connection.32 Walter related how the close contact between Taft and the Zionist leader began after Roosevelt visited Ibn Saud,

Figure 5.1  Cleveland Law Director Thomas Burke, Abba Hillel Silver, Senator Robert Taft, and Cleveland Mayor Frank Lausche, The Temple, unknown event, Cleveland, c. 1943. (Hastings-­Willinger & Associates, The Temple–­Tifereth Israel)

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with the possibility that Roosevelt would be elected for a fourth term. As Silver was so critical of Roosevelt’s Zionist policy, he was told he should contact Senator Taft, described to him as one totally opposed to Roosevelt.33 Walter did not say who proposed to Silver that he should meet Taft or who set up their first meeting on a night train between New York and Washington. There Silver presented the Zionist viewpoint to Taft, stressing the dangers to Zionist interests that were inherent in Roosevelt’s policy. Taft promised to examine the matter thoroughly and to contact Silver within forty-­eight hours. Walter said that Silver, pessimistic and doubtful, did not think anything would come of it. Nonetheless, Silver had convinced Taft, who contacted him by telephone. Then and there, he set forth plans to make pro-­Zionist proposals in the Senate and the House of Representatives that would block Roosevelt’s political steps.34 Walter’s own political involvement in the Silver-­Taft relationship began somewhat later in 1944. He related how the closer relationship between the two, and Taft’s endeavor to confirm a Zionist resolution in the Republican platform, made Taft an important factor in Zionist activity in Washington. Silver then invited Walter to his office to stress to him how important it was for Taft to continue in the Senate, urging him to work for Taft’s reelection in Ohio in 1944—­a reelection for which he, Silver, was ready to do all that was necessary. Walter pointed out that preelection polls indicated there was every chance of Taft losing the election to his Democratic opponent. The Democrats on their part were so sure of winning that they allotted their candidate a minimal budget for the campaign against Taft.35 Given the difficult situation, Walter met with Taft, and they concluded that to reelect the senator, they would have to move a large bloc of Democratic voters into Taft’s camp. Eminently suitable for that purpose were the Jewish voters who traditionally voted for the Democrats and who would have to be convinced to vote for Taft although he was a Republican. With Taft’s agreement, Walter contacted Silver and placed the reelection problem before him. Silver’s response was that ten days before the Senate elections, Taft should appear in the synagogue in Cleveland with him.36 Silver fully understood how difficult it would be to convince his audience to vote for Taft in view of their loyalty to Roosevelt. In the course of his sermon, then, as he talked of the coming elections, he stopped abruptly, threw up his hands, and exclaimed, “He betrayed us!” The congregation knew he meant President Roosevelt and his actions regarding the Palestine question. He repeated this twice more and then introduced Senator Taft, sitting beside him on the bimah, as a dear friend. He mentioned Taft’s pro-­Zionist resolutions in the Senate, declaring he had saved the day for the American Zionist movement. Taft responded briefly, and at the end of the sermon, Silver carried on a dialogue with his congregation for the purpose of igniting enthusiasm and commitment. He asked them if he himself was a politician, and they shouted, “No!” He went on to ask them if they wanted a friend in Washington after the elections in January. They said yes.

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In conclusion, he asked if he had to tell the Jewish public how to vote, and here again the answer was no.37 Walter described Silver’s impression on his audience as electrifying, and this was evident in the election results. Ballots in districts with a significant Jewish population clearly supported Taft, and that obvious change in the Jewish voting pattern reelected Taft to the Senate.38 Their contemporaries were well aware of the political connection between Taft and Silver. One assumes, however, if its full force had been known, it would have hurt Taft’s status and created problems concerning his support for the Zionist movement. Thus Silver’s Sunday sermon in Cleveland supporting Taft was deleted from the protocol. Silver insisted that Taft’s support for the Zionist movement was not for electoral reasons and rather that after the senator had read widely on the subject and examined the issue, he had decided to support the Zionist movement for compelling reasons. Despite Silver’s assertions, one assumes that Taft understood the political importance of the Jewish community in general and that his cooperation with Silver was understandable in light of the Taft family’s past connections with Orthodox Jewry in general and the Ohio community in particular. Rabbi Eliezer Silver, president of the Association of Orthodox Rabbis and founder of the Rescue Committee, was the chief rabbi of Cincinnati beginning in 1931. In his memoirs, he told of his relationship with President William Howard Taft, the senator’s father. Recounting how he had met with the president about improving the status of the Jews in Czarist Russia, Eliezer Silver described as a warm personal friendship his ties with the president’s son, Senator Robert Taft, who worked on behalf of Cincinnati’s Orthodox community and on that of the United States in general on varied issues. One issue was the community’s efforts to establish a mikvah despite Reform Jews’ objections, while another was recognizing Jewish medical students’ rights not to violate the Sabbath. He even tried to exempt American yeshiva students from compulsory military service during World War II, and he also helped obtain entry permits for European Orthodox rabbis during the Holocaust.39 Walter’s memoirs are not the only evidence of close ties between Silver and Taft during the 1944 election campaign. In a letter of thanks to Silver, Taft asserted he could find no words to express how much he valued Silver’s declaration of support, for which he would always be grateful to him.40 After his declaration in Cleveland, Silver continued to support Taft, presenting him as a companion in pro-­Zionist activity in Washington.41 In a letter to Taft, Silver pointed out the importance of Jewish support, declaring that Taft’s address to the Jewish community in Cleveland was widely reported in the Jewish press and that his audience had been deeply impressed by his speech and by Taft himself.42 Silver raised money in Cleveland for Taft’s election campaign, enlisting his own supporters, who reported on the sums collected, transferred the money to Silver, and promised to add their personal contributions.43 The growing strength of the connection between these two public figures is seen further

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Figure 5.2  Senator Robert Taft and Abba Hillel Silver, unknown event, New York, 1940s. (Alexander Archer, The Temple–­Tifereth Israel)

in Silver’s request that Taft arrange priorities for him on flights to London and Palestine in view of the political importance of his presence there. Silver stressed that Taft had a central role in his own Zionist achievements and that Silver’s return to a central role in American Zionist leadership was a victory for their common purpose.44 Their similar views against the Marshall Plan, in support of the United Nations, and in aspects of policies vis-­à-­vis Britain and President Roosevelt placed them for different reasons on the same antigovernment front.45 This common stance, and both being from Ohio, led them to cooperate closely. What led Taft to work for Silver and the Zionist movement was his dependence on the Jewish vote in Ohio and Silver’s views, similar to his own, regarding American foreign policy and President Roosevelt. Silver, on his part, worked for Taft despite their basic differences of opinion because their shared views on the Marshall Plan and on Britain accorded with Silver’s Zionist interests and his views on American foreign policy in general. It could be said that at this particular time in history, Silver and Taft shared common interests they had reached for different reasons.46

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Conclusion In 1948 following the establishment of Israel, Silver was removed from all official positions in the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency by David Ben-­Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel. This dramatic step was remarkable in light of Silver’s public power and his intensive activity during the 1940s on behalf of Zionism in the United States and internationally. Silver had not only served as president of the Zionist Organization of America from 1945 to 1947, but he had also held the crucial position of official representative of the Zionist movement and the Jewish Agency to the United Nations. Silver struggled on behalf of the Partition Plan for Palestine and addressed the United Nations General Assembly, advocating for the creation of the State of Israel on May  8, 1947. With the achievement of statehood, and given the past political struggle between Ben-­Gurion and Silver, Silver could be removed from his position. He had now become less important for Israel’s political activity in the United States.47 Following Silver’s retirement from all official Zionist positions in 1948, his involvement in public activities was primarily behind the scenes and within his position as a Cleveland Reform rabbi. In his sermons, Silver presented his overall political and ideological outlook regarding the desirable international arrangements after World War II and the future role of the Jewish state. Silver wished that the new state come into being as part of a series of international arrangements that would be founded on the policies of the United Nations, minimize East–­West conflict, and advance economic development in former colonies.48 It should be emphasized that supporting the United Nations organization in the 1940s and 1950s was widespread among the Jewish community in the United States. For example, the papers of the World Jewish Congress indicate that the organization’s leaders called upon its members and on the general American Jewish public to actively support the United Nations. The World Jewish Congress maintained that as an intellectual collective upholding a progressive world view, the Jews were obliged to support the United Nations. International peace and cooperation as manifested by the United Nations were particularly vital to Jews given the suffering and catastrophe they had experienced during World War II. Nevertheless, Jewish support of the United Nations did not stem from narrow self-­interest but emanated from a sense of mission that recognized the importance of the organization to the entire world. According to the World Jewish Congress, Jews should commit themselves to supporting both the foundation of the United Nations and its reinforcement, to ensure that the ideals underlying its establishment not remain only within the realm of utopia.49 Silver’s unpublished autobiography addresses the political activity of American Jews under his leadership. He rejected the view that the status of an American Jewish leader in general (and of a Zionist leader in particular) was determined

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by that individual’s relations with the White House—­that is, that the more welcome a leader was there, the better his leadership status was, and vice versa. Silver pointed to a contradiction: on one hand, when President Truman was elected in 1948, Silver’s own position in the Zionist movement became weaker because he was a persona non grata in the White House (when the Republican Dwight Eisenhower began his presidency in 1953, Silver was once again thought to have political power). On the other hand, his political achievements on behalf of the Zionist movement and, after 1948, the State of Israel were far greater under Truman than they were when Eisenhower was president, when he had close association with key Republicans in the administration, such as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.50 Silver did not mention it in his unpublished autobiography, but from the sources presented here, we learn that his local political work in Cleveland and Ohio was essential to his success in establishing and wielding the “Jewish vote” in America. Silver’s autobiography reveals the confusion of concepts that lay behind the activity of American Zionist leaders in the 1940s. Blurred boundaries between the Zionist and general American arenas were evident in Wise’s case, and this situation held true for Silver and his adherents as well. Silver well knew that his political achievements had been gained only because the Republican leadership wanted to change Jewish voting patterns and to distance the Jewish community from the Democrats. Silver, though, did not seem to be troubled by the circumstances, and even though he did not support Dewey, the Republican presidential candidate, in either 1944 or 1948, he maintained close contact with other Republican leaders, such as John Foster Dulles and Taft.51 Reduced Jewish support for Roosevelt and the Democrats did, though, dovetail with Silver’s political strategy. His opposition to a third and then a fourth term by a president as a danger to American democracy and his desire to end the blanket Jewish vote for Roosevelt and the Democrats were the motivations in his design to employ the Jewish vote, which he viewed as a valuable and powerful political weapon.52 Silver’s proximity to the Republicans rather than the incumbent Democrats ironically made it easier for him to exact political gains for the Zionist movement.53 Using the Jews as a political force in favor of an ethnic Jewish agenda in the United States was thoroughly unique in Zionist politics and on the Jewish scene in general. Just how unique is evident from the response by Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization until 1946. Weizmann recognized that American governmental support was essential to the establishment of a Jewish state.54 At the same time, he strenuously opposed the patterns of political activity developed by Ben-­Gurion and Silver in the United States. His model was his own success in the complex process that had led to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. A dynamic that meant motivating a large Jewish public to put political pressure on the American government seemed to him futile and, moreover, to harbor a potential source of irreparable damage to the Zionist movement.55

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Weizmann perhaps did not perceive that the unique situation in the United States from 1944 until the end of the decade allowed the Zionist movement, for the first time in its history, to alter previously accepted norms of political activity. This was due to a combination of factors: the shock to the American Jewish public following the Holocaust, American society’s willingness to countenance ethnic political activity, and the improved socioeconomic circumstances of American Jewry. These factors, together with Silver’s charismatic leadership, united to determine the Jewish vote as an effective political instrument in the late 1940s.56 American Jews under Silver’s leadership were willing to function as an ethnic group by using the Jewish vote to change government policy for a short but highly significant time. From a political standpoint, their activity on the American scene contributed meaningfully to the possibility of establishing a Jewish state within the political arrangements that followed World War II. But the importance of the Jewish vote went beyond that particular goal. The successful ethnic politics of American Zionists and their leadership in the late 1940s increased Jews’ unity, reinforced their ethnic identity, and helped establish them as an ethnic group that could and would organize in a struggle for its own goals as well as for non-­ Jewish issues with which it identified. All this differed sharply from the accepted perception of the way American Jewry and its leadership functioned in the context of the Holocaust in Europe.57 By way of contrast, in the future, most American Jews would follow ethnic voting patterns, whose unique features, however, were linked to these voters’ varying world views as Americans.58 The success of Silver in activating the Jewish vote in the late 1940s led to recognition of how salient the issue was in the complex relationship involving the State of Israel, American Jewry, and the government of the United States even after 1948. From that time on, Israel was not the crucial issue for the great majority of American Jews in deciding how to vote. The question thus arises, Why does the Jewish vote continue to constitute a central presence in the public debate, even when most Jews in the United States no longer follow ethnic voting patterns as they did in the 1940s?

notes 1. This article cannot adequately describe ethnic activity in general and Jewish activity in particular in American politics. Regarding Jewish activity on behalf of Roosevelt and the Democratic Party, see Henry L. Feingold, “From Equality to Liberty: The Changing Political Culture of American Jews,” in The Americanization of the Jews, ed. Robert M. Seltzer and Norman J. Cohen (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 114–­116. On American ethnic patterns, see Thomas Sowell, The Economics and Politics of Race (New York: Morrow / Harper Collins, 1983); Angus Campbell, The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960); and Ira N. Forman, “The Politics of Minority Consciousness: The Historical Voting Behavior of American Jews,” in Jews in American Politics, ed. Sandy L. Maisel (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 141–­160. See also Ioanna Latiotou, Transatlantic Subject: Acts of Migration

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and Cultures of Transnationalism between Greece and America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); and Mohammed E. Ahrari, ed., Ethnic Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Greenwood, 1987). 2. Abba Hillel Silver saw that his own sons learned Hebrew. For example, he sent his son Raphael a parcel of Hebrew books at camp and required him to continue Hebrew lessons during the summer holiday. See Silver’s letter to Raphael, July 6, 1944, microfilm, 3/219, Abba Hillel Silver Archive (SA), Cleveland, Ohio. The microfilm edition is of MS 4787 Abba Hillel Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS), Cleveland, Ohio. 3. See Michael Meir, Between Tradition and Progress: History of the Reform Movement in Judaism [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1989), 184–­374. Raphael Silver asserted his father chose the Reform rabbinate as the most suitable arena for realizing his leadership ambitions. Alon Gal and Ofer Schiff, “Abba Hillel Silver: Judaism and Zionism (A Document)” [in Hebrew], Iyyunim 8 (1998): 689. 4. Silver’s early interest in Jewish political behavior is evident from his doctoral thesis on the history of the messianic idea. Silver maintained that political messianism found its most potent expression in Herzl. His thesis became A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel (New York: Macmillan, 1927). 5. Interview with Virginia Silver, December 9, 1981, SA 7/21. 6. Marcus’s letter to the family, November 29, 1963, Central Jewish Archives (CJA) Cincinnati, MSS COL-­2104/4. 7. Marcus’s letter to the family, November 29, 1963, Central Jewish Archives (CJA) Cincinnati, MSS COL-­2104/4. 8. On Silver’s power in American Zionism, see Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 307–­308. 9. The survey is from Marc Lee Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1989). See also the articles in “Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism,” special issue, Journal of Israel History 17, no. 1 (1996). Much biographical detail may be found in A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Papers of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society, 1994). A recent study on Silver is Ofer Schiff ’s The Downfall of Abba Hillel Silver and the Foundation of Israel (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2014). 10. Melvin I. Urofsky, A Voice That Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen Wise (New York: SUNY Press, 1982) and D. R. Shapiro, A Reform Rabbi in the Progressive Era: The Early Career of Stephen Wise (New York: Garland, 1988). 11. Ben-­Gurion’s report to the Jewish Agency Executive, February 16, 1941, Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem (CZA), S-100. 12. Ben-­Gurion’s report to the Jewish Agency Executive, February 16, 1941, CZA, S-100. 13. Ben-­Gurion’s report to the Jewish Agency Executive, February 16, 1941, CZA, S-100. An examination of the future prime minister’s proposal shows that his plans did not emerge in a vacuum; they were to be understood against the background of changes in American Jewry in general and among Zionists in particular. Ben-­Gurion’s nineteen-­day visit to the United States in 1939 preceded a much longer one between October 1940 and January 1941. Ten months later, he returned for another long period, from November 1941 to mid-­September 1942. Moreover, he had been in the United States during World War I, a formative period in his life and political development. For an extensive discussion of Ben-­Gurion in the United States and its place in his plans, see Zohar Segev, From Ethnic Politicians to National Leaders [in Hebrew] (Beer Sheva: Ben-­Gurion University Press, 2007), 1–­6. 14. See Ariel L. Feldstein, Ben-­Gurion, Zionism, and American Jewry (London: Routledge, 2006); David H. Shapiro, From Philanthropy to Activism: The Political Transformation of American Zionism in the Holocaust Years, 1933–­1945 (Oxford: Pergamon, 1994); M. I. Urofsky, We Are One (New York: Anchor, 1978); Z. Ganin, Truman, American Jewry, and Israel, 1945–­1948 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979); Joseph Heller, The Birth of Israel, 1945–­1949: Ben-­Gurion and His Critics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000),

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22–­49. On Roosevelt’s opposition to the establishment of a Jewish state within postwar agreements, see H. Parzan, “The Roosevelt Palestine Policy, 1943–­1945,” American Jewish Archives Journal 1 (1974): 31–­65. On Truman’s similar policy, see M. J. Cohen, Truman and Israel (Oxford: University of California Press, 1990). 15. See, e.g., Henry L. Feingold, A Time for Searching, Entering the Mainstream, 1920–­1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). In 1933, some twenty-­four thousand American women belonged to Hadassah, the number rising in 1939 to sixty-­six thousand. The ZOA had nine thousand members in 1933 and forty-­three thousand in 1939. See Samuel Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1961), 20–­28, 189–­217, 327. 16. On American Jews’ choice of Zionism as the main component of their ethnic identity in the context of the Holocaust, see Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 263–­264. 17. Leon I. Feuer, “The Birth of the Jewish Lobby, a Reminiscence,” American Jewish Archives Journal 2 (1976): 109–­110. A legal distinction must be made between the activity Feuer describes and that of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) since Israel’s establishment. AIPAC’s status was established as the representative of a foreign state. As noted in previous chapters, American Zionists sought to prevent such a step. On AIPAC, see Urofsky, “Zionism and American Politics,” in The Americanization of the Jews, ed. Robert M. Seltzer and Norman J. Cohen (New York: New York University Press, 1965), 160–­161. Feuer’s view is compatible with the conclusions of this chapter. David Howard Goldberg, in Foreign Policy and Ethnic Interest Groups (New York: Greenwood, 1990), 1–­13, maintains that ethnic pressure groups are an integral part of American politics and have influenced American foreign policy. 18. On Wise’s continuous support of Roosevelt, see Wise’s letter to Frankfurter, January 28, 1928, CZA A-139/243. Writing to David Niles, political assistant to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and in charge of minority affairs in the Roosevelt administration, Wise attacked Roosevelt’s opponents in his third-­term election and announced that he would campaign for the president. Wise to Niles, December 22, 1939, and January 9, 1940, CZA A-139/243A. Silver maintained close political ties with leading Republicans, among them Senator Robert Taft. See, e.g., letters in SA 1/150: Taft-­Silver September 23, 1944; Silver-­Taft October 27, 1944; Silver-­Taft March  26, 1945. 19. Zionist leaders then and later preferred to hide the existence of a Jewish lobby as much as possible to avoid anti-­Semitism and accusations of dual loyalty. See Edward Tivnan, The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 135–­136. 20. See also letters of Chaim Weizmann, Zionist Organization president, to Wise April 29, 1942, CZA Z-5/1216; and of Dov Joseph, a director of the Jewish Agency and future Israeli cabinet minister, February 4, 1945, CZA S-100. 21. Wise to Frankfurter, January 28, 1936, CZA A-243/139. Another letter to Frankfurter, February 8, 1937, CZA 243/201, expresses the jurist’s importance as a Jewish leader in New York and addresses Wise’s activity on behalf of the New York Democratic senator Robert Wagner. Frankfurter praised Wise especially for a dinner he gave in Wagner’s honor, noting that although elections would be held only in 1940, Wise’s early activity was timely and important. 22. Open letter from Silver, 1940, CZA A-243/132. 23. Silver, “Thoughts on the Election Campaign and on the Coming Elections,” November 5, 1944, sermon, SA 6/711. Here he also weighed the advantages and disadvantages of the American two-­party system, the blurred distinctions between the two large parties, and the uniquely long existence of American democracy. Despite Silver’s denials of involvement in the election campaign, articles in the Jewish press indicate that Dewey’s pro-­Zionist declaration was given after he had met Silver; see “Dewey Issues Statement after Conference with Rabbi Silver,” Jewish Post, October 20, 1944.

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24. Summary of a meeting with Rosenman in Silver’s diary, October 12, 1943, CZA Z5-­391. 25. Silver to Segal, June 12, 1944, CZA Z-6/2306. 26. Silver to Segal, June 12, 1944, CZA Z-6/2306. 27. Silver to Segal, June 12, 1944, CZA Z-6/2306. In his memoirs, Bloom maintained that he did work to pass the pro-­Zionist resolution. See Sol Bloom, The Autobiography of Sol Bloom (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1948), 269–­297. This recollection differs from the impressions of Leon Feuer, head of the office of the Emergency Committee in Washington, of a meeting in Bloom’s office. There Feuer, Silver, and their associates tried to persuade Bloom to support the pro-­Zionist resolution in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Emergency Committee members presented their political justifications to Bloom, attempting as well to play on his feelings as a Jew after the Holocaust. Feuer notes that these attempts were of no avail, with Bloom asserting he would continue to follow State Department directives opposing the resolution. See Feuer, “The Birth of the Jewish Lobby, a Reminiscence,” American Jewish Archives Journal 2 (1976): 111–­112. 28. Silver to Neumann, 6.17.1944, SA 2/165. 29. Silver to Neumann, 10.27.1944, SA 1/133. 30. Attempts to link Taft with the Zionist movement began in 1939. Benjamin Akzin wrote to Brandeis of meeting Taft, declaring that the Republican senator would play an important role in American politics. According to Akzin, Taft showed interest in the Palestine question. Akzin asked Brandeis to meet with Taft, who did not believe that all American Jews supported the establishment of a Jewish state, to alter this view. See Akzin’s letter to Brandeis, January 5, 1939, American Jewish Historical Society Archive, P-501/1. 31. See James T. Patterson, Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1972); Caroline Thomas Harnsberger, A Man of Courage: Robert A. Taft (New York: Wilcox and Follett, 1952); Russell Kirk and James McClellan, The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft (New York: Fleet, 1967); Robert Taft, A Foreign Policy for Americans (New York: Doubleday, 1951); Phyllis Robbins, Robert A. Taft: Boy and Man (Cambridge: Dresser, Chapman, and Grimes, 1963); T. V. Smith and Robert Taft, Foundations of Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939); William S. White, The Taft Story (New York: Harper, 1954); Clarence E. Wunderlin, ed., The Papers of Robert A. Taft (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997). 32. Walter maintained close and continuous contact with Taft ever since he helped run Taft’s first election campaign for the Senate in 1938. See Wunderlin, Papers of Taft, 599–­600. 33. Paul Walter to Daniel Silver, 27 January 1989, SA, 154/7. 34. Paul Walter to Daniel Silver. 35. Paul Walter to Daniel Silver. The introduction to the collection of Taft’s letters notes his exceptional difficulties in the 1944 election. See Wunderlin, Papers of Taft, 10–­11. 36. Wunderlin, Papers of Taft, 10–­11. 37. Wunderlin, 10–­11. 38. Wunderlin, 10–­11. 39. Eliezer Silver, A Man of the Law and of Action: A Biography from His Diaries and Writings [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1948), 44–­48. 40. Taft to Silver, September 23, 1944, SA 150/1. 41. Silver to Taft, October 27, 1944, SA 150/1. 42. Silver to Taft, March 26, 1945, SA 150/1. 43. Abraham Goodman to Silver from Miami, August 3, 1944, SA 253/3. 44. Silver to Taft, July 1, 1945, SA 244/3. 45. In all these cases, Silver and Taft had the same attitude but from completely different approaches. See Zohar Segev, “The Jewish State in Abba Hillel Silver’s Overall World View,” American Jewish Archives Journal 56 (2004): 94–­127. 46. The political connection between Taft and Silver was not unique. Wise had similar patterns of political collaboration with Robert F. Wagner, a Democratic U.S. senator from New York, and Sol Bloom, a Democratic U.S. representative from New York. Wise supported

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Bloom in the 1940 and 1944 elections. For example, Wise wrote to Bloom a support letter that he alluded to publishing. Wise to Bloom, August 30, 1940, American Jewish Historical Archives, P-134/64. Wise supported Wagner in 1944 to try to assure his election. Wise to Frankfurter, October 16, 1944, CZA, A-243/137. 47. Zohar Segev, “American Zionists’ Place in Israel after the Establishment of the State: Involved Partners or Outside Supporters,” American Jewish History 93, no. 3 (2007): 277–­302. 48. Segev, “Silver’s Overall World View.” 49. Zohar Segev, The World Jewish Congress during the Holocaust: Between Activism and Restrain (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 208–­209. 50. Draft of Silver’s autobiography, 1963, SA 7/3. On Roosevelt’s policy in the Zionist context, see Selig Adler, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and Zionism—­the Wartime Record,” Judaism, 21 (1972): 265–­276. Silver’s success in influencing the government despite his being a persona non grata in the White House is clearly expressed in his efforts to convince Truman and his administration to support the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and later to recognize the State of Israel. See Ian J. Bickerton, “President Truman’s Recognition of Israel,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly (1968), 173–­240; William F. Levantrosser, ed., The Man from Independence (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 37–­65. 51. Dewey’s relationship with Silver is outside the scope of this chapter. Though Silver appears to have supported Dewey in election campaigns, internal Zionist memos and correspondence between Dewey’s people and Silver contradict this conclusion. For example, writing to Silver, Dan Elfang declared that his support of Dewey before the 1948 elections was merely for the sake of appearances. See Elfang’s letter to Silver in 1947, CZA A-123/327. 52. See Silver’s sermons, “Thoughts on the Election Campaign and the Elections of 1944,” November 5, 1944, AS 6/711, and his sermons on Roosevelt’s third term, 3.31.40, AS 6/608. 53. Silver was able to center his activities on Zionist interests because of his knowledge of the workings of American politics, specifically through his relationship with Robert Taft. Because Silver’s connections were with the senator, he could oppose the establishments of both parties without fear of harming his contact. Indeed, Taft constituted an opposition even in his own party. 54. Weizmann defined the United States as the most important arena for the Zionist movement. See his letter to Wise, 7.6.1942, in Chaim Weizmann, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann (Jerusalem: Transaction, 1975), 20:325 (hereafter Weizmann Papers). 55. See Weizmann’s letter to Silver, November 7, 1944, Weizmann Archive 3-­2530, and his letter to Wise, December 21, 1944, Weizmann Papers, 21:258–­259. On Weizmann’s view of the Zionist movement’s policy in the United States, see his letter to Meir Weisgal, March 20, 1947, Weizmann Papers, 21:283–­286. Based on trustworthy information from the United States, Weizmann stressed a similar view in a letter to Eliezer Kaplan. Weizmann Papers, 21:353–­354. For an outstanding study of Zionist political activity, see Jehuda Reinharz, Zionism and the Great Powers: A Century of Foreign Policy (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1994). 56. On Silver’s leadership style, see, e.g., James G. Heller, “More on Abba Hillel Silver,” American Jewish Archives Journal 20, no. 2 (1968): 128; and David Howard Goldberg, Foreign Policy and Ethnic Interest Groups (New York: Greenwood, 1990), 1–­13. 57. American Jewish activity on behalf of Soviet Jewry is an outstanding example of ethnic political activity without mobilizing the Jewish vote. See Henry L. Feingold, “Silent No More”: Saving the Jews of Russia, the American Jewish Effort, 1967–­1989 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2007). Peter Y. Medding wrote about the new model of Jewish politics, which was acting out of power within the American system, in “Segmented Ethnicity and the New Jewish Politics,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 3 (1987): 26–­48. On American Jewish involvement in the human rights movement, see Hasia R. Diner, The Jews of the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 265–­274. 58. For a comprehensive discussion regarding the Jewish vote and Jewish political attitudes that have led Jews to vote as a bloc for the Democratic Party since World War II, see Stephen J. Whitfield, “The Jewish Vote,” Virginia Quarterly Review 62, no. 1 (1986): 1–­20.

chapter 6

Q

“SHE WILL BE THE MARY POPPINS WE HAVE BEEN SEARCHING FOR” the rise of feminism and organizational change in the cleveland section of the national council of jewish women Mary McCune

Early in 1975, Peggy Wasserstrom, executive vice president for the Cleveland Section of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW, or “Council”), wrote to Yonina Langer, Councilettes coordinator in the NCJW’s national office, to express her dismay that the youth branch, Councilettes, had not held a meeting in over three months. Recently a member, Carole Adelstein had volunteered to serve as the group’s adviser, and Wasserstrom hoped that Adelstein, a former leader of the young adult group Council Ms., would be able to revitalize the Councilettes, acting as “the Mary Poppins we have been searching for.”1 In the post–­World War II period, Cleveland’s Council struggled with the challenges many women’s organizations faced: How to maintain robust membership during rapid social change, particularly in the lives of women? How was a group founded in 1894 to attract young members in an era of expanding opportunities? What alterations in policy and programming were necessary to recruit young women to Council Ms. and Councilettes and eventually to graduate them into the ranks of “senior” Council? The manner in which Council responded and adapted to these changes sheds light on how many women’s organizations, long committed to promoting women’s civic participation, came to embrace feminist ideals, if not always the feminist label itself. Detailing how Council both reacted to and aided the rise 122

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of feminism contributes to recent scholarship exploring the multidimensional origins of the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. The typical tale told regarding the rise of that movement often relies on a metaphor of waves, associating the “first wave” with the long campaign for women’s suffrage and the “second wave” arising after Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963. This was followed by the emergence of a more radical women’s liberation movement stemming from civil rights and student protest movements. Between these waves was a period of “doldrums,” a quiescence of women’s activism. More recent scholarship, though, has argued against the idea of the “doldrums” and has challenged the utility of the “waves” metaphor. Considering the myriad ways that twentieth-­century women fought for their rights, historians now present a more complex and multidimensional origin story of the feminist movement, finding important connecting threads in the labor movement, the peace and antinuclear movements, and the movement for African American civil rights, among others.2 These historians argue that the traditional use of the “waves” metaphor is too simplistic to capture the rich and varied ways in which women fought for equality. Recent scholarship also urges us to look away from the coasts, and especially from cities like New York, to ascertain more precisely what women throughout the nation were doing and how they too were creating the feminist movement, not merely following the lead of their enlightened, radicalized, and urban sisters. Stephanie Gilmore asserts that grassroots activists in smaller cities “created change in their own communities, responding not just to national calls to action but to immediate and local issues that demanded feminists’ attention. Their work certainly falls within the temporal boundaries of a national movement known as the ‘second wave.’ But feminists in and beyond [the National Organization of Women] did more than surf a wave of feminist activism; they created groundswells from which this social movement emerged, developed, and sustained itself.”3 Similarly, we need to consider how women who were committed to women’s rights but not avowed feminists nevertheless contributed to the movement and the promotion of equality for women. Susan M. Hartmann, writing on women’s rights activism in nonfeminist-identified organizations and institutions, argues that “the actions of individuals and groups outside of organized feminism help explain how a sea change in attitudes, practices, and policies regarding gender roles could occur throughout the social and structural fabric of the United States, despite the relatively limited personnel and resources of the formal organizations of the women’s movement. Moreover, the cultivation of feminism in major American institutions helps explain its continued power at a time when other social movements of the 1960s have languished.”4 Susan Lynn, reassessing the idea of the 1950s as a conservative era when women were single-­mindedly focused on domesticity, contends that one reason for the tenacity of this stereotype is because until recently, historians overlooked the high level of civic

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Figure 6.1  Councilettes, meeting on East 105th Street, 1966. (WRHS)

and political activism of women in the period. Older portrayals of women’s lives in the 1950s and early 1960s were based on “the assumption that marriage and family precluded women’s involvement with social and political activities. For many women who came of age after World War II, early marriage and close spacing of children tended to leave more years free from childrearing responsibilities than for any previous generation.”5 Finally, as Joanne Meyerowitz points out in her introduction to the edited collection Not June Cleaver, “Despite the domestic ideal, women [in the 1950s] were recognized, and recognized themselves, as legitimate public actors.”6 This very much coincides with trends occurring in Council at the level of the Cleveland Section, in Council sections elsewhere in the nation, and at the national level.7 Council women were immersed in civic activism and politics. The group was among those liberal organizations (like those examined by Hartmann) to involve itself in promoting women’s rights and, by the 1970s, working in coalition with self-­identified feminist groups. Council member Laurie Sokol, commenting on her own and her peers’ work in the 1950s, recalled that “we required gratification beyond the nursery. . . . We were professional women. . . . We wanted to serve our communities, local, state, national and international.” Even when devoted

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to homemaking and raising children, such women remained active in organizational work. Sokol noted, “My whole life used to be the organizations.”8 Her words reflect the postwar reality of many women in the Cleveland Section. They were not merely reactive to the rise of feminism, hoping a Ms. Mary Poppins could revitalize a youth group and attract more members; rather, they also grappled with feminist ideals themselves, seeking ways to incorporate these ideals into their own long-­standing projects and traditions. Exploring the ways in which these Council “seniors” experimented with subgroups aimed at attracting professional, young adult, and teenage women allows us not only to see how feminism came to the Cleveland Council but also to uncover how Council itself is a vital part of the history of the modern women’s rights movement. By examining how Council responded to community needs and how it promoted women’s public engagement, we are better able to understand how traditional women’s organizations advanced a women’s rights agenda during the so-­called doldrums years. We can also recognize how organizations like Council contributed to the lasting success of the modern feminist movement, even if many of its members did not consider themselves to be “feminists.”9 Founded in 1893, the NCJW was part of a larger trend in the club movement. Initially devoted to promoting Jewish identity among women, the group soon became engaged in philanthropic work, particularly with immigrant populations. The NCJW exemplified, as historian Faith Rogow calls it, a brand of “domestic feminism,” which she associates with the club movement, whose members “believed in a modest form of women’s rights, including woman suffrage, but they justified those rights not as the logical outcome of equal citizenry but as necessary to carry our [sic] their traditional duties as wives and mothers.”10 Like other Progressive Era women’s groups, NCJW supported protective labor legislation for women and opposed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) because the group, like others, feared for the future of such legislation should the ERA be ratified. By the 1970s, however, the NCJW was a much more overtly political organization, actively supporting the civil rights movement, urban literacy programs, promotion of day care for the children of working mothers, and more. The organization, along with such groups as the National Council of Negro Women and the National Council of Catholic Women, was involved in the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, spearheaded by President John F. Kennedy and chaired by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Like other women’s groups formerly opposed to the ERA, the NCJW reevaluated its position in the early 1970s and became a firm supporter of the amendment as well as other feminist issues such as the right to abortion and access to birth control. Yet writing in 1993, Rogow asserted that the group did not wholeheartedly embrace the feminist moniker, stating, “Despite Council’s feminist veneer, it did not bill itself as a feminist organization, and Council women still hesitate to label themselves feminists” and adding that feminist identification varied by section and individuals.11

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The Cleveland Section of the NCJW is one of the oldest in the organization, founded in 1894 and officially linked to the national council in 1896. The Cleveland branch’s development closely resembles that of the national organization. Early projects focused on aiding Eastern European Jewish immigrants by providing such social services as English and citizenship classes, day care, and summer camps. The group dramatically expanded its services to include vocational training, the “Ship-­A-­Box” program aiding Jews overseas in the 1940s, Jewish Big Sisters, and various services for the elderly and developmentally disabled. These activities were funded by dues, proceeds from the section-­run thrift store, and by the 1970s, “Designer Dress Days,” a popular fundraiser. The Cleveland Section was one of the organization’s largest, with 2,600 members in 1944.12 Following the war, the section rededicated itself to pursuing work that would benefit both the Cleveland Jewish community and the city at large. Assessing the impact of the creation of the State of Israel on Jews around the world and specifically in Cleveland, leaders maintained that the future then offers new horizons for service. The Council of Jewish Women with even greater determination must improve its present program, add new services for unmet human needs in the field of social welfare, reach out to give more people aid and comfort, institute a more enriched program to preserve the cultural and spiritual heritage of the Jewish people, and must work to develop thinking Jewish women, Jewish women who are secure, prideful, understanding and at peace with themselves. Above all, Council of Jewish Women must join with others to work even more militantly for the promotion and the encouragement and the respect of human rights and the fundamental freedoms for all.13

This sentiment sums up the direction the section was moving in following World War II. In the postwar period, the section crafted its programs with the aim of addressing the needs of Jews and their neighbors in the city. Both the section and national organizations were involved in a wide range of progressive initiatives and worked in coalition with similarly minded organizations. Susan Lynn found that the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) both shifted from a focus on class-­based economic issues to the movement for achieving racial justice. The Cleveland Section of the NCJW made a similar shift away from settlement-house work focused on the immigrant population (although still committed to aiding Jewish immigrants) to working quite closely with other organizations to address the causes of poverty in inner-­city neighborhoods, among other issues.14 Leaders also found themselves having to consider, however, how to maintain membership in a rapidly changing world for women. As more women entered and remained in the workforce and perhaps eschewed older models of middle-­class

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female philanthropy, the group often struggled to find committed volunteers for its many endeavors throughout the city. Reports about membership figures during this period reveal both continued membership growth and a certain fear about the decline in committed volunteers. In 1950 President Isabelle G. Brown proudly announced to members that the section had won the national NCJW’s “coveted engraved gavel” for the largest new membership enrollment that year, and she noted that this increase constituted “the largest new member enrollment of any Section in Council history. . . .”15 In 1951 the group claimed over 4,200 members and yet during the next decade, section leaders bemoaned the relative drop in members that occurred year after year.16 For example, in 1958 the vice president for membership reported that Cleveland Section was losing between three hundred and five hundred members annually and that death or relocation could account for only about one hundred of those members. This trend continued into the early 1960s, with membership hovering between 4,000 and 4,500 members.17 Various proposals were floated to address the problem, including more direct outreach to Jewish women new to Cleveland, phoning members who had not paid their dues, and especially finding ways to convey the mission and purpose of the organization to local women. A November 1962 discussion hints at the impact of women’s changing lives and the need, therefore, to rethink elements of organizational focus and activity. One board member felt that “our program, while educational, is not glamorous. We need something unusual or glamorous to help us get publicity and get new members as well as retaining our old members.” While others disagreed with her, this assessment of the section’s program suggests that women—­particularly younger women—­were seeking different programming and novel ways to contribute to the community.18 Indeed, leaders at both section and national levels expressed much concern regarding the growing difficulty in recruiting active volunteers. This was especially the case in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, a time of great social and political upheaval both in Cleveland and the nation. In 1968 national NCJW president Jo Weiner addressed the importance of volunteering in language reminiscent of the 1950s. She stated that “Council is my magic carpet. I pass by home just long enough to stock up the freezer and tack up a farewell note to the family. You know, I sometimes suspect that our husbands are the noblest volunteers at Council.” If active members could educate their very own families about the importance of female voluntarism, she felt they could likewise motivate women in their communities to volunteer for the group.19 But other materials at the Cleveland level indicate that the problem with volunteer staffing of programs involved more than simply convincing housewives that their energy was needed outside the home. In a 1969–­1970 report, Marianne Gogolick, vice president of community services, pointed to dynamics in the city as well as in women’s personal lives: “There has been a severe drop of volunteers who want to work in the inner city. . . . The picture is changing—­women are getting jobs, going back

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to school or just do not want to commit themselves to a structured time. Spot jobs can always be filled but our on-­going projects for the most part could use many more people.”20 Others echoed her words. Members of the Program Survey Committee reported such difficulty in finding volunteers that it needed to turn to “the community at large”—­Jewish nonmembers—­to help with some of the more ambitious programs. The committee recommended that the section conduct a study to assess the problem and suggest solutions. Committee members also felt the section needed “a campaign to help women better understand the rewards of volunteering—­needs glamorizing. [The Committee] also suggested to have a day care center for children of volunteers.”21 The suggestion of opening a day care center points to one major hurdle that young mothers faced in participating in volunteer activities. And yet the use of the word glamor in the section’s records hints at the additional possibility that younger women and working women perceived the organization as outdated, based on older models of philanthropy and likely not one to meet their needs or interests. Others similarly recognized that something other than a lack of babysitters accounted for the relative lack of volunteers. In that same year, Ernestine Greenberger, chair of the Future Planning Committee, maintained that “changing family patterns and the emergence of a ‘Women’s Lib’ psychology make it doubtful that young women in the future will continue to seek personal fulfillment in volunteering, or that they will have the leisure to do so.”22 Even when reaching out to women who were not working, section leaders recognized that the feminist movement influenced how women thought about themselves. Some women found that “homemaking (as it is now politely referred to)” was unsatisfying; volunteering, the article assured them, would be the solution to their ennui: “Finding out after many years of stagnation and diapering that you are still able to turn out a wicked news article, that you are one heck of a good organizer for a gala function outside your own home, that your bookkeeping would astound any CPA, that the field of continuing education through doing is yours for the taking,—­well what better way to establish self-­confidence, self-­assurance, the stuff that all this new woman stuff is all about?”23 Despite, or perhaps because, Greenberger questioned whether the “‘Women’s Lib’ psychology” would lead to difficulties in recruiting active members, the Cleveland Section began to incorporate feminist topics into its programming in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1969 the section hosted a three-­part series entitled “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. And Where Are You Going?” At least one of the speakers, ironically enough, was a man; this probably did not do much to sell the program to younger feminist women. Dr. Douglas Bond of the department of psychiatry at University Hospitals was the first speaker. The planning committee told him they wanted him to discuss the “position of women in our country”; specifically, they were interested in his thoughts about questions such as “Does she have a more clear-­cut concept of her place in the community, in her home,

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Figure 6.2  Promoting the Mt. Pleasant Day Care Center, a collaborative project of the Cleveland Section, NCJW. Standing left, Mrs. Thomas Cristal (Sue Garson), c. 1969.

as a wife, as a mother, as a person in business or profession? Or is she fearful, uncertain of her abilities, or goals toward which to direct her activities? Is she becoming more competitive with men?” The audience, they told him, would be made up of women ranging from twenty-­five to sixty-­five years of age. The program organizers requested that he address the challenges women faced at different developmental stages in life.24 After his talk, one evaluator wrote to the board that the program, entitled “Women—­Pampered Darlings or Dedicated Doers,”

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did not adhere to the agreed-­upon guidelines and had focused instead on issues related to Vietnam War protests. While this evaluator did not reveal what Bond said about antiwar protests (or about “pampered darlings” and “dedicated doers” for that matter), she did observe that attendees had varying reactions to the program based on their age. The regular attendees, those fifty and older, enjoyed the program, but the evaluator stated that “some of the younger ladies new to our education were not so enchanted.”25 Reactions to subsequent programming in the series continued to break down along generational lines. The next set of speakers focused on their personal lives, poetry and writing, and the joys of volunteerism. The final speaker was Janet Rosenberg, author of Breakfast—­Two Jars of Paste: A Training Manual for Workers in the Human Services, who gave a talk entitled “The New Breed—­Women Doing Their Own Thing.” Attendance at this program was lower than at others, and the evaluator theorized that younger women skipped it because they were “presumably looking for a more in depth speaker and had found the first two meetings lighter in feelings.” On the other hand, some of the older women did not care for Rosenberg’s talk, which was “excellent and intellectual . . . to the displeasure of some of our more seasoned staunch supporters.” The evaluator felt that the series had been a success, yet was puzzled by “women!”: “The varied ages and types we attracted to the varied speakers—­and the varied reactions to the varied presentations—­Women are a perplexing problem!”26 Perplexing as women may be, it seemed clear from her report that younger women were seeking out different types of educational programming—­in tone, if not content—­than the section had offered in recent years. In 1970 section leaders invited another man, Eugene Maeroff, associate editor and columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, to present on “The Women of Tomorrow.” They asked him to share his thoughts regarding how women viewed themselves in the present and how this might change in the future. Some “provocative” questions they asked him to consider included why women, although the majority of the population, were seriously underrepresented in politics; did Maeroff believe that this was a result of women being “psychologically” unprepared for leadership positions? If so, did he think they ever would be psychologically prepared? What did he think about the drafting of women? Was day care “optimum for early child care whether or not there is an economic need for women to go to work?” And finally, did he believe parents needed to “condone the changing morality to help bridge the generation gap?”27 Maeroff seems to have adhered to the suggested guidelines more than Bond had, giving a talk focused on women’s rights and continued discrimination. He felt that women would be increasingly involved in politics, and he thought they should focus their efforts where they were “peculiarly involved,” in areas such as peace, the legalization of abortion, and the protection of the environment. He also noted that women continued to face “brutal discrimination” in the workforce and discussed the ways

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in which newspapers were changing, such as by allowing women to work outside the women’s department.28 This was the first of a two-­part series held in early 1971 entitled “What’s with Women?” The second speaker, Dr. Daniel Deutschman, a psychiatrist affiliated with Mt. Sinai and University Hospitals, gave a talk on “The Several Faces of Eve,” in which he explored the last fifty years of women’s history and considered “the effect of the past upon women today.”29 This presentation focused on changing ideas about marriage, the role of the suffrage movement, and the impact of women joining the paid labor force in large numbers during World War II—­all of which, Deutschman believed, had led to women’s greater independence. “The net effect,” he argued, “is that women now have more choices, such as work and divorce, but older women have lost out.”30 While there are no existing evaluations of these two programs, they were both widely advertised in section and Jewish community publications and thus are likely to have been well attended. The topics that the speakers were asked to address reveal a heightened interest in explicitly feminist-­oriented programming (albeit delivered by male experts) on the part of the section leadership, plausibly motivated by the developing interests of the membership itself. While the section invited male experts to discuss women’s problems, members themselves were actively supporting issues related to feminism. Some of this was encouraged by the national organization, which adopted the theme of “Energy for New Era—­Woman Power” from 1971 to 1973.31 On the state level, the Ohio NCJW sections articulated their 1972 legislative priorities as the Equal Rights Amendment, legalization of abortion, childcare provision, and juvenile justice system reform. The Columbus section was one of many groups that came together to form the Ohio Status of Women Commission, Inc., aimed at maintaining “pressure on state government to formulate policies on women’s issues, particularly economic issues.”32 The Cleveland Section aided a local rape crisis center and partnered with the local National Organization of Women to support the “Right to Choose.”33 Advocating the legalization of abortion was a major item on the section’s legislative agenda throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Social Action Committee supported legislative attempts to “liberalize” existing abortion laws and sponsored programming that featured both “pro-­abortion” and right-­to-­life speakers from the community.34 In 1975, two years after Roe v. Wade, the Cleveland Section’s Bulletin printed a call to action from the national organization alerting members to a proposed right to life amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ban abortion.35 In 1975 the Cleveland Section joined other local groups in commemorating the United Nations’ Year of the Woman. The national NCJW participated with a host of women’s organizations in the crafting of a National Women’s Agenda (NWA) to help guide the efforts of feminist activists for that year as well as to (ideally) influence proposed governmental initiatives. The NWA was spearheaded by the Women’s Action Alliance, an

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organization founded by Gloria Steinem and Brenda Feigen Fasteau in which the NCJW also participated.36 In announcing Cleveland’s participation in International Women’s Year, President Peggy Wasserstrom urged members to remember that “Jewish women . . . have a 5000 year history of celebration. For it was the Hebrew culture that was the first to hold women in a state other than that of chattel. Our tradition is not static but has allowed women to grow and develop in society.” While encouraging women to join in Cleveland’s celebration of International Women’s Year, she reminded them to “celebrate, too, Council this year. Choose your area of interest and join me in the cycle of personal reward through service to others.”37 Attentive to the changing times and deeply committed to advancing women’s rights both in the Jewish community and in the nation, leaders were also keenly aware of their need to develop future leaders, in addition to volunteers, if they were to carry these goals forward. In her 1973 president’s report, Barbara Mandel concluded that “to maintain our present level of excellence, we must continue to find and involve the most able women in our community. This involvement will lead to understanding and understanding will lead to commitment.”38 Yet the same problems encountered in attracting new members and active volunteers also bedeviled attempts to groom new leaders. A letter writer in the early 1980s urged the section to consider holding board meetings at varying times to allow more women to participate. For many years, both the national NCJW and the Cleveland Section had been experimenting with different subgroups to offer flexibility to women of different ages and at different stages in their lives. This was particularly the case in Cleveland in the 1960s and 1970s, when the section was seeking to attract younger members. The first sub-­or auxiliary group created in the Cleveland Section was an “evening branch” founded in 1946 to meet the needs of business and professional women who, like the letter writer in 1980, were unable to attend daytime meetings and programming. This group numbered 120 in 1949. The group maintained close relations with the “senior Council” through a dedicated liaison. Evening branch women engaged in a variety of activities over the years including the Ship-­A-­Box program with Israel, evening educational programming, and monthly parties welcoming “new Americans.”39 By 1969 the group had approximately 220 business and professional women as members, yet it voted to disband a decade later, asserting members would continue their work in the section itself.40 Most of the evening branch members were retired and able to participate in daytime programs.41 The membership at that point appeared to be quite elderly and many could no longer drive. Highlighting the average age of group members, one program featured a Plain Dealer photographer who brought photos of life in early twentieth-­century Cleveland. Ruth W. Weinstein, chair of the evening branch, stated that “this proved to be very nostalgic to many of our members who had lived through that era and could relate and recall many of the

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scenes.” Weinstein recognized that “evening meetings are not popular with our members and younger women are seeking different diversions than we are able to offer.”42 The section leadership began to give attention to the call of younger women for “different diversions.” In March 1969, the Program Survey Committee discussed the fact that young married women were looking for specific projects they might engage in, “something that would interest a new young area for Council.” The committee deliberated and agreed that these women should establish a program themselves and that perhaps this group would turn into something like an evening branch or the youth group Councilettes.43 As early as July, however, the younger women already seemed to be adrift, and the group lacked a central purpose. Some of the women did not want to work with children, since they either had their own or worked as schoolteachers; others felt the desire to do more than they were currently engaged in: decorating cigar boxes. After establishing a liaison with senior Council, the group, named Jr. Mrs., determined that they would serve mostly as a social and educational group, meeting once a month, since many of the members were working women.44 Clearly, the evening branch, then, was considered to be a distinct endeavor, serving an older constituency and, as noted, hosting programs not of interest to younger women. Jr. Mrs. continued to struggle to find an identity, and some senior Council leaders expressed concern that the meetings did not include enough “Council content.”45 By 1971 the group had over sixty members, all under age thirty, and engaged in such activities as fundraisers for Ship-­A-­Box, Tupperware parties, wine tastings, and game nights.46 Appealing to this demographic proved to be difficult. By mid-­1971, Jr. Mrs. was already encountering problems maintaining leadership, with women citing reasons such as being employed or unable to get away from home because they had small children.47 Such difficulties led to the group disbanding at the end of 1973. While time constraints due to work and family played a role, for some it was the lack of seriousness in the group’s projects that turned them away. Their group’s primary activity, other than social events, was Ship-­A-­Box, but as the 1973 Jr. Mrs. annual report pointed out, “interest in this project is minimal as it lacks appeal for our membership and is not of a sustaining nature.”48 Given the limited interest, fostering effective and sustained leadership was a major problem for Jr. Mrs. A 1972 recruitment letter exhorted women to join, asserting that it has been said that Jr. Mrs. is nowhere these days. The members are apathetic and not involved. Some want programs with more depth and others like the social, frothy events. We hear much criticism but get little real assistance in changing things. What has happened to this group? And what is this group but its members? Maybe things would be better if each Jr. Mrs. would look to herself and find something of herself to give to Council and to Jr. Mrs. The

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more minds and bodies the better. To criticize without doing something to enact change is apathetic. That is a sad label for individuals who comprize [sic] a group of women between 18 and 30! Think about it.49

In April 1972, the Jr. Mrs. newsletter urged members to “Try It—­You’ll Like It”: “Let’s rap about what you want to do and know about. . . . This will be real and relevant. . . . There are many new possibilities for Jr. Mrs. that will give us more oomph and involvement.”50 The term relevant appeared several times in Jr. Mrs. Records, indicating that many young women were searching for volunteer opportunities more directly related to social and political issues. Contributing to the group’s problem was the fact that its very name could prove alienating to women who were not, in fact, “Jr. Mrs.” Young, unmarried women may have been reluctant to join a group with such a name. The name also echoed that of the popular pageant Junior Miss, which may have turned away more avowedly feminist potential members. Seeking to address the former problem, in early 1972, the newsletter proclaimed “MRS., MISS OR MS.? It makes no difference. Jr. Mrs. wants young women 18–­30—­students, career girls, housewives—­married or single.”51 By the end of the year, however, members admitted the problematic nature of the name, asserting that “the name Jr. Mrs. is exclusive in itself. There are many unattached young women in this community who might see us as only for young married women. This is false. We need the area college girls, career women and unattached persons.” The members announced that they were soliciting ideas for a new name.52 In 1973 the group disbanded. In their final report, leaders concluded that members wanted “a standing Young Ms. committee to be formed with the purpose of involving Council members under the age of thirty in Section activities directly and be endowed a specific, relevant ongoing project.”53 The new group debuted in November 1973, targeting women aged eighteen to thirty-­five. Explaining why it was formed, the first newsletter stated that the defunct Jr. Mrs. “did not meet the needs of this group. Instead of purely social gatherings, Council Ms. hopes to have Council oriented informative meetings to generate interest and active participation in Council.”54 The group, eschewing the descriptor Junior for a title more clearly linking it to Council, did seem to focus on more serious and topical issues than Jr. Mrs. In September 1974, they hosted a talk on “Sexolution and You,” and in December 1976, the young organization featured a speaker from a local rape crisis center.55 Council Ms. continued throughout the 1970s with a membership of around two-­hundred, and it seemed to balance more effectively the problems faced by its earlier incarnation by offering programming both serious and social in nature.56 It also played a role in reinvigorating the group of teenagers known as Councilettes. Councilettes was initiated by the national NCJW in 1966 as a way to revive the junior council, founded in 1894 to engage young, unmarried women in the

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NCJW. Upon marriage, NCJW juniors were to move into the “senior” organization.57 The revitalized junior group, Councilettes, was also affiliated with specific sections and composed of high school–­aged girls. In 1966 twelve Council sections nationwide sponsored a Councilette group, and the Cleveland Section began organizing its own in November of that year.58 By 1968 the group had 151 members.59 Councilettes, like Council itself, stressed the importance of volunteering and the personal impact working in the community could have. “It is not only what youth can do for the community, but what volunteering does for the teenager,” claimed a recruitment flyer.60 Cleveland Councilettes were involved in many volunteer and social programs, but one of particular note was the “adoption” of Wade Park Elementary School. After the senior Council turned down the girls’ idea of “adopting a poor Cleveland family,” Councilettes, in consultation with their advisers, proposed working with this school, located in the city of Cleveland.61 The girls volunteered in a number of ways, including tutoring, donating books to the library, holding holiday celebrations, and collecting clothing and shoes for students to use in gym class. The location of the school, however, soon proved troublesome for some adults who feared for the safety of the volunteers. In October 1968, the group’s advisory committee “reevaluated [the project] in terms of the location of the school and the safety of the Councilettes. Because of these factors, it was deemed inadvisable to undertake a project which would necessitate Councilettes being in the area after dark.” They also suggested that Councilettes not work in the school building itself but host celebrations and luncheons in Council’s own administrative building.62 Similar fears hampered Councilettes’ volunteer efforts at Antioch Baptist Church (at East Eighty-­Ninth St. and Cedar Avenue), where one of the group’s advisors was threatened by a student early in 1970. The advisory cabinet recommended “that protection is needed. Rev. [Emanuel Sylvestre] Branch [Jr.] will be contacted. [We] feel that our tutors should be alerted to proper behavior in [the] inner city area, what to look out for, how to dress, etc.”63 One member spoke passionately about the importance of the tutoring program for both black and white students even as others suggested moving the program to “another safer area closer to home.”64 These incidents speak to the growing suburbanization of the Jewish community as well as the heightened racial climate of the 1960s. Although motivated by good intentions, parents and others all too often perceived inner-­city African American communities as potentially dangerous sites. Within a few years, Councilettes, like Jr. Mrs., were concerned about declining enrollments. Poor event planning was blamed, as was the lack of a “unifying project to include everybody.”65 Membership drives were announced and topical programming suggested, such as discussions on obstetrics, sex education, social work, and crime. One member even thought inviting “Miss America as a guest speaker . . . might be interesting to our membership.”66 Because younger women might find female-­only organizations less appealing than in the past,

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some members contemplated changing the name of the group from Councilettes to Council Youth in order to get teenage boys involved.67 In 1971 Councilettes did hold their first mixed-­sex program: a Valentine’s Day dance.68 In the same year, though, the group held a panel discussion on “Women’s Lib.”69 Regardless of these efforts, and despite trying to utilize contemporary slang in recruitment material (“Councilettes are a ‘with it’ group of teenagers. . . .”), they continued to see membership decline throughout the early 1970s.70 By January 1972, the group had only thirty members. Members felt that some of the problem, once again, was that they did not have a project that teenagers could “identify with” and specifically mentioned the tutoring program at Antioch Baptist Church, which was no longer running. Their adviser, though, felt that teenagers were quite busy and wondered whether working with the group was a “worthwhile effort.”71 In 1975 Cleveland NCJW section leaders, including Peggy Wasserstrom’s “Mary Poppins,” the former head of Council Ms., sought to revitalize the group and give it a permanent organizational structure, though by 1978 numbers were once again in decline.72 While Jr. Mrs., Council Ms., and Councilettes all struggled with recruiting and maintaining members, they nevertheless proved to be important conduits for grooming future leaders. For example, the biography of one of the section’s 2016 “emerging leaders,” Cyndy Fellenbaum, notes that she got her start in Council with the Councilettes. The work that she did with that group influenced her to pursue a career in special education. Upon retirement, Fellenbaum resumed her active participation in Council, serving as a Cleveland Section board member.73 Her biography also addresses the ways in which women’s personal, familial, and work lives shaped how they engaged with Council—­women were often better able, for example, to dedicate themselves to the group later in their lives. Fellenbaum’s statement that she “has always felt that a woman’s body is her own and that each woman should make her own decisions in that regard” highlights the deep-­seated feminist principles regarding reproductive rights held by the organization and its members, sentiments commonly expressed starting in the mid-­1960s. Throughout its history, the NCJW has been devoted to promoting women’s issues and advancing women’s rights. Evidence suggests that in the early 1970s, young women were often at the vanguard of change, urging that new topics be addressed in Council programming, advocating for “relevant” work, and supporting efforts focused on feminist issues. This does not mean, however, that the section’s senior Council merely followed the lead of their youthful counterparts, altering the group to meet current demand. Rather, those in senior Council too were exploring how Council’s long-­standing commitment to women’s rights coincided with the agenda of the emerging feminist movement. The creation and development of subgroups aimed at young and working women—­and the appearance of explicitly feminist topics in programming and as legislative

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priorities—­occurred at the same time as the rise of the feminist movement. This shows that the Cleveland Section’s leadership, and the NCJW as a whole, was a part of the rapid growth of that movement. Groups like Council, committed from the start to facilitating women’s participation in civic society, served as important links between early twentieth-­century Progressive Era–­activism, the midcentury fight for civil rights and free speech, and the mid-­to late 1970s promotion of avowedly feminist ideals. They contributed vitally to the long-­term success of the women’s rights movement, and as such are an important, if often neglected, part of that movement’s history.

notes 1. Mrs. Philip (Peggy) Wasserstrom to Ms. Yonina Langer, February 17, 1975, box 1, folder 29, MS 4783 National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), Cleveland Section Records, Series 3, Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS), Cleveland, Ohio. 2. See Nancy A. Hewitt, ed., No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010). See also Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); and Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 3. Stephanie Gilmore, Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America (New York: Routledge, 2013), 3. See also Judith Ezekiel, Feminism in the Heartland (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002). 4. Susan M. Hartmann, The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 2. 5. Susan Lynn, “Gender and Progressive Politics: A Bridge to Social Activism of the 1960s,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–­1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 104. 6. Joanne Meyerowitz, “Introduction: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–­1960,” in Not June Cleaver, 9. 7. See Naomi Brodsky, “The First 100 Years of the National Council of Jewish Women,” Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 11, no. 3 (November 1993): 359–­369; and Faith Rogow, Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women, 1893–­1993 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993). 8. Laurie Sokol as quoted in Hasia R. Diner and Beryl Lieff Benderly, Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 372–­373. See also Joyce Antler, The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America (New York: Schocken, 1998); Hasia Diner, A Jewish Feminine Mystique? Jewish Women in Postwar America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press); and Melissa Klapper, Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890–­1940 (New York: New York University Press, 2014). 9. Mira Katzburg-­Yungman argues that the other major Jewish women’s organization of the period, Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, took a separate path. Dedicated to issues related to women and children, Hadassah shifted focus in the postwar period. She asserts that “Hadassah, then, is not a feminist organization aimed at the

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betterment of women, but, both ideologically and practically, an organization that brings women together for Zionist activity,” in Hadassah: American Women Zionists and the Rebirth of Israel (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012). June Sochen found that women volunteering in male-­led Jewish organizations embraced the feminist message more directly (281). See June Sochen, “Jewish Women as Volunteer Activists,” American Jewish History 70, no. 1 (September 1980): 23–­34. For feminism’s impact on Judaism, see Diner and Lieff Benderly, Her Works Praise Her, 399–­427. On differences in the activism of NCJW and Hadassah in an earlier period, see Mary McCune, “The Whole Wide World, without Limits”: International Relief, Gender Politics, and American Jewish Women, 1893–­1930 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005). 10. Faith Rogow, “National Council of Jewish Women,” Jewish Women’s Archive, accessed May 31, 2016, http://​jwa​.org/​encyclopedia/​article/​national​-council​-of​-jewish​-women; Karen  J. Blair, Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–­ 1914 (Teaneck, N.J.: Holmes & Meier, 1980); Molly Ladd-­Taylor, Mother-­Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–­1930 (Urbana-­Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995); and Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–­1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 11. Rogow, Another Meeting, 191; 186–­191. See also Kathryn Kish Sklar, “Why Were Most Politically Active Women Opposed to the ERA in the 1920s?,” in Rights of Passage: The Past and Future of the ERA, ed. Joan Hoff-­Wilson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 25–­35. See also Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 12. “History,” National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland, accessed May 31, 2016, http://​ ncjwcleveland​.org/​who​-we​-are/​history/; Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, s.v. “National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) Cleveland Section,” accessed May 31, 2016, https://​ech​ .case​.edu/​cgi/​article​.pl​?id​=​NCOJWCS; “President’s Report,” 1944, p. 5, box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 National Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland Section Records (NCJW Cleveland), Series 2, WRHS. 13. Annual Report, President, Cleveland Section, 1948–­1949, p. 16, box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 14. Susan Lynn, “Gender and Progressive Politics,” 105–­106. 15. Isabelle G. Brown, “Annual Report, Cleveland Section, 1949–­1950,” n.p., box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 16. Isabelle G. Brown, “Annual Report, Cleveland Section, 1950–­1951,” n.p., box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 17. Minutes, Executive Board of Trustees, June 23, 1958, p. 3, box 3, folder 1, MS 3620 NCJW Cleveland, WRHS; see minutes, Executive Board, box 3, folder 2, MS 3620 NCJW Cleveland, WRHS. 18. Minutes, Board of Directors, November 27, 1962, p. 1, box 3, folder 2, MS 3620 NCJW Cleveland, WRHS. 19. Jo Weiner, Text of Mrs. Weiner’s Taped Message, pp. 1–­2, box 1, folder 10, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 20. Marianne (Mrs. Benjamin A.) Gogolick, “Community Service Annual Report 1969–­1970,” box 1, folder 1, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 21. Minutes, Sub-­committee on Trends Program Survey Committee, May 13, 1970, box 1, folder 15, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 22. Ernestine Greenberger, “Annual Report,” Future Planning Committee 1972–­1973, box 1, folder 18, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 23. “Council Volunteers are Changing . . .” Bulletin (Cleveland Section) 43, no. 10 (January–­February 1975): 4–­5, box 2, folder 38, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 24. Margaret Davidson (Mrs. Bernard R.) Gold to Dr. Douglas Bond, September 9, 1969, box 2, folder 36, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS.

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25. Phyllis Gary, Board Report, November 25, 1969, box 2, folder 36, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 26. Phyllis Gary, Board Report, November 25, 1969, box 2, folder 36, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. For Janet Rosenberg’s book, see https://​books​.google​.com/​books/​ about/​Breakfast​_two​_jars​_of​_paste​.html​?id​=​AJosAQAAMAAJ. 27. Mrs. Dieter Myers and Mrs. Bernard Friedman to Eugene Maeroff, November 18, 1970, box 2, folder 36, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. William Yardley, “Gene I. Maeroff, Education Reporter and Author, Dies at 75,” New York Times, July 25, 2014, accessed May 31, 2016, http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2014/​07/​26/​business/​gene​-i​-maeroff​-education​-reporter​-and​ -author​-dies​-at​-75​.html?​_r​=​0. 28. Esther Brightman, Club Editor, “Ways Outlined for Women to Attain Full Potential,” n.d., n.p., clipping, box 2, folder 36, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 29. “Past, Future of Women to Be CJW Series Topic,” Cleveland Jewish News, January 15, 1971, 15, clipping, box 2, folder 36, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 30. Esther Brightman, “Psychiatrist’s View Traces History of Women’s Lib,” n.d., n.p., clipping, box 2, folder 36, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 31. Barbara (Mrs. Morton L.) Mandel, “President’s Biannual Report, 1971–­1973,” p. 2, box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS; Barbara Mandel, “Cleveland Section National Council of Jewish Women Annual Report 1971–­72,” p. 1, box 1, folder 17, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 32. Gilmore, Groundswell, 73; “President’s Biennial Report, 1971–­1973,” p. 13, box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 33. Minutes, Advisory Meeting, June 20, 1974, p. 1, box 1, folder 23, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 34. Minutes, Board of Directors, April 29, 1969, p. 3, box 1, folder 3, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS; see correspondence regarding “Abortion, the People’s Choice?,” panel, box 2, folder 36, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 35. “Abortion Rights—­an NCJW Call to Action,” Bulletin 43, no. 12 (March 1975): 5, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 36. Cynthia Harrison, “Creating a National Feminist Agenda: Coalition Building in the 1970s,” in Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-­Wave Feminism in the United States, ed. Stephanie Gilmore (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 19–­47. 37. “President’s Message,” Bulletin 44, no. 1 (Summer 1975): 1, box 2, folder 8, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS (emphasis in original). 38. Barbara (Mrs. Morton L.) Mandel, “President’s Biennial Report, 1971–­1973,” pp. 1–­2, box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 39. Annual Report, President, Cleveland Section, 1948–­1949, p. 10, box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. See also Isabelle G. Brown, “Annual Report, Cleveland Section, 1949–­1950,” n.p., box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS; and Marguerite (Mrs. David Ralph) Hertz, “Annual Report, President, Cleveland Section, 1947–­1948,” p. 10, box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 40. CJW Cleveland Section Board Institute, May 21–­­22, 1969, n.p., box 3, folder 62, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS; Stella Weintraub, “Business and Professional Group—­Evening Branch—­Council of Jewish Women,” n.p., November 29, 1978, box 1, folder 22, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 41. “Our Last Hurrah!,” n.p., box 1, folder 22, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. From 1981 to 2015, an “evening branch” hosted a women’s seder. See “Cleveland’s Women’s Seder,” NCJW, accessed May 31, 2016, http://​ncjwcleveland​.org/​2015/​02/​ncjwclevelands​ -womens​-seder/. The seder hosted in 2016 was not explicitly sponsored by an evening branch. 42. Ruth W. Weinstein, “Annual Report—­Evening Branch,” p. 1, box 1, folder 22, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS.

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43. Minutes, Program Survey Committee, March 12, 1969, box 1, folder 15, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 44. Minutes, Program Survey Committee, July 23, 1969, and September 9, 1969, box 1, folder 15, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 45. Barbara Mandel, “Annual Report Executive Vice-­President,” April 1970, box 1, folder 1, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 46. Mrs. Alvyn W. Tramer, “President’s Report,” 1969–­1971, p. 4, box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 47. Barbara Mandel, “Annual Report Executive Vice President,” April 1971, box 1, folder 1, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 48. Annual Report—­Jr. Mrs., n.d. [but appears to be 1972–­1973], box 1, folder 18, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 49. Editorial, Jr. Mrs. Newsletter, November 1972, p. 3, box 3, folder 77, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 50. “Try It—­You’ll Like It,” April 1972, box 3, folder 77, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 51. Jr. Mrs. Newsletter, January 28, 1972, box 3, folder 77, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. For a history of Junior Miss, now Distinguished Young Women, see “History,” Distinguished Young Women, accessed May 31, 2016, http://​distinguishedyw​.org/​about/​history/. 52. “Jr. Mrs. Executive Board Report and CJW Board Report,” Jr. Mrs. Newsletter, November 1972, p. 2, box 3, folder 77, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 53. Annual Report—­Jr. Mrs., n.d. [but appears to be 1973–­1973], p. 5, box 1, folder 18, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 54. Renee Snow, “Dear Council Ms.,” Council Ms. Newsletter, no. 1 (November 1973), p. 1, box 3, folder 76, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 55. Ronnie Silver, Council Ms. Newsletter, no. 9 (September 1974), box 3, folder 76, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS; Ms. Memos, December 6, 1976, box 3, folder 76, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 56. Pat Milner, “Annual Report of Council Ms.,” n.d., [mentions last two years, 1977–­1979], box 1, folder 22, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 57. Mrs. Leonard (Joyce) Schiff to Eleanor Steigman, March 1, 1966, box 1, folder 14, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. Faith Rogow, Gone to Another Meeting, 33, 206. Council of Jewish Juniors ended in the 1950s. See Faith Rogow, Jewish Women’s Archive, accessed May 31, 2016, http://​jwa​.org/​encyclopedia/​article/​national​-council​-of​-jewish​-women. 58. Minutes, Program Survey Committee, March 8, 1966, 2; Minutes, Program Survey Committee, November 8, 1966, box 1, folder 14, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 59. Mrs. Richard H. Bernon, “President’s Report 1965–­1967,” box 1, folder 12, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS; Minutes, Councilette Advisory Cabinet Meeting, April 30, 1968, box 1, folder 30, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 60. “Be a Charter Member of Councilettes!,” flyer, c. March 1967, box 2, folder 33, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 61. Minutes, Councilette Advisory Cabinet Meeting, April 30, 1968, box 1, folder 30, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 62. Minutes, Councilette Advisory Cabinet Meeting, October 8, 1968, box 1, folder 30, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS; Councilette Advisory Cabinet, November 11, 1968, box 1, folder 30, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 63. Minutes, Councilette Advisory Cabinet, February 10, 1970, box 1, folder 30, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. See also “Church History,” Antioch Baptist Church, accessed May 31, 2016, http://​www​.antiochcleveland​.org/​hp​_wordpress/​wp​-content/​uploads/​ 2015/​05/​01​-Church​-History​.pdf. 64. Minutes, Councilette Advisory Cabinet, February 10, 1970, box 1, folder 30, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS.

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65. Minutes, Councilette Board Meeting, December 21, 1969, box 1, folder 30, and Minutes, Councilette Board Meeting, May 24, 1970, box 1, folder 30, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 66. Minutes, Councilette Board Meeting, August 11, 1969, box 1, folder 30, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 67. Minutes, Program Survey Committee, February 16, 1971, box 1, folder 14, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 68. Councilette News-­Flash, no. 2 (January 1971), 3, box 2, folder 34, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 69. Minutes, Board of Directors, January 26, 1971, box 1, folder 4, MS 4586 NCJW Cleveland, Series 2, WRHS. 70. Annual Report, May 3, 1972, p. 2, box 1, folder 17, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 71. Mrs. Burton (Bernice) Abrams, “Councilette Annual Report, 1972–­March 1973,” pp. 1–­3, box 1, folder 18, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 72. Phyllis Brook, “Annual Report 1977–­78,” box 1, folder 21, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS; see also 1974–­1975 correspondence between Peggy Wasserstrom and Yonina Langer, box 1, folder 29, MS 4783 NCJW Cleveland, Series 3, WRHS. 73. “Announcing the 2016 Emerging Leaders,” NCJW Cleveland, accessed May 31, 2016, http://​ncjwcleveland​.org/​2016/​01/​announcing​-the​-2016​-emerging​-leaders/.

chapter 7

Q

TREPIDATION, TOLERANCE, AND TURNOVER jewish-­black relations in cleveland neighborhoods, 1920–­1960 Todd M. Michney

In a pattern seen in many U.S. cities, Cleveland’s Jewish neighborhoods transitioned to become African American most dramatically in the years immediately following World War II.1 Indeed, the significance of the city’s sizeable Jewish areas for black residential expansion cannot be overstated. As of 1920, Cleveland’s Jewish population of approximately one hundred thousand was the country’s fourth largest, twice the size of Detroit’s; at some 13 percent of the city total, Cleveland’s proportion of Jewish population was second only to New York City’s at the time.2 Numerous observers have noted that Jews did not violently resist black influx, in contrast to Roman Catholics, whose more permanent, less “portable” religious edifices (to mention one factor) inclined them toward territoriality.3 And while Jews shared with other whites many of the negative stereotypes concerning blacks, they had closer relations with African Americans compared to other ethnic groups (notably Irish and Poles, who were more often associated with antiblack hostility). Segments of the Jewish community supported African American aspirations for equality whether in the left-­wing mobilizations of the 1930s and 1940s, in the civil rights movement that peaked in the 1960s, or in “intergroup relations” efforts that flourished over the midcentury interval. Furthermore, Jews in Cleveland and elsewhere were generally more willing to participate in community-­based efforts to improve race relations—­a commitment that historian Lila Corwin Berman notes often outlasted their own departures for the suburbs.4 The following examines Jewish-­black relations at the local level, focusing primarily on Cleveland’s two main Jewish neighborhoods from around 1920 to 142

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1960, Glenville and Mount Pleasant (the latter known to the city’s Jews as “Kinsman,” after its major thoroughfare). While historians have investigated the alliance between both groups’ national leadership on civil rights issues,5 looking more closely at neighborhoods adds nuance and opens new avenues for inquiry.6 This chapter will give detailed attention to delicate topics, including black-­ Jewish collaboration in Communist Party activism, mutual prejudices between the two groups, and other whites’ scapegoating of Jewish residents for their decisions to relocate. Only by looking more closely and striving to analyze the full range of these contacts can we hope to understand the complex intertwining of Jewish and African American urban experiences in Cleveland and elsewhere.

Pre–­W orld War II Era Eastern European Jews began moving out of their older community around Woodland Avenue and East Fifty-­Fifth Street as early as World War I, flowing into outlying Glenville and Mount Pleasant during the 1920s; illustrating the previously mentioned dynamic, Southern black migrants increasingly took their places.7 By 1925, some 40 percent of Cleveland’s Jewish population lived in Glenville, with an additional 30 percent in Mount Pleasant.8 Both areas were being heavily built up with two-­family houses—­sometimes called “mortgage lifters,” because owners could rent one suite to defray mortgage payments.9 New Jewish arrivals associated the move with upward mobility. As one memoirist stated of Glenville, “Homes in Woodland for the most part were rented; in the new neighborhood, Jews became homeowners on a grand scale.” Another, moving to Mount Pleasant, described it as “developing quickly in the hungry search for status.”10 A flurry of community-­building followed, with synagogues, family businesses, and institutions like the Council Educational Alliance (CEA), a Jewish social service and recreational agency, sinking roots in both areas. While Glenville was more uniformly Jewish, Mount Pleasant had a substantial Italian population as well as an established black enclave. The CEA described Glenville as “slightly better off economically,” and while this distinction was somewhat overblown, it stuck—­among Cleveland Jews, the former developed a reputation as the preserve of shopkeepers and professionals, versus Kinsman as a home to skilled tradesmen like painters and carpenters. In both neighborhoods, families moved outward as their economic standing permitted; as early as 1937, observers noted this pattern with residents relocating to Glenville’s newer section beyond Lakeview Road, nicknamed “Superior-­Through” after the streetcar line.11 As in the World War II period and after, this initial Jewish population movement bore complicated relationships with race. By 1930, African American settlement formed a vast district stretching along Cedar and Central Avenues from approximately East 22nd to East 105th Streets, containing some 90 percent of the city’s black population.12 As African American home-­seekers replaced Southern

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and Eastern European ethnic populations including Jews, the district became overcrowded with further expansion constrained by white opposition, discriminatory tenanting and lending, and lower group income among blacks. Relations between African Americans and European immigrants in Cedar-­Central do not appear to have been antagonistic; historians have uncovered instances of household bartering and racially integrated youth gangs in the area. Seemingly agreeing, one former Jewish resident claimed, “We weren’t afraid of blacks [there], we were more afraid of the Italians than we were of blacks.”13 Not only did Jews moving from the East 55th Street area have previous exposure to African Americans, they encountered blacks either who were moving to Mount Pleasant and Glenville around the same time or who were already there. A black enclave took shape around 1900 in the vicinity of East 126th Street and Kinsman Road when, according to tradition, workers on a bankrupted railroad line received lots instead of pay. Self-­sufficient Southerners subsequently moved to the area, founding churches and, due to their early arrival, circumventing the application of race-­based deed restrictions. By 1930, 348 black families formed a compact cluster. Homeownership exceeded the average for the surrounding area, and African American unskilled laborers were present at just half the black Cleveland average. While the enclave included some professionals like doctors and lawyers, more common were postal employees, railroad workers, truck drivers, and chauffeurs. By 1940 the settlement had grown to 697 households, while another cluster of 209 families had emerged to the southeast off East 142nd Street. Meanwhile, upwardly mobile blacks—­especially professionals but also including white collar and service workers—­began moving to Glenville around 1915, and a small African American enclave existed in the vicinity of Beulah Avenue and East 123rd Street by 1910. By 1940, nearly 300 African American families lived in Glenville—­a significant presence but only 2 percent of the total population.14 The insularity of African American settlement in Mount Pleasant left some whites, even into the 1940s, unaware or unperturbed. For example, a Jewish man who grew up on East 142nd Street knew black families lived nearby; however, he did not think of East 128th Street between Kinsman and Imperial Avenue—­the heart of the historic enclave—­as a “black neighborhood.” A Jewish woman whose family rented in the 1930s and 1940s on Kinsman, immediately south of the enclave, remembered seeing black youth at the corner drugstore, but mistakenly thought that few if any lived nearby. Yet another man remembered African American students at Alexander Hamilton Junior High, but professed to have no idea where they lived. In fact, he presumed blacks could not have resided in the neighborhood due to discrimination or income.15 Cleveland was not completely spared from racial clashes relating to African American population growth, but incidents were few and far between compared to Chicago and Detroit.16 In Glenville, black physician James Merida’s house was vandalized when he moved onto Parmalee Avenue in 1927; white residents

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proceeded to form a “neighborhood improvement association,” which unsuccessfully sought to prevent further African American purchases. Uncharacteristically, this group had a Jewish secretary, who Harry C. Smith, longtime civil rights champion and editor of the black-­owned Cleveland Gazette, derided, asking, “And what kind of Jew is it, please, that will link up with the Ku Klux Klan or its fundamental sentiment or tenet? We know of many Jewish people in this community who will never endorse Mr. Eisler’s course in the Merida matter.” In 1938, when a group of Jewish residents attempted to enforce a restrictive covenant following a black purchase off of East Boulevard, the Jewish Community Council sat down with NAACP representatives, and the Jewish residents’ lawsuit was quickly withdrawn.17 Whites were rarely openly hostile, however. One Jewish interviewee whose family moved onto Kempton Avenue in 1918 noted that two black families already lived on the street, with “very good relations between all concerned.” The first African American purchase on Columbia Avenue, around 1931, was said by one Jewish resident to have generated a “great deal of resentment . . . but no unpleasantness.” A black man whose family bought on that same street in 1940 recalled, “A Jewish family next door watched silently as we moved in” but “pleased at the improvement[s] [we made], soon extended neighborly relations.” A Jewish woman who grew up in Mount Pleasant in the 1930s claimed whites “didn’t mind a few” black neighbors if they were “nice, quiet people.” And in 1939, government appraisers disapprovingly noted of Glenville, “Jewish occupants in this area have not been unwilling to sell to colored.”18 Dozens of interviews with black and Jewish former Mount Pleasant residents suggest that their interactions were typically benign, if somewhat formalized. Children played together and sometimes visited each other’s houses, adults shared food and conversation, black customers shopped at Italian-­and Jewish-­owned stores, and at least one black youth worked as a shabbos goy (gentile helper) at a local synagogue. With wives more likely to help in running family businesses, some Jews employed African American women as domestics, a practice about which one former resident said, “Too often they were referred to as ‘My schvartze [black] cleaning lady’—­partly descriptive, partly condescending.”19 Jewish business owners also sometimes employed African Americans; in one example, a Tennessee migrant got a job at a Glenville kosher poultry market in 1940, took over the business in 1965, and continued to run it until his retirement in 1988, learning Yiddish in the process.20 One setting where interracial interactions were anything but benign was public swimming facilities, which exposed African Americans to white ire and, not infrequently, violence. The most determined efforts to deny blacks access occurred at the Woodland Hills Park pool in Mount Pleasant soon after its 1927 opening and at the Forest Hill Park pool in Glenville, continuing into the 1940s. However, Jews did not involve themselves in these interracial conflicts like Italians and Hungarians did in this case, at least identifiably. On the contrary, Jews

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Figure 7.1  Woodland Hills Bathing Pool, undated postcard, Sapirstein Greeting Card Co. (WRHS)

prominently figured into the opposing civil rights demonstrations, which were coordinated by not just local African American groups but also the Communist Party. When the 1936 National Negro Congress came to Cleveland, lawyers Sam Goldman and Yetta Land, with the Communist Party’s International Labor Defense, helped lead a direct action protest to integrate the Woodland Hills pool under police protection. They reprised this role in 1938 when harassment of black pool-­goers resumed, successfully pressing for the arrest and trial of four white ethnic youth who assaulted a black postal clerk and member of the Communist Party-­affiliated International Workers Order. In the intervening year, however, there was a lull in the protests. One Jewish former resident remembered an incident in that summer of 1937, when “two or three Jewish Communists and a couple blacks” entered the pool, prompting the other bathers to gather along the sides chanting “Get out! Get out!” Outnumbered, the activists in that instance complied. The same year, however, Jewish Communist youth interested in combating racial discrimination launched the Glenville-­Doan Council—­the neighborhood’s first attempt at community-­wide organization.21

World War II Era Whereas early African American settlement in Glenville and Mount Pleasant was insubstantial and interracial contact was limited, surging Southern African American arrival during World War II exacerbated overcrowding in

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Cedar-­Central, thereby triggering overflow into these outlying, still heavily Jewish neighborhoods. Local historian Russell Davis correctly linked war-­related employment opportunities to increasing black homeownership in both areas. “At the same time,” Davis explained, “war induced prosperity caused many white city residents to seek new homes in the suburbs.” In 1944 William O. Walker, owner-­ editor of Cleveland’s main black newspaper, the Call & Post, called attention to “the prodigious buying of residential properties by Negroes in the Glenville and Mt. Pleasant districts,” even despite the refusal of lenders to offer mortgages in these areas.22 Notwithstanding a citywide housing shortage during the war, the influx of African Americans into Glenville was substantial, with estimates placing the black population at 10–­18 percent and growing rapidly as of 1945. Black public school enrollments climbed—­to 30 percent at one school. At the same time, Glenville’s Jewish population—­which had already begun suburbanizing to Cleveland Heights some ten years earlier—­decreased by nearly half, falling from over twenty-­seven thousand in 1937 to approximately fifteen thousand at the war’s end.23 While partly attributable to racial anxieties, additional factors were Jews’ above-­average rates of upward mobility and their generally smaller, more “portable” institutions (compared to Roman Catholic edifices).24 Jews had particularly strong in-­group commitments whether defined in religious or social terms. As one black interviewee observed, “When white families moved out of Glenville and other formerly all-­white areas, they weren’t always ‘running away.’ Many just wanted new homes in a suburb, or wanted to move where friends had moved.”25 Jews were also moving out of Mount Pleasant as African Americans moved in, but demographic turnover there unfolded more slowly. The most change could be seen in the census tract containing the historic black enclave, where African Americans’ share of the population jumped from 27 to 56 percent between 1940 and 1950; in Mount Pleasant as a whole, their proportion rose from 8 to 22 percent.26 And, as in Glenville, Jewish departures were already under way by the outset of racial residential transition. Demographer Howard Whipple Green discovered a one-­third decline in Mount Pleasant’s Jewish population from 1926 to 1937, from 22,500 to around 15,000, with a “slow trend of mobility towards the east.” Jewish enrollments fell at Lafayette Elementary School in the heart of the historic black enclave but increased at the Charles Dickens and Andrew Rickoff schools in Mount Pleasant’s eastern reaches, where the black population was also growing. Even so, in 1944 the CEA reported “antipathy . . . toward the Negro group which was moving into the neighborhood . . . with much tension resulting.”27 Racial residential transition in Glenville and Mount Pleasant proceeded not without tension but virtually without violence and—­in a continuation of the earlier-­noted pattern—­none from the Jewish residents. There were reports of “blockbusting” in Glenville as early as 1945 and in Mount Pleasant during the 1950s, but in neither case did this aggressive real estate activity approach the

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highly organized campaigns later seen in the Lee-­Harvard neighborhood.28 In Glenville during the war, white residents hoping to halt black influx held meetings on several occasions—­with one group, the Park Home Owners Association, responding to charges of anti-­Semitism by claiming to have forty Jewish members.29 However, such activity was sporadic and obviously unsuccessful, and there were no analogous efforts in Mount Pleasant. Tensions were reported in Glenville’s schools, and in both neighborhoods, beliefs that nighttime vandalism, juvenile delinquency, and crime were on the increase—­as well as a desire to avoid African Americans—­were offered as reasons for a “falling off ” of participation at CEA branches and the diminished use of public spaces like parks.30 Another indicator of the ongoing demographic transition in Glenville and Mount Pleasant was the sale of Jewish institutions—­most notably, of Glenville’s Cleveland Jewish Center (Anshe Emeth) to the black Cory Methodist congregation in 1947 for $135,000—­less than one-­tenth of its assessed value. More than a dozen synagogues would become churches in the succeeding decade.31 Notably, Glenville and Mount Pleasant also saw the city’s farthest-­reaching efforts to promote interracial tolerance, at the initiative of liberal-­minded residents and social service professionals working in each area (and in particular, the efforts of Sanford Solender of the CEA). Following up on their efforts to reelect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944, an interracial group of Glenville residents joined with the CEA to organize the Glenville Area Community Council (GACC). Inaugurated at an April 1945 meeting with one thousand in attendance, the promoters proclaimed, “Good Americans Are Good Neighbors . . . Let’s Get Together,” a direct riposte to the Park Home Owners Association’s racial chauvinism. Mount Pleasant followed Glenville’s example by forming its own community council in 1946. While these organizations developed broadly conceived neighborhood agendas extending to recreation, housing upkeep, crime prevention, and the restriction of liquor availability, promoting good “intergroup relations” was the initial impetus. Neither community council managed to attract significant participation from Catholics or to halt the out-­migration of Jews and other whites, but they did credibly claim to have mitigated racial tensions. Perhaps more important, these efforts—­in which Jews participated actively—­prefigured the later, more successful interracial community mobilizations in two suburbs to which Jews moved in large numbers, Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights.32 The CEA opened its doors to African American participation by 1944 and organized venues for interracial and intercultural sociability. However, staff at both neighborhood branches expressed frustration with racial prejudice among their Jewish membership and agonized over whether and when to move operations to best serve their traditional constituency.33 Efforts by Jewish and African American organizations and leaders to resolve matters of common concern amid the tense wartime atmosphere extended beyond the neighborhood level. Most ambitiously, a Council on Negro-Jewish

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Relations formed by the Jewish Community Council, NAACP, and Urban League aimed to counteract black anti-­Semitism, which the groups theorized had links to occasional “unfair treatment of domestic help by Jewish women, employment practices by Jews, and policies of some Jewish landlords in the Negro areas.” One Jewish participant in the effort expressed his opinion that as “victims of persecution and oppression themselves, Jews ought to be more understanding and careful to avoid any discriminatory acts toward other minorities.” Yet frictions between Jewish business owners and black customers persisted. Finally, after a local black newspaper ran a 1944 exposé on “cheat merchants” that explicitly identified some as Jewish, the council decided to “call in the violators and to secure a cessation of their unfair practices.” Subsequently, “It was pointed out that while the Jewish community could not accept the responsibility for what individuals might do, it was in the interest of the Jewish community to encourage its members to maintain high standards of conduct in keeping with Jewish traditions.”34 Other sources provide detailed insights on the perceptions and attitudes of Glenville and Mount Pleasant residents amid wartime demographic turnover, revealing some of the challenges activists faced in mobilizing these neighborhoods around an interracial community program. As research for their 1948 master’s thesis on GACC, social work students interviewed Jewish, white gentile, and African American residents to discern their levels of “social distancing” as well as their impressions of the neighborhood’s trajectory. As residents who participated in GACC initiatives were surely more open-­minded on racial matters than those who did not, the findings were discouraging. While nearly all the white gentile and Jewish interviewees stated they would accept African Americans as coworkers, on the other questions—­whether they would readily accept blacks in the neighborhood, on their street, as dinner guests, or as friends—­affirmative responses hovered around one-­third, with many adding the qualification that it would depend on the individual. That formal interracial participation did not necessarily equate with comfort in daily settings came through in one Jewish woman’s comment: “I meet and eat with Negro women all the time in organizations but I’m not yet ready for Negro neighbors . . . It takes time to get used to them.”35 African American participants indicated their frustration with the white distancing behaviors that made GACC’s interracialism ultimately unsustainable. Some expressed bitterness at the rejection white departures implied. “The Jews were here first, but they seem to be running from us now,” said one black respondent, while another recalled, “Don’t see much of the Jews now, but I had excellent relations with them in the old block club.” Reflecting on the fact that many Glenville Jewish residents rented, yet another professed, “I would rather have Jews for neighbors. They don’t keep their law[n]s and yards up so well but they know how to be neighborly. They build their home life around their children.” Someone else had a more negative response, stating that “most ugly incidents have been with white Gentiles rather than with Jews. [But] Jews are not any better

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though.” Clearly, interracial neighborhood organizing efforts were incapable of neutralizing the tense climate that accompanied demographic churn—­let alone of convincing whites to stay put.36 Observations by CEA staff in both Glenville and Mount Pleasant demonstrate additional difficulties with interracial approaches. In keeping with increasingly standard social work practice, they strove to promote cross-­cultural understanding but sometimes ran up against constituent bias. “It is very interesting and sometimes a bit discouraging to find how many deep-­rooted prejudices are to be found among our own club members,” one Mount Pleasant staffer wrote in a 1939–­1940 report, specifically about Jews’ attitudes toward blacks and Italians. By 1944, an increase in the facility’s use by non-­Jews (including an African American Girl Scout troop) sparked resentments. Staff responded to alleviate tensions by forming a “House Inter-­Cultural Committee,” in which the “amount of anti-­ Negro feeling” was discovered to be “surprisingly high—­particularly among the girls.” However, staff did successfully recruit participants for citywide multiethnic and interracial programming that year; a mixed Jewish-­Italian group even attended a pageant mounted by local African American youth. By late 1945, the CEA had hammered out a policy welcoming “any non-­Jewish person wishing to join, after carefully interpreting to him our purpose as a Jewish agency and the Jewish nature of our program.” Yet while committing itself to nonexclusion, the CEA also stated that if Jewish participation became too small, a branch should be moved in order to serve the core constituency.37 Faced with declining attendance, both branches soon confronted the relocation issue. Neighborhood-­based status rivalries among CEA members existed even before the advent of non-­Jewish participation, and now with outmigration to the suburbs, some residents purposefully disassociated themselves. A staff member explained, “The Mt. Pleasant neighborhood at the present time seems to be in a state of flux, as far as the Jewish Community living here is concerned. The influx of non-­Jews and Negroes seems to have resulted in many of the groups not wanting to identify themselves as [a] ‘Kinsman’ fraternity or sorority.” Another observer interpreted such attitudes in the context of Jewish aspirations of upward mobility.38 Glenville’s CEA branch decamped for Superior-­ Through in 1947; however, the agency—­now the JCC after a 1948 organizational merger—­continued to maintain an East 105th Street “extension” program until 1950, in which youth-­led clubs met at members’ homes instead of a JCC facility. In Mount Pleasant the CEA/JCC branch stayed longer despite Jewish outflow to Lee-­Harvard and suburban Shaker Heights, in part because a pocket of lower-­ income Jews remained in the vicinity of East 116th Street and Kinsman. But in late 1949, the agency opened a new facility on Lee Road, just inside the Shaker Heights border. Programming in Mount Pleasant was “curtailed,” although the property there was not sold until 1952, to a black Masonic lodge. The JCC clearly agonized over how to maintain a commitment to those Jews left behind, with

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Figure 7.2  Former home of the Council Educational Alliance’s main branch, 13512 Kinsman Avenue, and later an African American Masonic lodge, 1975. (Richard Karberg, WRHS)

a 1949 panel concluding that “inadequate service” provided to such families “is adding to the feeling of desertion and distress.”39

Postwar Era Demographic turnover in Cleveland’s historically Jewish neighborhoods accelerated in the postwar years. By 1950, Glenville’s African American population had reached twenty-­two thousand (24 percent of the total), up from just 899 in 1940. Furthermore, black newcomers were concentrated in “central” Glenville, on the blocks off of East 105th Street from East Boulevard to Parkwood Drive between Superior and Saint Clair Avenues; in the corresponding four census tracts, they constituted the majority—­overwhelmingly so in one case, at 83 percent.40 Although as many as nine thousand Jews still resided in Glenville’s eastern reaches, by 1954 Glenville High School’s Jewish proportion was estimated at just 6 percent, down from 60 percent in 1944. Enrollments at Patrick Henry Junior High School had also fallen—­partly in response to black–­white rumbles and other racial incidents, which CEA staff cited among motivations for the quickening Jewish suburbanization. Also indicative was the community’s changing age

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structure, with the Family Service Association noting, “The older Jewish people have tended to stay in their homes and apartments between Lakeview and Eddy Road.” By 1956 eastern Glenville’s Jewish population was in freefall, with even the Holocaust survivors who had gravitated to the area’s comparatively affordable rents moving on.41 As for Mount Pleasant’s Jews, the CEA asserted in 1949 that “the population west of East 140th Street has been decreasing and is very small at the present time.” The neighborhood’s black population had doubled between 1940 and 1950, to approximately 7,500 (22 percent of the total). Jewish enrollments in the local public schools correspondingly fell, especially at Alexander Hamilton Junior High School. Even so, an estimated five thousand Jews still lived in Mount Pleasant as of 1954, including nearly 10 percent of public school attendees as late as 1958. Yet another landmark was the simultaneous 1957 defeat of both neighborhoods’ longtime Jewish city councilmen, Harry T. Marshall (Twenty-­Fourth Ward) and Joseph Horowitz (Tenth Ward), by African American challengers.42 The trajectory at the JCC Arlington House in Superior-­Through paralleled the earlier experience at East 105th Street in terms of Jewish members’ reactions to African Americans and staff dilemmas about how to serve the traditional constituency while remaining inclusive. The branch initially thrived, with new Jewish families moving into the area even as others moved away. But its location on East 123rd Street at Arlington Avenue—­immediately west of Forest Hills Park, which many whites considered a racial boundary—­served to foster parental trepidations about children’s safety, exacerbated by newspaper reports of assaults in the surrounding neighborhood. Like Mt. Pleasant House, Arlington House additionally saw an increase in non-­Jewish participation. While a handful of black children already participated in the branch’s day camp, in 1955 four black families joined at Arlington, for a total of twelve non-­Jewish member families—­discomfiting Jewish parents who felt that “since the children have to be mixed in the schools, the agency should provide an opportunity where they [Jews] can have clubs among their own people.” Some Jewish families remained active at Arlington even after moving out of the area. But following a membership decline of nearly three-­quarters since 1950, Arlington House decided to close in 1959. Disturbingly, a similar pattern was emerging at the JCCs’ newest branch, Shaker-­Lee House, with staff noting a “growing restlessness” as the number of African American families increased in the nearby Lee-­Harvard neighborhood.43 Not just the JCC (which predominantly served youth) but all of the Jewish institutions in eastern Glenville and Mount Pleasant struggled in the face of demographic change. As of 1955, Sherith Jacob (Eddy Road Jewish Center) was the only large synagogue left, with most of its membership already residing in the Heights suburbs. Other congregations sold their facilities to incoming black churches, like Trinity Colored Methodist Episcopal, which purchased Oheb Zedek for just sixty thousand dollars in 1953. Mount Pleasant’s institutions faced

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similar dilemmas. The Workmen’s Circle School saw decreased enrollment and found it necessary to offer transportation to its students who lived outside the area. The Kinsman Jewish Center (B’nai Jacob Kol Israel) still had five hundred families as of 1950 but in 1952 voted to merge with N’vai Zedek “to achieve a strong organization in the Kinsman Shaker area.” By 1955 so many Orthodox Jews had moved beyond walking distance—­a religious stricture pertaining to Sabbath observance—­that the rabbi initiated High Holy Days services at the JCCs’ Shaker-­Lee House. Finally, in 1959 the merged congregation picked up once more and moved to the suburbs, becoming the Warrensville Center Synagogue. Perhaps the last Jewish institution to leave Mount Pleasant (in 1973) was the Hebrew Shelter Home, which offered inexpensive lodgings and a kosher kitchen. Located on Kinsman Road at the Shaker Heights border, it was used mainly by Israeli tourists.44 Jewish-­owned businesses, on the other hand, thrived in both neighborhoods into the 1960s. While many left Glenville after a 1968 shootout between black militants and police, Mount Pleasant saw a different pattern, with businesses like Greenstein’s Hardware remaining into the 1980s.45 Furthermore, relations between that neighborhood’s Jewish merchants and African American customers apparently remained cordial.46 Organized efforts to promote friendly intergroup relations also continued, even though population turnover made sustained interracial participation difficult. Founded to address wartime tensions, GACC actually expanded its wide-­ ranging reform agenda as the neighborhood became increasingly black, but it had to adapt to new realities. While Arlington House collaborated with GACC, it had even greater difficulty generating enthusiasm than its predecessor on East 105th Street. Arlington House lent its facilities for meetings and assisted in GACC’s project of organizing block clubs; in 1957 one such club on Hopkins Avenue reported black residents were “active” and young Jewish residents “very active” but described the older (and more religious) Jews and Appalachian whites as “non-­participating.” Tellingly, GACC also had to remind Arlington staffers it was originally “predominantly a Jewish constituency.”47 Because population turnover unfolded more slowly in Mount Pleasant—­partly due to its large renting population, which moderated race-­ related anxieties about property values—­such efforts endured longer. To mention a few examples, the local Cleveland Public Library branch began sponsoring a joint Christmas–­Hanukkah program in 1948, which continued at least until 1962. The annual observance included performances by choirs and other groups from neighborhood churches, schools, and Jewish institutions like the Workmen’s Circle. However, the Jewish representation was solely from the Shaker-­Lee JCC by 1957. That same year, the Mount Pleasant Community Council (MPCC) revived its annual folk festival to celebrate the observance of Brotherhood Week. Chaired jointly by a committee consisting of Rabbi Jacob Muskin, Saint Cecelia pastor Reverend John Tivenan, and Judge Perry B. Jackson (who was African

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American), the event mobilized nearly twenty nationality-­based, fraternal, and religious organizations along with black churches and was attended by over two thousand people. Especially notable was the Shaker-­Lee JCC’s involvement, again illustrating how Jews often maintained a stake in their former neighborhoods after moving out. Shaker-­Lee House actually hosted Brotherhood Week in 1959 and for several years afterward, reformulating it as a dinner honoring the late Joseph Sokol, a Jewish MPCC activist.48 Finally, the local chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews sponsored training for teachers and principals to address the “problems they are meeting in a changing neighborhood,” which subsequently grew into a “Five-­Year Plan for Intergroup Relations.” Some particular concerns raised included vandalism, racial incidents after sports events, prejudices children absorbed from their parents, and “discipline problems and more aggressive behavior” in the public schools. By 1962 concerns about a growing “lack of interracial contact” in the neighborhood itself led to a reciprocal exchange with the JCC, in the form of an annual Passover dinner observance and group picnic, which continued until at least 1967.49 With above-­average rates of upward mobility and strong in-­group commitments, Jews were often among the first to move out of city neighborhoods facing racial turnover, and thus they were sometimes blamed by other whites for “selling out” to African Americans. Cleveland’s most striking illustration of this phenomenon occurred when the first black family moved to Lee-­Harvard in the summer of 1953.50 When white residents discovered Wendell and Genevieve Stewart’s purchase of the two-­story colonial at 15508 Talford Avenue, among their first actions was an attempt to confront and embarrass the seller, who the Jewish Community Federation (JCF) divulged was “a Jewish business man with a non-­ Jewish wife who, it was alleged, had sold the home to Negroes out of spite against his neighbors.” Over the weekend, reported the JCF, “tension mounted and calls were received . . . from Jewish residents in the area who felt extremely threatened by the growing restlessness, since such great resentment was expressed against ‘Jews who pulled this dirty trick on us by selling to Negroes.’” With support from the JCF, Community Relations Board, NAACP, and sympathetic clergy from nearby Saint Cecelia’s Roman Catholic Church—­not to mention Mayor Thomas Burke’s personal mediation and provision of adequate police protection—­the Stewarts settled in and were eventually accepted by their neighbors. By 1958 the JCF had a full-­fledged Community Relations Committee to avert “violence and hasty selling and to help produce a calm atmosphere”; while supporting African Americans’ right to buy wherever they wanted, it also warned that “those breaking long-­established neighborhood patterns should be fully informed as to possible community reactions.” The following year, the issue again erupted in eastern Glenville when a retired Jewish couple who had a running feud with their all-­white neighbors on East 125th Street sold to an African American purchaser. Despite an intervention by the JCF, NAACP, Urban League, and Cleveland

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Church Federation—­ and police protection notwithstanding—­ vandals ransacked the still-­vacant house several nights later. Meanwhile, the Jewish former owners were barraged with anonymous phone threats.51 More white supporters of African American civil rights into the 1960s identified as Jewish than as any other background, and Jews played additional roles in facilitating black access to much-­needed housing. By 1963 Federal Homes, Inc., a company founded by three Jewish Glenville High School graduates, had built four hundred homes for black buyers in Mount Pleasant, Lee-­Harvard, and Maple Heights. At the time, it was building twenty-­four homes on Deforest Avenue off Lee Road, with twenty more planned for Priebe Avenue farther south. Two Jewish brothers, Stanley and Charles Bernath, also had twenty homes under way that year in the vicinity, with plans for an additional fifty; the following year, they opened a new subdivision in Lee-­Seville. Both Federal Homes and the Bernaths’ Stanley Building Company offered Veterans Administration–­guaranteed financing with no money down. Meanwhile, Jewish developer George Dubin became known as “the area’s largest builder of homes for Negroes,” completing more than six hundred houses by 1962 in the vicinity of Kerruish Park.52 Because not only African Americans but also Jews were denied membership in professional real estate associations, black and Jewish real estate brokers sometimes played another role in expanding African American housing options through blockbusting—­the leveraging of white racial fears to generate rapid turnover on entire streets at a time. Such tactics exacerbated already-­tense race relations and typically took financial advantage of white sellers and black buyers alike, but relatively well-­off African Americans desperate to acquire nearly new, suburban-­style houses like Lee-­Harvard’s understood that blockbusting could serve their objective.53 By the early 1960s, intensive suburbanization gave Cleveland a reputation as a “city without Jews.”54 Nevertheless, Jewish interactions with African Americans in the midcentury decades left a lasting legacy. As the Great Migration fundamentally transformed U.S. cities over this period, formerly Jewish neighborhoods frequently transitioned to become black ones—­with tension, but spared the intense resistance that often accompanied racial turnover in some areas populated by other ethnicities.55 Interactions and relations between Jews and African Americans were complicated, encompassing not only coexistence and cooperation but also fear, distrust, and antagonism that was not insignificant, despite falling short of violence. These patterns continued beyond city lines as upwardly mobile African Americans moved to suburbs with significant Jewish populations, notably Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights as well as University Heights, Beachwood, South Euclid, and most recently, Solon. Only by more closely studying the rich and complex history of black–­Jewish interactions on the local level can we arrive at a more nuanced understanding and begin to grasp the full scope of these groups’ enduring but at times strained relationship.

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notes Portions of this chapter are adapted from Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900–­1980, by Todd M. Michney. Copyright © 2017 by the University of North Carolina Press, www​.uncpress​.org. Used by permission of the publisher. 1. See Jeffrey S. Gurock, When Harlem Was Jewish, 1870–­1930 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Gerald Gamm, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); Wendell Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Amanda I. Seligman, Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); and Lila Corwin Berman, Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 2. “Statistics of Jews,” American Jewish Year Book 22 (1920–­1921): 372. 3. Gamm, Urban Exodus; Pritchett, Brownsville; and John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-­Century Urban North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). On Jews often moving first, see Lila Corwin Berman, “Gendered Journeys: Jewish Migrations and the City in Postwar America,” in Gender and Jewish History, ed. Marion A. Kaplan and Deborah Dash Moore (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 338. 4. See Paul Buhle and Robin D. G. Kelley, “Allies of a Different Sort: Jews and Blacks in the American Left,” in Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black–­Jewish Relations in the United States, ed. Jack Salzman and Cornel West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 197–­229; Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, “Liberal NIMBY: Jews and Civil Rights,” Journal of Urban History 38 (May 2012): 452–­466; and Lila Corwin Berman, “Jewish Urban Politics in the City and Beyond,” Journal of American History 99 (September 2012): 492–­519. 5. See especially David Levering Lewis, “Parallels and Divergences: Assimilationist Strategies of Afro-­American and Jewish Elites from 1910 to the Early 1930s,” Journal of American History 71 (December 1984): 543–­564; and Cheryl Greenberg, “Negotiating Coalition: Black and Jewish Civil Rights Agencies in the Twentieth Century,” in Struggles in the Promised Land, 153–­176. 6. See John Bracey and August Meier, “Towards a Research Agenda on Blacks and Jews in United States History,” Journal of American Ethnic History 12 (Spring 1993): 60–­67; Joe William Trotter Jr., “African Americans, Jews, and the City: Perspectives from the Industrial Era, 1900–­1950,” in African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict, ed. V. P. Franklin et al. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 193–­207; Robert G. Weisbord and Arthur Stein, “Negro Perceptions of Jews between the World Wars,” Judaism 18 (Fall 1969): 428–­447; and Hasia Diner, “Between Words and Deeds: Jews and Blacks in America, 1880–­1935,” in Struggles in the Promised Land, 87–­106. 7. Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Cleveland, 2nd ed. (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society and Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, 1987), 269–­273. 8. Real Property Inventory of Metropolitan Cleveland, A Sheet-­a-­Week (September 22, 1938); Regional Church Planning Office (RCPO), “The Church in a Changing Neighborhood,” October 30, 1961, pp. 5–­6, at Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS). 9. Cleveland Real Estate Board, Homes and the Growth of Cleveland (Cleveland: Cleveland Real Estate Board, 1952), 24. On Glenville’s early history, see David Mayo Austin et al., “Community Council: Test Tube for Democracy; A Case Study of the Glenville Area Community Council” (master’s thesis, School of Applied Social Sciences, Western Reserve University, 1948), 14–­40; and the series in Cleveland Press, February 20–­­24, 1940. On Mount Pleasant, see Cleveland Press, August 9, 1941. 10. “Here in the Golden Land: A Vignette of Jewish Life in Cleveland,” n.d., p. 3, box 1, folder 1, MS 4340 David M. Miller Papers, Series 2, WRHS; Tobey Penn, “Raisin in My Soup,” n.d., pp. 2, 3, Manuscript Vertical File, WRHS.

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11. “Annual Report of the Executive Director,” April 25, 1927, box 3, folder 41, MS 3668 Jewish Community Centers of Cleveland Records (JCC), WRHS; Austin et al., “Community Council,” 23–­24. For a sense of Jews’ geographic distribution, see Howard Whipple Green, Jewish Families in Greater Cleveland (Cleveland: Cleveland Health Council, 1939). On the Glenville–­Mount Pleasant rivalry, see Cleveland Jewish News, January 7, 1972; Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 26, 1978; and Sanford Watzman, All the Way to Y2K: Life of a Jewish American in the Last Three Quarters of the 20th Century (Silver Spring, Md.: self-­pub., 2000), 123–­125. For a reminiscence of Superior-­Through, see Cleveland Jewish News, September 13, 2001. For richly illustrated overviews, see Judah Rubinstein with Jane Avner, Merging Traditions: Jewish Life in Cleveland, rev. ed. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2004), 111–­159, 163–­184. 12. Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–­1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976). 13. Kimberley L. Phillips, AlabamaNorth: African American Migrants, Community, and Working-­Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915–­1945 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 145–­146; Margie Glass, interview transcript, December 12, 1986, box 1, folder 16, MS 4536 St. James Oral History Project, WRHS; John J. Grabowski, “A Social Settlement in a Neighborhood in Transition: Hiram House, Cleveland, Ohio” (PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1977), 160; Bea Shafron et al., group interview, “Living History #5,” July 23, 1980, box 3, folder 5, MS 3895 Jewish Immigrant Interviews: Oral History Transcripts, WRHS. Grabowski discusses Italian–­Jewish conflict in Cedar-­Central; Grabowski, “Social Settlement,” 164–­166. 14. Todd M. Michney, Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900–­1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 21–­33. 15. Gerald Lander, taped interview with author, December 13, 2002; Adeline Davis, taped interview with author, October 9, 2001; David Krieger, taped interview with author, October 7, 2001. For strikingly similar Jewish perceptions of black “invisibility,” see Deborah Dash Moore et al., Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 207. 16. See especially Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–­1960 (1983; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); and Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 17. Cleveland Gazette, July 23, 1927; Minutes, Executive Committee, October 6, 1938, Jewish Community Council of Minutes and Reports, microfilm, WRHS. On Smith, see Kusmer, Ghetto Takes Shape, 130–­134. 18. “From Mrs. Jacob Amster,” [1956], Julian Krawcheck Papers (JKP; unprocessed collection), WRHS; “From Allen E. Reublin,” [1956], JKP, WRHS; “From Rudolph D. Henderson, Jr.,” [1956], JKP, WRHS; Pauline Leber, taped interview with author, December 6, 2001; “Area Descriptions—­Security Map of Cuyahoga County,” Cleveland, Area D-23, October 19, 1939, HOLC City Survey File, Records of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (RG 195), box 87, “Greater Cleveland, OH” folder, National Archives II (College Park, Md.). 19. Michney, Surrogate Suburbs, 40–­43; quote is from Stanley Lasky, written response to author’s interview questions, April 25, 2001. My interviews suggest black–­Jewish relations differed in degree but not in kind from Italian–­Jewish relations; for one Italian boy who similarly found work as a shabbos goy, see Cleveland Jewish News, June 5, 2003. 20. James H. Jefferson Sr. obituary, Plain Dealer, December 29, 2000. Mount Pleasant Jewish families also hired domestics of Eastern European ancestry, especially during the Depression; see Watzman, All the Way, 58–­62. 21. Michney, Surrogate Suburbs, 43–­51, 74; Harold Ticktin, taped interview with author, February 11, 2002; Austin et al., “Community Council,” 41–­50. On the Communist Party presence in Mount Pleasant, see especially Watzman, All the Way, 57–­58, 88, 174–­176. Organized on the basis of nationality, Cleveland had four Jewish International Workers Order (IWO) branches—­two in Mount Pleasant and two in Glenville, with a combined membership of

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approximately six hundred. See “Executive Committee, October 6, 1938,” box 8, folder 133, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records (JCF), WRHS; “Application for Representation” (IWO Branch 188), May 10, 1938, box 8, folder 133, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS; “Application for Representation” (IWO Branch 124), June 21, 1938, box 8, folder 133, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS; “Membership Application” (IWO Lodge 805), c. October 27, 1947, box 8, folder 133, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS; “Membership Application” (IWO Lodge 148), July 25, 1947, box 8, folder 133, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS. 22. Russell H. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland from George Peake to Carl B. Stokes (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publications, 1972), 308; Call & Post, August 5, 1944. For another mention of this dynamic, see “East Glenville Area Report,” January 1958, box 28, folder 693, MS 3788 Federation for Community Planning Records (FCP), WRHS. 23. Ruth Ackerman and Netta Siegel, “The Glenville Area Community Council: A Case Study,” May 31, 1945, p. 3, box 2, folder 26, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Minutes, Board of Trustees, Council Educational Alliance (CEA), November 15, 1944, box 5, folder 32, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Jewish Suburban Population Movement in Cleveland and Its Impact on Communal Institutions,” May 1957, box 11, folder 184, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS. See also Marian J. Morton, Cleveland Heights: The Making of an Urban Suburb (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2002), 104–­122. 24. See Pritchett, Brownsville; Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 242–­245; and Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, 193–­194. On Jewish upward mobility, see Marshall Sklare, ed., The Jews: Social Patterns of an American Group (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958); for a critique, see Stephen Steinberg, “The Rise of the Jewish Professional: Case Studies of Intergenerational Mobility,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 9 (October 1986): 502–­513; and Rachel Kranson, Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). 25. “From James C. Weaver,” [1956], JKP, WRHS. 26. “Mt. Pleasant Area: A Study of Recreational Needs,” April 9, 1952, pp. 3, 12, box 4, folder 56, MS 3991 Greater Cleveland Neighborhood Centers Association Records (GCNA), WRHS; U.S. Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Housing: 1950 Block Statistics; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Housing: Supplement . . . Cleveland Block Statistics (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1942). 27. “Digest of ‘Jewish Families in Greater Cleveland,’” 1937, box 11, folder 182, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS; “Comments Regarding Population of Children in the Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood,” [1941?], box 3, folder 45, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Todd M. Michney, “Changing Neighborhoods: Race and Upward Mobility in Southeast Cleveland, 1930–­1980” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2004), 219–­225; “1943–­1944 Annual Report H. Okilman,” pp. 10, 13–­14, box 3, folder 49, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 28. Minutes, Race Relations Committee, January 25, 1945, box 36, folder 882, MS 3788 FCP, WRHS; “Re: Glenville Area,” April 5, 1945, box 36, folder 4, MS 3520 NAACP (Cleveland Branch) Records, WRHS; Glenville Area Community Council (GACC), “Statement to the Cleveland Board of Education,” December 1945, box 36, folder 4, MS 3520 NAACP (Cleveland Branch) Records, WRHS; Plain Dealer, April 25, 1945; Austin et al., “Community Council,” 55; Cleveland Press, May 23, 1945; Michney, “Changing Neighborhoods,” 228–­229. 29. GACC, “Statement,” box 36, folder 4, MS 3520 NAACP (Cleveland Branch) Records, WRHS; Plain Dealer, April 25, 1945; Cleveland Press, May 17, 1945; Austin et al., “Community Council,” 62–­63. 30. GACC, “Statement,” box 36, folder 4, MS 3520 NAACP (Cleveland Branch) Records, WRHS; Austin et al., “Community Council,” 29–­30, 56; “Re: Glenville Area”; “Sub-­committee—­Executive Committee and Staff,” January 7, 1947, box 5, folder 100, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; Minutes, Board of Trustees, CEA, February 20, 1947, box 5, folder 100, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; Michney, “Changing Neighborhoods,” 230–­231, 234. 31. Call & Post, September 2, 1950; RCPO, “Church in a Changing Neighborhood,” 29. On synagogues converted to churches, see Jeffrey S. Morris, Haymarket to the Heights: The

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Movement of Cleveland’s Orthodox Synagogues from Their Initial Meeting Place to the Heights (Cleveland: MSL Academic Endeavors, 2014). 32. Michney, Surrogate Suburbs, 59–­96. Interracial community mobilizations in Shaker and Cleveland Heights include the Ludlow Community Association (formed 1957), Lomond Association (1963), and Heights Citizens for Human Rights (1964). 33. “Annual Report of the 105th Street Branch, Council Educational Alliance, September 1945 to June 1946,” box 5, folder 97, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS. 34. Minutes, Committee on Negro-­Jewish Relations, August 14, 1941, Jewish Community Council Minutes and Reports, microfilm, WRHS; Minutes, Negro-­Jewish Relations Committee, May 16, 1944, Jewish Community Council Minutes and Reports, microfilm, WRHS; Jewish Community Council, “Minutes of a Meeting Held October 11, 1944,” box 6, folder 88, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS. For more on similar patterns, see Dominic J. Capeci Jr., “Black-­Jewish Relations in Wartime Detroit: The Marsh, Loving, Wolf Surveys and the Race Riot of 1943,” Jewish Social Studies 47 (Summer/Autumn 1985): 221–­242. 35. Austin et al., “Community Council,” 150–­168 (quote from 167). 36. Austin et al., “Community Council,” 126–­139, 140–­141 (quotes). 37. “Report on the Senior Division—­1939–­1940,” box 3, folder 47, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Annual Report—­1944–­1945,” box 5, folder 96, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; “1943–­1944 Annual Report H. Okilman,” pp. 7, 9–­11, 13–­14, box 5, folder 96, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; “Council Educational Alliance Planning Staff Meetings, September 23–­­26, 1945,” pp. 13–­15, box 3, folder 50, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 38. Leonard M. Katowitz, “Evaluation of Staff Meetings—­1946,” p. 23, box 3, folder 51, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Annual Staff Report—­1946–­1947,” box 5, folder 97, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; Saul Farber, “The Experience of the Council Educational Alliance with Teen-­Age Councils,” 1947, box 5, folder 100, MS 4696 JCC Series 2, WRHS. 39. CEA, “Annual Report of Northeast Branch, September, 1947-­June, 1948,” box 3, folder 51, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; “Minutes of Membership Committee of Northeast Advisory Committee,” April 26, 1950, box 27, folder 1, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Shaker-­Lee Branch Report—­1950–­51,” box 5, folder 108, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; “Report of the Mt. Pleasant Advisory Committee to Board of Trustees,” December 12, 1949, box 30, folder 1, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Harold Arian to John Jones, April 8, 1952, box 27, folder 119, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “They Came[,] They Talked[,] and Here Is What They Said,” March 27, 1949, box 6, folder 90, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS. 40. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 16th Census of the United States, 1940: Population and Housing—­Statistics for Census Tracts: Cleveland, Ohio and Adjacent Area (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1942), 5; U.S. Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Population: 1950—­Census Tract Statistics, Cleveland, Ohio and Adjacent Area (Washington, D.C., 1952), 12, 13, 15, 16. 41. “Review of F.S.A. Participation in the Glenville Area Community Council,” June 16, 1954, box 28, folder 693, MS 3788 FCP, WRHS; “Opinions Regarding Movement of Jewish Population During Next Five Years,” February 15, 1955, box 20, folder 314, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS; “Quarterly Report, Arlington Branch, Jewish Community Centers,” [November 1954], box 5, folder 102, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; “Arlington Branch Report,” [c. January 1958], box 27, folder 5, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 42. Minutes, Intercultural and Interracial Relations Committee, October 4, 1956, box 36, folder 877, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Ann Werneke, “The Church in the Changing City: A Study in Contrasts,” [1961], p. 17, box 2, folder 7, MS 3876 Regional Church Planning Office Records, WRHS; Austin et al., “Community Council,” 24, 36; “Area Characteristics, Mount Pleasant [1950],” box 9, folder 225, MS 3788 FCP, WRHS; “Mount Pleasant Area Study,” May 16, 1950, box 49, folder 1175, MS 3788 FCP, WRHS; “Evaluation of the Present and Future Location of Mt. Pleasant Facilities,” [May 1949], box 30, folder 1, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Enrollment of Children in Mt. Pleasant-­Kinsman-­Shaker-­Extension for 1944–­1948,” box 30, folder 1, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Progress Report, Cleveland Jewish Community Centers New Building,”

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December 1954, box 20, folder 314, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS; Map, “Distribution of Cleveland Jewish Population Based on 1958 Day of Atonement Census,” box 11, folder 184, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS; Call & Post, November 9, 1957. 43. “Annual Report 1950–­51,” box 5, folder 102, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; “Group Analysis—­Group Work II,” May 1953, pp. 21–­45, box 28, folder 16, MS 3688 JCC, WRHS; Minutes, Arlington Branch Advisory Committee Minutes, February 14, 1955, box 27, folder 3, MS 3688 JCC, WRHS; Minutes, Group Work Council, Intercultural and Interracial Relations Committee, June 2, 1955, box 36, folder 877, MS 3788 FCP, WRHS; Memo, Howard Robbins to Herman Eigen, “Arlington Branch 1955 and the Effect of Population Shifts,” box 27, folder 5, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “A Brief History of the Arlington Branch,” [c. 1959], box 27, folder 5, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Annual Report, Prep and Pre-­Prep Divisions—­1956–­1957,” box 27, folder 5, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Jewish Community Centers of Cleveland: Report on the Branches,” April 1958, box 5, folder 105, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS. For similar population dynamics and dilemmas, see Paula E. Hyman, “From City to Suburb: Temple Mishkan Tefila of Boston,” in The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), esp. 188–­191. 44. “Report on Arlington Branch and the Effect of Population Shifts,” December 1955, box 5, folder 102, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; Call & Post, March 14, 1953; RCPO, “Church in a Changing Neighborhood,” 31–­32; I. Jaffe to Irving Rabinsky, December 25, 1949, box 14, folder 380, MS 3832 Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS; Nathan Brilliant to Lloyd Schwenger, October 22, 1953, box 14, folder 378, MS 3832 Bureau of Jewish Education Records, WRHS; Twentieth Jubilee Banquet (January 22, 1950), box 1, folder 1, MS 4758 Warrensville Center Synagogue Records (WCS), WRHS; K.J.C. Newsletter (October 1952), box 1, folder 2, MS 4758 WCS, WRHS; Rabbi Jacob Muskin to Herman Eigen, September 17, 1956, box 5, folder 107, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; Kinsman-­Shaker Courier (September 1956), box 1, folder 2, MS 4758 WCS, WRHS; N’vai Zedek Congregation to “Dear Member,” March 22, 1959, box 1, folder 12, MS 4837 Jacob Muskin Papers, WRHS; It’s Happening Here: The Story of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and Its Agencies (c. 1967), p. 22, box 8, folder 122, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS. Temple Beth-­El, a Reform congregation located on the Shaker Heights border at 15808 Chagrin Boulevard (Kinsman Road), remained until 1998. 45. John Baden, “Residual Neighbors: Jewish-­African American Interactions in Cleveland from 1900 to 1970” (master’s thesis, Case Western Reserve University, 2011), 48, 66, 73–­74; Cleveland Press, December 7, 1964. On Jewish merchants in Glenville, see the postriot interviews and especially “Delegate Assembly, Jewish Community Federation,” September 17, 1968, in Louis Masotti Papers, box 4, folder 2, Case Western Reserve University Archives. Up until sometime after 2011, only one Jewish-­owned business remained in Glenville: Gordon Cycle & Supply, Inc.; see Plain Dealer, September 26, 2006. 46. Eugene Brudno, taped interview with author, January 6, 2003; see also Phillip Timothy Gay, “Eugene the Egg Man: He Was Friend and Mentor to Neighborhood Kids,” Plain Dealer Magazine (August 28, 1983), 14–­22. A “Russian-­Turkish Bath” (schvitz) established in 1927 still operates in Mount Pleasant; see Plain Dealer, August 6, 1961, and Cleveland Jewish News, January 31, 2002. 47. “Minutes of Arlington Advisory Committee,” January 12, 1953, box 27, folder 2, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Minutes, Intercultural and Interracial Relations Committee, June 2, 1955; “Minutes of the Arlington Branch Advisory Committee,” December 9, 1957, box 27, folder 3, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 48. “Community Holiday Program,” [c. December 23, 1948], on file at Cleveland Public Library, Mount Pleasant branch; Cleveland News, December 8, 1956; Call & Post, December 8, 1962; Cleveland Press, December 17, 1957; Plain Dealer, February 17, 1957; “Fact Sheet,” [1957], box 23, folder 2, MS 3611 Nationalities Services Center Records, WRHS; Mt. Pleasant Community Council Bulletin (February 1958), box 38, folder 3, MS 3520 NAACP (Cleveland Branch) Records, WRHS; “Brotherhood in Our Neighborhood,” c. February 12, 1958, box 38,

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folder 3, MS 3520 NAACP (Cleveland Branch) Records, WRHS; Jacob Muskin, John Tivenan, and Perry Jackson to Sol Green, March 11, 1957, box 31, folder 19, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Minutes, Shaker-­Lee Branch Advisory Committee, January 19, 1959, box 30, folder 2, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Joseph Sokol Memorial Program,” January 15, 1961, box 7, folder 146, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS. 49. “Five Year Move for Mt. Pleasant Unity is Planned,” Cleveland Press (c. November 1959), newspaper clipping in “Mt. Pleasant Community Services Center,” Cleveland Press Collection, Cleveland State University; Cleveland Press, December 10, 1959; Minutes, Intergroup Relations Committee, Group Work Council, February 4, 1960, box 36, folder 878, MS 3788 FCP, WRHS; Minutes, Board of Trustees, Mount Pleasant Community Centers, September 17, 1962, and January 21, 1963, box 4, folder 56, MS 3991 GCNA, WRHS; Irving Lerner to “Dear Parents,” March 15, 1963, box 7, folder 146, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS; Memo, Irv Lerner to Julian Kolby, May 10, 1967, box 7, folder 146, MS 4696 JCC, Series 2, WRHS. 50. For an anonymized version of this incident, see the pamphlet published by a confederation of Jewish organizations, Guide to Changing Neighborhoods (New York: National Community Relations Advisory Council, February 1956), 18–­20. 51. Plain Dealer, July 11, 1953; Cleveland Press, July 13, 1953; “Memorandum on Housing Situation, Lee-­Harvard Area,” [July 23, 1953], NAACP Records, Group 2, box A314, folder 7, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division (LC-­ M); Charles Lucas to Roy [Wilkins], August 8, 1953, NAACP Records, group 2, box A314, folder 7, LC-­M; “Some Considerations in Dealing with Housing Problems,” January 1958, box 41, folder 1058, MS 4254 Temple Emanu El Records, WRHS; Call &Post, August 22, 1959; “Housing Crisis: Presented . . . at the Intergroup Relations Workshop, Western Reserve University, November 6–­­7, 1959,” National Urban League Records, box 1, C52, “Affiliates File, Cleveland, Ohio, 1959–­1960” folder, LC-­M; Call & Post, August 29, 1959. On the incident’s successful mediation, see Michney, Surrogate Suburbs, 125–­135. 52. Call & Post, July 20, 1963; Call & Post, June 29, 1963; Call & Post, July 6, 1963; Call & Post, November 7, 1964; Cleveland Press, April 2, 1959; “Revised Long Range Plan and Program,” January  16, 1962, box 43, folder 12, MS 3514 Cleveland Development Foundation Records, WRHS. On a less-­successful wartime effort by a Jewish contractor, see Call & Post, November  1, 1947. For the considerable number of Jewish developers working in Cleveland, see “Builders Division, Contractors and Suppliers Unit,” February 16, 1959, box 22, folder 335, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS. 53. For examples of anti-­Semitism directed toward Jewish real estate brokers, see “From Ray Kraft,” July 1961 and “From Mrs. Phillip Indriola,” [March 1961?], JKP, WRHS. On the exclusion of blacks and Jews from real estate associations, see Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 195, 248; and Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 133–­134. On blockbusting tactics and responses, see Amanda I. Seligman, “‘Apologies to Dracula, Werewolf, Frankenstein’: White Homeowners and Blockbusters in Chicago,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 94 (Spring 2001): 70–­95. 54. See the named chapter in Eugene J. Lipman and Albert Vorspan, eds., A Tale of Ten Cities: The Triple Ghetto in American Religious Life (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1962), but apparently the phrase dates to the mid-­1950s; “Estimating Cleveland’s Jewish Population,” January 1980, box 12, folder 188, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS. 55. Jewish neighborhoods that turned over later (after 1960) sometimes experienced a more contentious dynamic; see Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985); and Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon, The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions (New York: Free Press, 1992).

chapter 8

Q

JEWISH SUBURBANIZATION AND JEWISH PRESENCE IN THE “CITY WITHOUT JEWS” J. Mark Souther

In the early 1960s, Sidney Z. Vincent, executive director of Cleveland’s Jewish Community Federation (JCF), called Cleveland a “City without Jews.” Vincent observed that of one thousand Jewish students graduating from public high schools in Cuyahoga County in June 1961, only six earned their diplomas inside the city of Cleveland. Unlike Catholic “nationality groups,” which did not “totally abandon the old neighborhoods” but instead “spread outward from a home base that remains identifiably and substantially Hungarian or Polish or whatever[,] the Jewish withdrawal is total and rapid.” And unlike the general dispersal of urban residents across the suburban landscape, he found a continued clustering of Jewish residence in a handful of East Side suburbs.1 Vincent was hardly exaggerating, but his comments also did not capture the full story. JCF estimates demonstrated that the proportion of Jewish children in Cleveland’s public schools dropped from 53 percent in 1944 to less than 2 percent in 1961, but even the suburban Cleveland Heights–­University Heights school system’s proportion of Jewish public school pupils sagged from a 1955 peak of almost 51 percent to 47 percent six years later. Had he been commenting on the matter in the late 1960s, Vincent would have found that the more newsworthy statistic was that for the first time, more than 60 percent of Jewish children were enrolled outside both the Cleveland and Cleveland Heights–­University Heights systems.2 Indeed, not only had Cleveland lost nearly all its Jewish population, but the inner-­ring suburbs also were at a crossroads in their appeal to Jews. Jewish flight from Cleveland, which occurred primarily between the 1920s and 1950s and was perhaps swifter and more complete than in most American 1 62

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cities, continued a pattern of outward movement from the urban core that had been under way since the nineteenth century.3 The pattern, if more pronounced, would not have been unfamiliar to Jews in many other cities. As Deborah Dash Moore has observed, Jews flowed into the suburbs (or at least into suburblike sections inside the corporate limits of cities) in the interwar years. Moore argues that “the children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants embraced the American dream of home ownership and suburban living. Like other Americans, Jews wanted the cleanliness, quiet, and security that comes from living in a relatively homogeneous, middle-­class community.”4 Of course, the pull of suburbia could not be easily disentangled from the fear of racial change as African Americans overflowed the bounds of the Cedar-­Central “ghetto” on the city’s East Side. Yet once Jews crossed outside the city limits, their movement triggered changes beyond the neighborhood level. Jews were already largely absent from the city’s leading industrial firms and from participation in business deals hatched inside the stuffy confines of the Union Club, but their exodus to the suburbs also effectively muted their voice in city government.5 Jewish civic influence in Cleveland continued but, as in other cities, it was largely what historian Lila Corwin Berman has called a “politics of remote urban activism.”6 Although the JCF moved its offices to a new building on Euclid Avenue in 1965 in a symbolic commitment to downtown Cleveland, its work inside the central city, led mostly by Jewish suburbanites, was increasingly one of trying to offset urban decay through investments in health and welfare while also reacting to the Jewish exodus to the eastern suburbs.7 Jewish institutions had to grapple with how to maintain their relevance as upwardly mobile Jews sought suburban lifestyles for many of the same reasons as non-­Jews: the rise of the automobile, the baby boom and veterans’ return in a time of postwar prosperity, and federal inducements such as the Federal Housing Authority and Veterans Affairs mortgage assistance programs. So attractive were the suburbs that in 1959, Jewish author Herman Wouk dubbed suburbia “a graveyard of Jewishness.” As historian Edward S. Shapiro argues, “In the compacted Jewish neighborhoods of the cities, Jewish identity was absorbed through osmosis. In suburbia, it had to be nurtured.”8 A large body of work on the implications of Jewish suburbanization on the retention of Jewishness appeared in the 1950s and 1960s. These works (and most notably, Herbert J. Gans’s study of Jewish families in postwar Park Forest, Illinois) contended that Jews of the Reform Jewish tradition sought to fashion institutional structures in the suburbs to transmit a sense of Jewish identity to their children.9 From such studies, one might infer that Jewish planning institutions merely facilitated grassroots efforts by suburbanizing Jews to re-­create Jewish social networks in the suburbs. However, Jewish institutional planners did not simply react to Jewish mobility; they placed themselves at the heart of debates over how to maintain Jewish cohesion in the face of decentralization. Indeed, as Rachel Kranson has argued,

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Jewish institutional leaders were not responding to postwar upward mobility with detachment—­they personally joined the Jewish move to suburbia. American Jews reaffirmed their identity alongside their embrace of normative suburban lifestyles by investing themselves in buildings and social practices that “signified their willingness to publicly assert their Jewish difference in front of non-­Jewish neighbors in their new, suburban communities.”10 Their enthusiastic embrace of the dual trappings of middle-­class suburban life and the Jewish institutional structure of their religious and social being belied the worst fears of postwar commentators and emboldened Jewish institutional leaders to embrace suburbanization. This chapter explores Jewish suburbanization in Cleveland, primarily in the 1940s to 1970s, focusing on how established Jewish institutions tried to lend structure to this relentless movement. It seeks to account for why some Jewish institutions persisted longer than others in the city and what prompted many to move. It also examines how the Jewish Welfare Federation (JWF) and its successor, the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland (the main policymaking organization in the Jewish community), as well as the Council Educational Alliance (CEA) and its successor, the Jewish Community Centers (JCC) of Cleveland, worked to find the proper balance between facilitating and resisting the pressure of suburbanization. Even as Jews streamed eastward into several suburbs, their predominant concentration in Cleveland Heights prompted in leaders a greater degree of introspection about the consequences of upward mobility in the 1960s than at any point up to that time. However, despite the success their stabilization efforts enjoyed in the 1960s and 1970s, Jewish community leaders also could not ignore the fact that their institutions were continuing to lose their hold on more and more members who were moving further into the outer suburbs. Rather than succumb to what one scholar has called the “mordant tone” of contemporary popular literature on the implications of suburbanization for Jewish life, these leaders demonstrated through their actions a willingness to embrace and shape Jewish community development in suburbia. They did so by using Jewish suburban institutions as social gathering points that could provide what had already been established in urban neighborhoods for generations. Far from a “graveyard for Jewishness,” the suburbs had the potential to be the cradle of a “religious revival.”11

To Stay or to Go? Tellingly, as early as 1936, the Council Educational Alliance opened its first extension programs in homes in Superior-­Through, the easternmost portion of the heavily Jewish Glenville neighborhood and so named for the Superior Avenue streetcar line that passed through it. The CEA’s extension model, developed in Cleveland, reportedly set the standard for Jewish community centers nationwide. It was also an early recognition that even at its height Glenville was already something of a

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Figure 8.1  Jewish suburban community, Cleveland, Ohio, 1957. From “Jewish Suburban Population Movement in Cleveland and Its Impact on Communal Institutions,” a report to the Committee on Community Organization Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds prepared by research director Judah Rubinstein, May 1957.

revolving door rather than a stable community.12 For nearly two decades, a growing number of Jewish families had been moving another two miles southeastward, into Cleveland Heights, which in turn led to the earliest Jewish institutional presence in the suburb: Montefiore Home opened in 1921, and the Temple on the Heights, the new home of the B’nai Jeshurun congregation, arrived five years later.13 By 1937, as determined by extrapolation from census tract data, Jewish institutional membership lists, and Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) absenteeism in public schools, the largest concentrations of Jews were all on the eastern edges of the city in Glenville and Mount Pleasant (Kinsman).14 The 1940s and 1950s proved fateful decades in terms of institutional decisions about Jews’ future in the city. The growing virulence of German anti-­Semitism raised concerns that Jewish institutions might lose their hold on Jews and thereby bring the erosion of Jewish communal life. By the early 1940s, Rabbi Armond E. Cohen began to see the need to relocate Anshe Emeth–­Beth Tefilo, then housed in the Cleveland Jewish Center on East 105th Street, to catch up with a congregation that had largely abandoned Glenville for Cleveland Heights. The script of a

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1941 speech likely written by Cohen warned that as part of a call to catch up to an increasing suburban Jewish population, “every Synagogue is in itself a fortress of Jewish life, and at a tragic time when European Jewry is being liquidated, we must think not only of holding every fortress in America, but even of expanding the frontiers of Judaism here.”15 More than merely a need to pick up and move to keep Jewish life from atomizing, however, the congregation’s leaders understood the imperative of investing in children to forge the “new Jewish community” and the power of a suburban setting to achieve that end, stating, The free American Jew must be nurtured on the most progressive educational methods employed in progressive Jewish schools, on recreation in the outdoors, on religious training, close to nature itself. The new American Jew begins at three in the happy atmosphere of a Jewish Nursery. Summers are spent in a Jewish camp. He works with his hands, in studio and workshop. He explores the woodlands and walks along the stream. His is the joyous experience of growing up and learning to love a Judaism which is uniquely American. The New Park Synagogue will be a Center for rearing this Jew.16

The decision to recenter the congregation in Cleveland Heights built upon a series of growing investments there. Four years after establishing a Heights branch of the congregation in 1938, Rabbi Cohen and fellow congregational leaders acquired thirty-three wooded acres on Mayfield Road, including Park School, a school originally opened with support from John D. Rockefeller, whose Forest Hill estate lay nearby. In 1943 they converted it into Park Religious School and also established Park Hebrew Academy and Park Day Camp. After the war, in consultation with close advisors, Cohen reached the decision to build what became known as Park Synagogue upon its completion in 1950.17 Other prominent Jewish institutions in the city of Cleveland faced similar decisions relating to the need to serve an increasingly suburban population. In 1945 the JWF Social Action Committee noted “shifts in the Jewish population” and questioned whether Mt. Sinai Hospital should not move eastward, but within a few years, it was decided that it would remain at its location, since even when the hospital had been near the heart of the Jewish community, two-­thirds of its outpatients had been non-­Jews.18 Unlike Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner’s Anshe Chesed congregation, which left its Euclid Avenue Temple to build in the suburban village of Beachwood in the 1950s, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver committed to keeping The Temple–­Tifereth Israel on East 105th Street and set out around 1950 to acquire adjacent property for Silver Park to serve as a buffer against the encroachment of blight.19 The Temple, like Mt. Sinai to its north, persisted for decades in the thriving University Circle institutional district. Institutions that stayed in the city, however, were very much exceptions to the rule of following population flight to the suburbs. Jewish leaders demonstrated

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great adroitness when contemplating how to keep pace with the continually recentering Jewish population. The JWF emerged after World War II as the entity most responsible for reorienting Jewish institutions to serve an increasingly suburban population. Through studies, surveys, and directives, the JWF provided leadership and resources to facilitate relocation. Likewise, the formation of the JCC, an amalgamation of several agencies initiated in 1948 and made permanent four years later, gave its activities an “essentially suburban orientation.”20 As the Cleveland Press editorialized in 1950, JCC leaders “are sensitive to new developments and new shifts in the Jewish community They don’t remain in one spot until the need has gone.”21 For most institutions after World War II, whether to stay or to go was not the question—­rather, it was when to go. Still, such convulsive change produced great strain on institutions. Communal agencies had to serve new population concentrations “while not forsaking declining Jewish areas.”22 Institutions resisted establishing beachheads in advance of the leading edge of population movement out of concern that doing so might accelerate that movement, but at the same time, they had to be vigilant to avoid falling too far behind the migration. In short, they had to walk the fine line between leading and trailing. To be sure, the phenomenon of uprooting was not without critics. In an article in Die Yiddishe Velt (The Jewish world) in 1945, the Orthodox Jewish rabbi Israel Porath of Cleveland Heights deplored the pull that upward mobility exerted on Jews. After recounting earlier Jewish migrations within the Cleveland corporate limits, Rabbi Porath noted that “the prosperity coming from the bloody war has once more made everyone drunk. We see once again how Jewish neighborhoods are becoming abandoned and emptied. . . . The synagogues that have just been freed from their mortgages are simultaneously becoming abandoned by their members and supporters.”23 Although Rabbi Porath was specifically referencing Orthodox synagogues, his lament surely was not alien to Reform and Conservative Jewish leaders.

The Rise of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights The acceleration of Jewish suburbanization and its impact on Jewish communal life are perhaps best viewed in the twin transitions of Jews from Superior-­ Through to Cleveland Heights and from Mount Pleasant to Shaker Heights. By the war’s end, some forty thousand Jews lived in Cleveland Heights.24 Temple on the Heights, on Mayfield Road near Lee Road in Cleveland Heights, began a canteen for youth, and the Jewish Young Adult Bureau (one of the agencies that later coalesced into the JCC) and B’nai B’rith had offered their own high school groups since before the war.25 The rapid movement of Jewish residents to Cleveland Heights led the Council Educational Alliance (CEA) to open Heights House in a rented building at 1905 Lee Road in 1945. At that time, the original

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CEA, located in the East 105th Street area in the heart of Glenville, was converted into an extension service, which would continue “as long as the population needs required it.”26 Arlington House, a CEA branch facility at 893 East 123rd Street in the Superior-­Through neighborhood, remained fairly stable during the 1940s as it and nearby East Cleveland absorbed some of the eastward migration from the East 105th area, but by the mid-­1950s, the pull of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights was being felt. In part the CEA’s (and subsequently, the JCC’s) own actions abetted the process; Heights House intensified service to junior high youth through its centralization of canteens at the Masonic temple at Lee and Mayfield Roads.27 However, the JCC responded to clear shifts already under way. Families with junior high or high school–­aged children were moving away so that the youth could be closer to more of their peers. Between 1951 and 1954 alone, there had been a 59 percent drop in junior high students and an astounding 76 percent drop in senior high students living in the Arlington House service area.28 Arlington House remained open, but it noted a decided shift in activities toward those that appealed to the “older Jews” who remained as well as English classes for the “New Americans” (immigrants) whose arrival prevented the wholesale collapse of Jewish presence in that area.29 The JCC also remained involved through the end of the decade in the Glenville Area Community Council and played a leading role in creating the Superior-­Through Neighborhood Organization, both of which were important community-­building vehicles for the incoming African American population drawn by the better housing opportunities that Glenville afforded.30 Four miles south of Glenville, where Mt. Pleasant House had operated since 1928 at 13512 Kinsman Road, much discussion after the war regarded relocating Mt. Pleasant House to the east. Most of the Jewish student population in 1946 lived to either side of Kinsman Road, between East 140th Street and the Shaker Heights border in Cleveland and south of Kinsman Road in the Moreland and Lomond school districts in southern Shaker Heights. Some argued that relocating near the intersection of Kinsman and Lee Roads made the most sense, while others contended that with ongoing eastward movement, a location nearer Kinsman and Warrensville Center Roads might be warranted. The Jewish Welfare Federation’s Subcommittee on Program and Facilities discussed the problem of transportation. Building too far east of Lee Road would create a hardship in that it would not be well served by public transportation. Thus the pull of suburbia was held somewhat in check by the amenities of the city. The committee resolved to seek advice from real estate agents. It is interesting to note that Jewish leaders sought guidance from the very people who had a hand in shaping future population movements through discriminatory practices.31 In 1947, sensing the eastward drift of the area’s Jewish population toward Shaker Heights, the CEA’s Mt. Pleasant Advisory Committee recommended renting a storefront in the Kinsman-­Lee district to start an extension program.

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In December 1949, a report by the Mt. Pleasant Advisory Committee likened the intensifying population shift in the Kinsman area to those in the East 105th Street area. It noted that Kinsman’s Jewish population, like the Jewish school-­age population three years earlier, now resided mostly east of Mt. Pleasant House. At that point, the committee recommended acquiring an eight-­room house at 3638 Lee Road and selling the Mt. Pleasant House.32 Despite the care that went into the matter, the burden of needing to be on top of population movement arguably helped redraw perceptual boundaries, thereby making Mt. Pleasant House’s decline as a Jewish center a self-­fulfilling prophecy. Indeed, after the Shaker-­ Lee House opened in 1950, Mt. Pleasant House remained open for two more years but found that whatever families with children remained nearby no longer patronized the old branch, preferring the new facility and the upwardly mobile connotation its name bestowed. Their choices had consigned Mt. Pleasant House to failure years before the JCC sold the facility in 1952 to be used “by a group of Negro masonic lodges.” The closure of Mt. Pleasant House, which had served as the largest CEA facility, also left the JCC with no well-­equipped center.33 As the population continued to grow in Cleveland Heights, there was much talk about establishing an all-­inclusive Jewish Community Center that would be centrally located to serve the Jewish community. In 1946 the discussion of location focused on University Circle and the Cedar-­Taylor area of eastern Cleveland Heights. Despite some expressed concerns about “the character of amusements and some businesses” (an oblique reference to the Euclid–­East 105th Street “second downtown” area), a University Circle location had the advantage of being well positioned to attract both nearby college students and, in the daytime, professionals from downtown. To some, however, University Circle would become more and more peripheral as the Jewish population filtered farther east. By that calculus, even Cedar-­Taylor—­the heart of the Jewish community—­might soon be left behind. The Subcommittee on Program and Facilities recommended establishing a community center in Cedar-­Taylor with extensions operating in homes or existing facilities.34 In the meantime, JCC service continued at Heights House. Using a 1955 JCF survey by demographer Howard Whipple Green, Jewish leaders learned that an estimated thirty thousand Jews lived in census tracts more or less within a two-­ mile radius of the Prentiss estate on Mayfield Road near Taylor Road, which represented a 54 percent increase over Green’s 1937 estimate. In 1955 the JCC board approved the purchase of part of the Prentiss estate, even though Green’s report noted a clear eastward trend of population toward the vicinity of Cedar and Green Roads.35 Other sites under consideration for a central Jewish Community Center were, with the exception of Park Synagogue, all in Beachwood, where Cleveland City Planning Commission member and former CEA president George B. Mayer argued it made more sense to locate, in order to be ahead of population movement rather than locating in the ephemeral center of the

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current Jewish community.36 Unlike in 1945, when the Jewish influx into the Heights was in full swing, by the late 1950s, the discourse about locating a new central JCC facility was less attuned to anticipating future growth than it was to conserving the Jewish population in the Heights. In a letter to the Cleveland Heights City Council to request rezoning of land for a Jewish Community Center on Mayfield Road, Morton L. Mandel pointed out that the JCC’s services were “a deterrent to decay psychologically and physically,” adding that the JCC (and by implication the general presence of Jews) tended to “stabilize property values.”37 The JCC’s decision to build the main community center in a suburb contrasts with the decision behind the Jewish Community Center of Detroit, which, as Lila Corwin Berman writes, located the new main facility in the northwestern part of the city in the late 1950s even after opening a new branch in suburban Oak Park (which was becoming a magnet for Jews).38 The unified Jewish Community Center opened in Cleveland Heights in 1961, symbolically erasing East 105th Street and Kinsman Road as centers of Jewish civic life.

The Challenges of Jewish Suburbanization The mere presence of appreciable numbers of Jews set the Heights suburbs apart from most of Cleveland’s suburban communities. Why did Jews move so preponderantly into the Heights, when much of suburbia possessed what many saw as better housing? To varying degrees, many ethnic groups fanned outward along identifiable paths. For instance, many Polish and Ukrainian Catholics coursed southward from the inner-­city Tremont neighborhood to suburban Parma and later to more distant North Royalton. The answer probably also lies partly in the Heights’s proximity to a concentration of academic and cultural institutions in University Circle, the early establishment of Jewish institutions in Cleveland Heights, and the reputation of Shaker Heights as a prestigious address. However, as Sidney Vincent and Judah Rubinstein observed, the tendency of Jews to “cluster” in parts of the Heights also reflected a legacy of restrictive covenants and an “unmistakable” nudge by real estate agents, who routinely steered homebuyers by identifying certain areas as Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant throughout the postwar period, until they were largely compelled by activism and lawsuits to abandon steering in the 1970s. Ironically, Leonard and Max Ratner’s Forest City Materials and its subsidiary, Sunrise Development Company (which sold suburban building lots to builders on the condition that Forest City supplied lumber for home construction), were powerful shapers of postwar suburbanization in communities that neither welcomed nor attracted Jewish homebuyers.39 If, however, the Jewish presence was in fact a stabilizing force in a community, this was not universally recognized even in Cleveland Heights or Shaker Heights, each of which harbored some who sought to impede Jewish entry.

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Cleveland Heights’s Jewish population lived primarily in the center of that suburb, between Cedar and Mayfield Roads, while most of its non-­Jewish population lived either to the south of Cedar Road or to the north of Mayfield Road. In the latter category was the Forest Hill subdivision (originally developed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. on his father’s former summer estate), which had remained exclusionary toward Jews since the 1930s by means of close interaction with realtors and a secret committee of the Forest Hill Homeowners Association (FHHA). The committee had to approve all sales of property, although a single Jewish owner managed to purchase there during the three ensuing decades.40 One JCF official observed that on approaching the Forest Hill neighborhood from the south in the evening during December, “you move from blackness of night into an absolute[ly] dazzling array of Christmas tree decorations and you can tell exactly where you are.”41 Forest Hill was said to be the locus of efforts around 1956 to build a second public high school on the Severance estate along Mayfield Road to remove youth in northern Cleveland Heights from the majority-­Jewish Cleveland Heights High School.42 The effort, which proved unsuccessful, only built on preexisting efforts to segregate non-­Jews in the Forest Hill section from the predominantly Jewish Boulevard Elementary School by drawing school district boundaries in such a way that they attended the heavily non-­Jewish Noble Elementary instead.43 Some FHHA members also allegedly objected to the location of the new Jewish Community Center across Taylor Road but were powerless to stop it. Even so, the Cleveland Heights City Council speedily approved the building of Lutheran High School even as it delayed permitting for the Jewish Community Center’s construction next door.44 Shaker Heights had more in common with Forest Hill than with Cleveland Heights in general with regard to its history of anti-­Semitism. While Jews moved unmolested into much of Cleveland Heights, in 1925, the Van Sweringen Company—­the developer behind Shaker Heights—­asked homeowners to have their deeds reissued with an additional restrictive covenant that responded obliquely to the efforts of Jews and African Americans to acquire homes in Shaker. This covenant required the consent of the majority of the nearest twenty-­one neighboring property owners in order to sell one’s own property—­a powerful deterrent to selling to non-­Christians and nonwhites. However, some residents failed to submit their deeds for revision, especially to the west of Lee Road. Although the covenant was never universally implemented in these older parts of Shaker, the Van Sweringen Company managed to enforce it in the mostly postwar “Club Section” of the suburb to the east of Warrensville Center Road until the JCF forced its hand in September 1953.45 Likewise, village leaders in Beachwood and Pepper Pike, which lay to the east of Shaker Heights, attempted to resist the Jewish influx. In December 1951, the Anshe Chesed congregation sought a building permit to erect a new temple on Fairmount Boulevard in Beachwood, which drew fire from the village council on the

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grounds that its large size would worsen traffic, although some residents also voiced anti-­Semitic views about the proposal. Meanwhile, many residents also protested village approval to build the much smaller Suburban Temple in 1953, which put the village council in the position of having to approve it if project size were to be cited as a legitimate factor. The village relented in the fight against Anshe Chesed until a court order by the Ohio Supreme Court in 1954 compelled issuing a permit for Fairmount Temple.46 Pepper Pike’s mayor and the city council worked to maintain Van Sweringen restrictions, only grudgingly accepting Jewish homebuyers in the 1950s due to a gentlemen’s agreement with real estate leaders to attempt to set a quota of 25 percent of homes as the maximum proportion that should be sold to Jews.47 Beginning in 1956, residents in the largely non-­Jewish portion of Beachwood to the south of Fairmount Boulevard attempted to secede from the heavily Jewish northern portion of the village to form a township as a first step toward annexation by Shaker Heights. Their effort, which was stymied by an Ohio Supreme Court ruling in 1958, was ostensibly undertaken solely to ensure access to the Shaker Heights school system. However, as Sidney Vincent rightly observed, in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, “Few situations present ‘clean’ examples of bigotry; there is almost always a complicated intermingling of economic, sociological, psychological, and religious interests.”48 Because the exodus of Jewish residents and institutions concentrated so preponderantly in the Heights, it placed additional strains on smaller satellite communities of Jews who relocated to other suburbs. The growing Jewish community in Euclid, a suburb located to the northeast of Cleveland, posed problems for Jewish leaders soon after World War II. An estimated 165 Jewish families lived in Euclid right after the war.49 Parents were concerned about the lack of social opportunities for their children, and some moved away from Euclid when their children reached adolescence. In this way they were not unlike their counterparts in older in-­town neighborhoods left behind in the wake of the wave of suburbanization. Yet the situation was different in certain respects, as many Jewish residents encountered anti-­Semitism in the public schools, when dealing with real estate agents, and especially in their use of the lake beaches.50 Nevertheless, Euclid still showed promise as a center for Jewish life. Encouraged by the growth of the Euclid Jewish Center, a Conservative congregation with about six hundred families, in 1957, the JCC finally launched a new Euclid extension program. However, after only a few months, Jewish leaders lamented that interest already was falling off. This they blamed in part on the dispersion of families (few streets in Euclid had more than five Jewish households, and a considerable number of families lived as far away as Lake County) and in part on growing participation in other Euclid-­area Jewish organizations like B’nai B’rith and non–Jewish-specific organizations like parent-teacher associations, Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, the League of Women Voters, and bowling clubs.51 The challenge underscored the dilemma faced by the Jewish community as it sought

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simultaneously to recenter itself in the Heights and to support Jewish families either left behind in the city or dispersing across the suburban landscape.

The Specter of Decline in Kinsman-­ Shaker and Cleveland Heights Writing in the closing months of World War II, Rabbi Israel Porath had hoped, like other Jewish leaders, for an enduring recentralization of Jewry in the Heights. Like the others, he had seen in Cleveland Heights not only the latest manifestation of a restlessness that continued to unhinge Jews and their synagogues but also an opportunity to stem the tide of relocation. Unlike the post–­World War I migration from the urban core that was geographically divided by class, in Cleveland Heights after World War II, Porath believed, “The new settlement will be made up of all three classes together: professionals, businessmen and workers.”52 However, even the presence of a wide socioeconomic range within the Jewish population proved unable to prevent the allure of more distant suburbs and concerns about decline from eroding the Heights’s centrality. The early 1960s marked a crossroads in the suburbanization of the Jewish community, bringing not only the end of group service activities inside the Cleveland city limits but also the first expressions of concern about deterioration in the suburbs. Just five years after the Shaker-­Lee House opened in 1950, new JCF data on Yom Kippur school absences revealed “major shifts” away from the Kinsman (and Arlington) section of the city and into the Heights and Shaker school systems.53 The Shaker-­Lee House reported as early as 1956 that in spite of growing overall participation in its programs, the response from residents to the north and east of the branch (i.e., Shaker Heights) was lagging, writing, “We find a feeling that the branch has little status in the community, and, therefore, people are reluctant to use us. Redecorating has helped this somewhat, but it is too deep a feeling to overcome with so simple a solution.”54 Two years later, the Shaker-­ Lee House all but blamed this loss of interest on “growing restlessness” near East 154th Street just outside Shaker, from which Jewish parents fled to “to avoid using the nearby [Alexander Hamilton] Junior High School where the Negro population has been growing.”55 Despite its location almost on the doorstep of tony Shaker Heights—­a place that just eleven years earlier had seemed a choice location—­by 1961 the Shaker-­ Lee House reported being surrounded by an “unsettled neighborhood” beset by “population shifts” that had caused its teen membership to withdraw over the previous few years.56 As part of an effort to bolster a new center of Jewish civic life around the new Jewish Community Center in Cleveland Heights, that year the JCC’s board finally closed its Shaker-­Lee and Arlington houses.57 Even Cleveland Heights—­with its new Jewish Community Center and large concentration of Jewish synagogues, social organizations, schools, and stores—­was

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beginning to face growing concerns about instability. By 1963 JCC staff began reporting concerns about the “lower Coventry area” near Mayfield Road, including “an influx of New Americans, Golden Agers and marginal families”—­by which they surely meant new Eastern European immigrants and elderly and single-­parent households. The United Youth Program of the Cleveland Welfare Federation also cited the Coventry district as one having “serious teen-­age problems,” leading one JCC board member to observe that Coventry seemed to be going the way of Glenville and Mount Pleasant. By 1965 a JCC committee report characterized Coventry as a place suffering “social and physical deterioration.”58 By 1969, just eight years after opening, the Jewish Community Center in Cleveland Heights had reportedly reached “the saturation point” in terms of its capacity to offer activities. Despite being at its peak, however, the center also now stood on the periphery of the Jewish community, whose geographic center had continued its push in what was now clearly a southeasterly direction toward Beachwood. Cleveland Heights High School, which once enrolled a Jewish majority, now counted only about five hundred Jews among its three thousand students. Jewish leaders lamented that public transportation was wanting in these newer areas, and they responded by starting their first extension efforts aimed at youth in three facilities in Beachwood in the late 1960s.59 With the departure of senior adult residential communities like Menorah Park and Montefiore Home to Beachwood, the Cleveland Heights Jewish Community Center was particularly ill positioned to serve the elderly.60 Over the next three years, the proportion of non-­Jews among new center’s members soared from 11 to 28 percent, in part reflecting the changing population of Cleveland Heights.61 Many Jews accepted and even actively supported the racial integration of Cleveland Heights, working within and across race and faith boundaries to fight blockbusting and racial steering, stimulate housing renovation, support open housing, bolster the public school system, and invigorate neighborhood social organizations.62 However, not everyone was so supportive. Many remembered the rapid racial transition that transformed the East 105th Street Jewish neighborhood in the 1940s and 1950s and saw in Cleveland Heights the leading edge of a similar transition along with a similarly concerning influx of “hippies and motorcyclists” in the Coventry area.63 Although Cleveland Heights saw at least token integration citywide in the 1960s, the bulk of the integration occurred “on or near Lee Road south of Mayfield Road . . . on the edge of the center of Jewish institutional life.”64 One man voiced his fear that African Americans were “overrunning the neighborhood surrounding the JCC” and said he did not agree that “we Jews had to assume the full white man’s burden” until West Side suburbs like Parma “would agree to take their fair share.” Whatever might be said regarding his mind-­set about race, the man rightly understood the costs of constantly fleeing change: “Where are we going to go, and who is going to pay for the next generation of institutional buildings?” he asked.65

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The 1970 announcement of the planned departure of the Temple on the Heights (B’nai Jeshurun), which in the 1920s had been the first Jewish synagogue established in Cleveland Heights, to the corner of Fairmount Boulevard and Brainard Road in Pepper Pike dramatized the situation. Following a vote by B’nai Jeshurun’s board to move in 1969, Rabbi Rudolph M. Rosenthal and congregation president and building committee chair Nathan Oscar wrote to congregation members to justify the board’s action. They argued that the decision was shaped by the fact that several other Jewish institutions had already made similar decisions. The synagogue, like Anshe Chesed, faced challenges to its move. After Pepper Pike residents approved a zoning ordinance to block construction of houses of worship in established residential areas, the congregation filed suit in 1974, ultimately leading to a ruling two years later against the constitutionality of the ordinance. Opposition also came from within, with many members hesitant to forsake Cleveland Heights. One opponent told the Plain Dealer, “I am opposed to status-­seeking in Pepper Pike. And I’m opposed to abandoning the Heights area.” Nevertheless, a certain sense of inevitability sometimes tempered such opposition with resignation. As this man’s wife pointed out, although some families left for other congregations to escape the pressure to follow their temple’s eastward leap, “My family hasn’t left, but we will when the first shovel goes in out in Pepper Pike.” B’nai Jeshurun’s move might have precipitated a quickening departure of Jews from the Heights were it not for the calmer response by the broader Jewish community.66 The JCF understood well the costs of keeping up with population shifts. It was in this context that it invested in the Heights Area Project on the cusp of the 1970s. The initiative, which developed out of recommendations in 1969 from a JCF-­assembled group of sixteen Cleveland Heights Jewish institutions called the Cleveland Heights Assembly, included both counseling and a mortgage assistance program to encourage young Jewish families to move into Cleveland Heights and neighboring University Heights. As Heights Area Project director Rabbi Marvin Spiegelman noted, the initiative’s chief aim was “to reassure Jews that these two cities are stable communities where they can satisfactorily continue to live.” It also worked through community meetings to dispel negative rumors that accompanied racial integration in the public school system. Working with synagogues that made affordable loans guaranteed by the JCF, the Heights Area Project also brought homes within reach of many families. The effort played no small role in staving off resegregation, a sharp contrast from what happened in the late 1960s in neighboring East Cleveland.67 The JCF’s Heights Area Project was not the only effort to preserve a vibrant Jewish community in Cleveland Heights. In 1970, when the JCC Study Committee recommended developing more substantive programs to the southeast, the JCC did not act on the recommendation out of an interest in “preserving Cleveland Heights.”68 Around this same time, Park Synagogue also made a commitment to

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maintain its primary facility in Cleveland Heights, even as it discussed establishing some eastern branch facilities and services, including a branch school. Rabbi Armond Cohen hoped that such services might cater to those living well east of Park while also serving “to halt the expensive and wasteful practice of synagogues in Cleveland transplanting themselves every twenty-­five or fifty years, leaving behind a record of blight.”69 Nevertheless, underscoring how torn the congregation was over standing pat versus following the eastward migration, internal debates raged throughout the 1970s amid growing concerns that the Park nursery school’s enrollment was plummeting. Revealingly, in 1975 Cohen wrote to Future of Park committee chairman Bert Wolstein that delays in approving a new branch school in Pepper Pike risked squandering the opportunity won in the hard-­fought battle to rezone land in the suburb. Cohen pointed to the inevitability he saw in the eastward drift of more than half of Park’s schoolchildren from the Heights, adding that he hoped not to renege on repeated and long-­standing promises to these families to build a branch school that might encourage them to maintain their affiliation without hardship. Similarly, one of Cohen’s letters in 1976, titled “SOUND AN ALARM!,” noted how the school’s declining numbers over several years made him hope that Sidney Vincent’s approval of “my urgent proposal for a school in Pepper Pike will be the signal to our laymen to move forward, and will bring to an end the halting, doubting and determined opposition of some in our midst who really believe that they have represented the interests of the broader Jewish community in opposing Park’s establishing a branch in the east.”70 Although the Heights Area Project proved successful in conserving a mostly Orthodox and Conservative Jewish concentration along or near Taylor Road, by the early 1980s, Jewish leaders could no longer ignore the recentering of most of the Jewish population in and around Beachwood. In the eight years after 1970, the Jewish population in Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, University Heights, and South Euclid dropped by 24 percent, while the Jewish population in Beachwood, Lyndhurst, Mayfield Heights, and Pepper Pike grew by over 30 percent.71 As of 1979, only 66 percent of all Jewish Community Center members were Jewish.72 Some ten years after the idea of moving east was first broached, leaders began discussing moving toward establishing two JCC facilities, being careful to plan the new facility in ways that would complement but not duplicate the offerings in the Cleveland Heights facility. In addition, the Jewish Community Center on Mayfield Road was to undergo a thorough renovation to maintain its attractiveness, taking advantage of the City of Cleveland Heights’s offer of “extensive funds” in exchange for a twenty-­year commitment to remain open.73 The dual-­JCC model, while representing a continuation of the longtime Jewish commitment to providing services for all Jews, was also something of a departure from earlier policies of following the population migration and scaling down services in the places they left. Like the Heights

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Figure 8.2  Park’s Future . . . And Yours! Fundraiser brochure for Park Synagogue, late 1960s. The million-­dollar fundraising campaign was to construct Kangesser Hall and a new school complex. (WRHS)

Area Project (and indeed because of the need to foster it in every possible way), the willingness to consider reinvesting in the Heights JCC represented the maturation of the idea that unabated suburban flight was the antithesis of metropolitan stability.74

Conclusion Over the years, commitments to retain a physical institutional presence in Cleveland and then Cleveland Heights have been difficult to maintain. Between 1986 and 2005, the Jewish Community Centers of Cleveland maintained twin centers in Cleveland Heights and Beachwood, but the recentering of Jewish life in Beachwood ultimately made the Heights facility’s continuation untenable. Likewise, after forty-­five years downtown, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland (as the Jewish Community Federation is now called) also moved to Beachwood. Though similar to other large concentrations of Jewish institutions, most notably in Detroit’s Oakland County suburbs of Oak Park and Southfield, Beachwood’s more recently constituted collective campus—­which includes the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, Jewish Community Center, The Temple–­Tifereth Israel, Mandel Day School, Fuchs Mizrachi School, and Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage—­reflects an uncommon geographic consensus

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among major Jewish institutions, the guiding hand of the Jewish Federation, and the availability of large tracts of undeveloped land near I-271 in recent years. Even as Beachwood became the focal point for Cleveland’s largest Jewish institutions, however, the arrival of Orthodox Jewish institutions in that suburb produced some of the same exclusionary tactics that were waged against Anshe Chesed in the 1950s.75 One may wonder what might have happened if Jewish institutions had chosen to invest for the long term in the University Circle district, which in recent years has continued to revitalize at an accelerating pace. The substantial renewal of both the downtown and University Circle reached a critical mass only after too much investment had rooted Jewish Cleveland eleven miles from downtown and seven from University Circle. Jewish Cleveland may be centered in Beachwood, but its focus is metropolitan. The onetime “City without Jews” is the beneficiary of long and deep commitments to arts and culture, health and welfare, education, and economic development. It is also showing signs of reversing an eastward trend more than a century in the making. In recent years, a synagogue in Solon closed after failing to grow, and groups such as the Urbanites and Chabad of Downtown Cleveland suggest that Jewish Millennials share the same sense of pull toward the city center as others in their age group. In fact, a telling example of the reverse flow is that Moishe House Cleveland (one of several dozen Moishe Houses worldwide that are part of a decade-­old program aimed at filling the social void between finishing college and starting a family) recently left Coventry in Cleveland Heights for Playhouse Square in downtown. Although it hardly seems likely that Beachwood will lose its status as the religious and civic heart of Jewish Cleveland anytime soon, there are signs that suburban living isn’t for everyone.76 If Sidney Vincent were able to see Cleveland today, would he still call it “City without Jews?”

notes 1. Eugene J. Lipman and Albert Vorspan, eds., A Tale of Ten Cities: The Triple Ghetto in American Religious Life (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1962), 46–­47, 55–­56. The chapter titled “Cleveland: City without Jews,” like other chapters in the book, was not credited in the publication, but Sidney Vincent is widely known as its author. 2. Jewish Community Federation, “Data on Yom Kippur Absences from Schools,” 1944, 1948, 1951, 1955, 1958, 1961, 1964, 1968, fig. 1, box 11, folder 185, MS 4563 Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Records (JCF), Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS). 3. The center of Jewish population had moved rapidly from the vicinity of Woodland Avenue and East 55th Street to Glenville and Mount Pleasant by the 1920s. See Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Cleveland (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society, 1978), 269. While Cleveland proper’s Jewish population tumbled from 70 percent in 1937 to only 5 percent in 1961, the city of Detroit’s share of the metropolitan Detroit Jewish population fell from 79 percent in 1958 to 55 percent in 1963. See [Regional Church Planning Office], “The Jewish Migration,” box 11, folder 184, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS; Lila Corwin Berman,

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Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 39. 4. Deborah Dash Moore, “Suburbanization in the United States,” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, March 1, 2009, Jewish Women’s Archive, accessed March 17, 2018, http://​jwa​.org/​encyclopedia/​article/​suburbanization​-in​-united​-states. 5. Lipman and Vorspan, Tale of Ten Cities, 50. 6. Lila Corwin Berman, “Jewish Urban Politics in the City and Beyond,” Journal of American History 99, no. 2 (September 2012): 516. 7. Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, s.v. “Jewish Federation of Cleveland,” accessed March 17, 2018, http://​ech​.case​.edu; Lipman and Vorspan, Tale of Ten Cities, 62. 8. Edward S. Shapiro, A Time for Healing: American Jewry since World War II, vol. 5, The Jewish People in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 147; “Graveyard of Jewishness” quote from Herman Wouk, This is My God (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), cited in Shapiro, A Time for Healing, 147. 9. Herbert J. Gans, “Park Forest: Birth of a Jewish Community,” Commentary, April 1, 1951. Other influential works include Judith R. Kramer and Seymour Leventman, Children of the Gilded Ghetto: Conflict Resolutions of Three Generations of American Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961); Marshall Sklare and Joseph Greenblum, Jewish Identity on the Suburban Frontier: A Study of Group Survival in the Open Society (New York: Basic Books, 1967); Benjamin B. Ringer, The Edge of Friendliness: A Study of Jewish–­Gentile Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1967); Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community (New York: Random House, 1967). 10. Rachel Kranson, Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 13, 95. 11. Riv-­Ellen Prell, “Community and the Discourse of Elegy: The Postwar Suburban Debate,” in Imagining the American Jewish Community, ed. Jack Wertheimer (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2007), 69, 73, 76. 12. “Report on the Branches [Shaker-­Lee, Heights and Arlington],” April 1958, box 12, folder 27, MS 3668 Jewish Community Centers of Cleveland Records (JCC), WRHS. 13. Judah Rubinstein with Jane Avner, Merging Traditions: Jewish Life in Cleveland, rev. ed. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2004), 187. 14. Judah Rubinstein, “Jewish Suburban Population Movement in Cleveland and Its Impact on Communal Institutions: A Report to the Committee on Community Organization, Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds” (presented to the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, May 6, 1957), pp. 2–­4, box 11, folder 184, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS. 15. [Armond E. Cohen?], untitled speech script, 1941, box 1, folder 6, MS 4763 Park Synagogue [Anshe Emeth–­Beth Tefilo] Records (PS), WRHS. 16. The Need for the Park Synagogue, [n.d., c. 1945], box 1, folder 13, MS 4763 PS, WRHS. 17. “A Brief History of the Park Synagogue,” typescript, 1968, box 2, folder 52, MS 4763 PS, WRHS; Henry A. Rocker, interview with Rabbi [Howard] Hirsch, June 15, 1966, transcript, pp. 16–­17, box 3, folder 79, MS 4763 PS, WRHS; Saul G. Stillman, “Ninety Years: A Minute in the Eye of God,” [n.d.], box 1, folder 5, MS 4957 Armond E. Cohen Papers (AEC), WRHS. 18. Social Agency Committee [Jewish Welfare Federation], “Minutes of Meeting,” April 6, 1945, box 6, folder 57, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Interview #165, MS 4219 Maurice Klain Cleveland Area Leadership Study Research Papers (MK), WRHS. The interviews transcribed in the Klain papers were conducted confidentially between 1957 and 1965. This essay uses random numbers for each interview subject to protect confidentiality. 19. Interviews #408 and #19, MS 4219 MK, WRHS. 20. Rubinstein, “Jewish Suburban Population Movement,” 10, 13–­15.

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21. “New Shaker-­Lee House Serves Important Community Purposes,” Cleveland Press, October 26, 1950, cited in Harold Arian, memo to Board of Trustees, October 27, 1950, box 12, folder 8, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 22. Rubinstein, “Jewish Suburban Population Movement,” 9. 23. Rabbi Israel Porath, “The Second Destruction of Cleveland Orthodox Synagogues” [Yiddish], Die yiddishe velt, March 28, 1945, 2. Translated from the Yiddish by Ira Robinson. 24. Social Agency Committee [Jewish Welfare Federation], “Minutes of Meeting,” November 18, 1947, box 6, folder 59, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 25. Group Work Study Committee [Jewish Welfare Federation], “Minutes of Meeting,” March 5, 1945, box 6, folder 61, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 26. Social Agency Committee [Jewish Welfare Federation], “Minutes of Meeting,” November 18, 1947, box 6, folder 59, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Jewish Welfare Federation, Sub-­ committee on Program and Facilities, “Minutes of Meeting,” April 10, 1946, box 6, folder 64, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 27. JCC, “Summary Report on Program Developments—­September, October, November 1955,” box 12, folder 19, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 28. Minutes, Board of Trustees of JCC of Cleveland, February 16, 1955, box 12, folder 14, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “A Report on the Teen Program of the JCCs,” February 1955, box 12, folder 23, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 29. Minutes, Board of Trustees of JCC of Cleveland, December 21, 1955, box 12, folder 14, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; “Report on the Branches [Shaker-­Lee, Heights and Arlington].” 30. Minutes, Board of Trustees of JCC of Cleveland, March 19, 1958, box 12, folder 15, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 31. Map of Area for Jewish Group Work Service, Kinsman-­Cleveland, Kinsman-­Shaker [n.d.], box 6, folder 62, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Jewish Welfare Federation, Sub-­committee on Program and Facilities, “Minutes of Meeting,” April 10, 1946, box 6, folder 64, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 32. Minutes, Board of Trustees of JCC of Cleveland, December 21, 1949, box 12, folder 13, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; George H. Hays (chairman, CEA), memo to CEA Interim Committee, December 14, 1949, box 12, folder 8, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 33. Minutes, Board of Trustees of JCC of Cleveland, January 16 and March 19, 1952, box 12, folder 13, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Rubinstein, “Jewish Suburban Population Movement,” 10. 34. Jewish Welfare Federation, Sub-­committee on Program and Facilities, “Minutes of Meeting held April 10, 1946,” box 6, folder 64, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Report of the Group Work Study Committee, September 1947, box 12, folder 24, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. Cedar-­ Taylor was named for the intersection of Cedar and Taylor Roads. 35. Minutes, Board of Trustees of JCC of Cleveland, April 20 and September 21, 1955, box 12, folder 14, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 36. Minutes, Board of Trustees of JCC of Cleveland, March 20, 1957, and January 22, 1958, box 12, folder 15, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 37. Morton L. Mandel to City Council, City of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, “Request for Rezoning for JCCs of Cleveland, Inc.,” April 24, 1958, box 12, folder 9, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 38. Berman, Metropolitan Jews, 41. 39. Interview #446, MS 4219 MK, WRHS; Jeffrey Morris, Beechwood, the Book ([Beachwood, Ohio]: self-­pub., [1998]), 54, accessed March 17, 2018, http://​web​.ulib​.csuohio​.edu/​ speccoll/​beechwood/. The Ratners’ influence on postwar residential development in the suburbs of Cleveland mirrored that of another Jewish developer, William Levitt, whose firm, Levitt & Sons, created massive Levittown developments in the suburbs of New York and Philadelphia. See Gans, Levittowners, 3. 40. Sidney Z. Vincent and Judah Rubinstein, Merging Traditions: Jewish Life in Cleveland (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society and Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, 1978), 18; Interview #526, MS 4219 MK, WRHS; Lipman and Vorspan, Tale of Ten Cities, 70.

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41. Interview #15, MS 4219 MK, WRHS. 42. Interviews #411 and #350, MS 4219 MK, WRHS; Lipman and Vorspan, Tale of Ten Cities, 70. 43. Interview #350, MS 4219 MK, WRHS. 44. Interview #526, MS 4219 MK, WRHS; Lipman and Vorspan, Tale of Ten Cities, 71. 45. Jewish Welfare Federation, “Memo on Jewish Population Trends and Transportation Plans for Shaker Heights,” May 1, 1946, box 6, folder 61, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS; Interview #185, MS 4219 MK, WRHS; Virginia P. Dawson, “Protection from Undesirable Neighbors: The Use of Deed Restrictions in Shaker Heights, Ohio,” Journal of Planning History 18, no. 2 (May 2019): 121–­122, 124–­125. 46. Morris, Beechwood, 43–­44. 47. Interviews #185 and #124, MS 4219 MK, WRHS; Lipman and Vorspan, Tale of Ten Cities, 70; Vincent and Rubinstein, Merging Traditions, 17. 48. Lipman and Vorspan, Tale of Ten Cities, 53, 70–­72. 49. Social Agency Committee [Jewish Welfare Federation], “Minutes of Meeting,” January 21, 1947, box 6, folder 59, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 50. Sanford Solender, memo to Henry Zucker, December 10, 1946, box 2, folder 28, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 51. “Jewish Center To Be Dedicated,” Plain Dealer, November 26, 1955, 8; Report on the Euclid Extension Program, February 1958, box 12, folder 27, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 52. Porath, “Second Destruction.” 53. Open letter to [JCC] board member, November 1955, box 12, folder 9, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 54. “The Shaker-­Lee Branch—­1956,” box 12, folder 27, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 55. “Report on the Branches [Shaker-­Lee, Heights and Arlington].” 56. “Shaker-­Lee Branch Report,” April 17, 1961, box 12, folder 25, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 57. Minutes, Board of Trustees of JCC of Cleveland, June 27, 1960, box 12, folder 15, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 58. Minutes, Board of Trustees of JCC of Cleveland, January 20, 1965, box 12, folder 16, MS 3668 JCC, WRHS. 59. “Request for New Position: Director of Extension Services [March 1969],” box 105, folder 3062, MS 4835 Jewish Community Federation Records, Series 2 (JCF II), WRHS. 60. JCC, “Board of Trustees Minutes,” June 20, 1973, box 105, folder 3064, MS 4835 JCF II, WRHS. 61. Herman Eigen to Stan Horowitz and Sid Vincent, April 25, 1972, box 105, folder 3063, MS 4835 JCF II, WRHS. 62. Marc Lee Raphael, “Jewish Responses to the Integration of a Suburb: Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 1960–­1980,” American Jewish Archives Journal 44, no. 2 (1992): 556–­557. 63. Raphael, “Jewish Responses,” 545, 548. 64. Raphael, 547. 65. Sanford Simon to Herman Eigen, March 14, 1973, box 105, folder 3063, MS 4835 JCF II, WRHS. 66. Raphael, “Jewish Responses,” 554–­555; Rudolph M. Rosenthal and Nathan Oscar to member, January 15, 1970, box 3, folder 33, MS 4276 B’nai Jeshurun Congregation Records, WRHS; Janice Munson, “‘Whither Thou Goest’: As Jewish Population Moves Eastward, Must the Temple?,” Plain Dealer, May 28, 1977, 1-­B. 67. Vincent and Rubinstein, Merging Traditions, 22; Jerry D. Barach, “Cleveland Heights—­ Can It Remain Jewish?,” Cleveland Jewish News, January 29, 1971, 1; “Project Assists Jews,” Plain Dealer, July 8, 1973, 10-­AA; Ceal Friedberg, “What Will Be Reaction to School Integration?,” Cleveland Jewish News, April 1, 1977, 1; Raphael, “Jewish Responses,” 550–­552. 68. Minutes, CSPC Executive Committee Meeting, November 11, 1980, box 105, folder 3067, MS 4835 JCF II, WRHS.

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69. Rabbi Armond E. Cohen, “Message to the Congregation at the [Park Synagogue] Annual Meeting,” Sunday, June 13, 1971, box 1, folder 6, MS 4957 AEC, WRHS. 70. [Armond E. Cohen] to Bert Wolstein [chairman, Future of Park committee], December 22, 1975, box 3, folder 18, AEC; Armond E. Cohen to Saul G. Stillman, June 15, 1976, box 3, folder 5, MS 4957 AEC, WRHS. 71. Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, “Estimating Cleveland’s Jewish Population, 1979: Report No. 2 of the Population Research Committee,” January 1980, p. 9, box 11, folder 188, MS 4563 JCF, WRHS. 72. “Forward Plan: Jewish Community Center of Cleveland,” June 18, 1980, box 105, folder 3067, MS 4835 JCF II, WRHS. 73. Minutes, JCF–­JCC Coordinating Committee, August 28 and October 23, 1985, box 105, folder 3066, MS 4835 JCF II, WRHS. 74. “Community Relations Committee Review of JCC Master Plan with Respect to Community Relations Questions,” March 4, 1982, box 105, folder 3066, MS 4835 JCF II, WRHS; “Forward Plan.” June 18, 1980, box 105, folder 3067, MS 4835 JCF II, WRHS. 75. Berman, Metropolitan Jews, 40; Samuel G. Freedman, “The Jewish Tipping Point,” New York Times Magazine, August 13, 2000, accessed March 17, 2018, http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​ 2000/​08/​13/​magazine/​the​-jewish​-tipping​-point​.html. 76. Jacqueline Mitchell, “It’s Official! Kol Chadash Votes to Disband,” Cleveland Jewish News, June 16, 2015, accessed March 17, 2018, http://​www​.clevelandjewishnews​.com/​news/​ local​_news/​it​-s​-official​-kol​-chadash​-votes​-to​-disband/​article​_7a80772c​-143e​-11e5​-91c3​ -5f749124ccc9​.html; “Chabad of Downtown Cleveland,” accessed March 17, 2018, http://​ www​.downtownchabad​.com; Ben Sattin, “‘Chopped’: Cleveland Edition,” Jewish Federation of Cleveland, May 28, 2015, accessed March 17, 2018, http://​www​.jewishcleveland​.org/​ news/​blog/​chopped​_cleveland​_edition/; Robert L. Smith, “Kibbutz-­Style Living Fills a Void for Twentysomethings at Moishe House in Cleveland Heights,” Plain Dealer, May 24, 2010, accessed March 17, 2018, http://​blog​.cleveland​.com/​metro/​2010/​05/​kibbutz​-style​_living​_fills​ _a​_v​.html; Moishe House—­Cleveland, http://​www​.moishehouse​.org/​houses/​cleveland; Dan Klein, “In Detroit, Jewish Resurgence Led by Young Aims to Transform City,” Cleveland Jewish News, December 1, 2011, accessed March 17, 2018, http://​www​.clevelandjewishnews​.com/​ news/​national​_world/​in​-detroit​-jewish​-resurgence​-led​-by​-young​-aims​-to​-transform/​ article​_a0b55d24​-1c42​-11e1​-9fd7​-001cc4c03286​.html.

chapter 9

Q

SUBURBAN TEMPLE AND THE CREATION OF POSTWAR AMERICAN JUDAISM Rachel Gordan

A younger generation of Jews sought to create a new American Judaism as they left behind urban enclaves after World War II and established new religious communities on the suburban frontiers. Suburban Temple, established in 1948, offers a case study of this new American Judaism. The first decade of Suburban Temple’s existence coincided with an era that was newly welcoming of American Jews. Safely in the middle class and beyond the struggle for economic survival that had characterized much of the first half of the twentieth century, postwar suburban Jews found themselves considering what forms of Jewish life were most viable for their communities. The question of how to create a meaningful Jewish life was not a significant concern for many non-­Orthodox Jews in the early twentieth century, when Jews’ foremost struggles focused on socioeconomic survival and overcoming anti-­Semitism. Before midcentury, Jewish religious practice resembled, more or less, that of previous generations, unless filial obligations weakened or adulthood offered the kinds of professional or social opportunities that seemed to call for an abandonment of Judaism. What had once existed in the realm of taken-­for-­granted facts—­that one was born Jewish—­in the postwar years turned into an option of whether and how to live Jewishly. During the first decade of Suburban Temple’s existence, serious discussion of religious services and religious education for both children and adults formed a thick strand of the community’s conversation. 183

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An investigation into the creation of Suburban Temple reveals how urgent these questions became for a generation that now understood itself as shaping its children into middle-­class Americans whose Cold War peers expected that they have some form of religion. Decisions about what kind of synagogue to establish and the form of its religious education were directly tied to the kind of future these Suburban Temple founders envisioned for their children.

Suburban Temple and Postwar American Judaism What did this new beginning represent to the temple’s founders, and what, if anything, does Suburban Temple illuminate about post–­World War II American Judaism? At a time when Judaism was being embraced as part of the nation’s vaunted Judeo-­ Christian tradition, Judaism had not just arrived, as many observed at the time; it was beginning a process of transformation in a newly welcoming and accepting American context. Once Jews had moved beyond the struggle for economic survival that had characterized much of the early twentieth century, postwar suburban Jews found themselves considering what forms of Jewish life were most viable for their communities. Religion acquired additional dimensions for Jews who were just becoming solidly middle class and being accepted by their non-­Jewish neighbors, who also expected some form of religious involvement on the part of all Americans.1 This external pressure, coupled with a Jewish desire to provide the younger generation with a religious identity—­which had become even more of an American requirement in the Cold War context—­made the question of how to live Jewishly more urgent than it had been for the previous Depression-­era generation. And yet those observing and writing about postwar American Judaism at midcentury noted the paradox of increased interest in religion, even as religious observance among Jews declined.2 At the 1957 meeting of the Synagogue Council of America—­an umbrella organization of the three major movements of American Judaism—­scholars and rabbis observed, “American Judaism is in the midst of a major revival that is more sociological than religious.”3 It was not a lack of interest in religion that Will Herberg and other sociologists of the Jews were observing; it was interest in a certain kind of Jewish religion. In his 1957 study, American Judaism, sociologist Nathan Glazer observed of this postwar Judaism prevalent in the suburbs, “American Jews, if they believe in anything, believe in the instrumental efficacy of religion, as do, of course, most American Catholics and Protestants. Judaism is good for the Jew. It keeps him mentally healthy and adjusted, and it keeps the Jewish people together.” More bluntly than many of the other scholars addressing the same topic, Glazer distilled the utilitarian perspective he found common among the younger postwar generation of Jews. The reality, Glazer explained, was this: “Most American Jews are incapable of giving a coherent statement

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of the main beliefs of the Jewish religion and tend to call ‘Judaism’ whatever views they happen to hold today.”4 Middle-­class status inspired new forms of Jewish religion, as Suburban Temple demonstrates. An examination of Suburban Temple’s early years, set alongside a brief summary of Herbert Gans’s study of Park Forest, Illinois—­a new Jewish community similar to Suburban Temple—­sheds light on how new synagogue communities allowed postwar Jews to enact new modes of Jewishness. The Gans study was completed in 1949 and originally published in Commentary in 1951.5 Park Forest was a garden-­apartment housing project located thirty miles south of Chicago. Unlike their grandparents and great-­grandparents, Park Forest Jews found themselves in a new situation—­living among mostly non-­Jews, as was the case for members of Suburban Temple. Yet despite their “scattered” status, Park Forest Jews also felt impelled to build Jewish community—­even if it was a community low on signs of religious practice: “In just one year, a Jewish community consisting of informal groups of friends, a B’nai B’rith lodge, a National Council of Jewish Women chapter, a Sunday school, and even a Board of Jewish Education has emerged.”6 As with the Jews of Suburban Temple, Park Forest’s Jews were most strongly motivated, Gans found, by “doing something” about their children’s Jewish education.7 Like many new synagogues, Suburban Temple’s founding in 1948 was the result of a breakaway group—­in Suburban’s case, an offshoot of one that met to discuss new models of children’s religious education. As the temple’s bulletin reported a year later, the study group had met for three years: “This venture is now four years old. The formation of the Suburban Temple attracted attention in Jewish circles throughout the nation. Some of the comment was adverse and based upon a mistaken notion of the aims and ideals of the Congregation.” As in other synagogue breakaway groups, the smaller group’s departure was interpreted as a rejection or critique of the initial group. In this bulletin, Suburban Temple’s president expressed his belief that their temple’s mission shared much in common with that put forth by Dr. Nelson Glueck, president of the Hebrew Union College, in a sermon preached at Temple Israel of Boston on October 3, 1948: “Let me quote just one paragraph from that sermon: ‘We American Jews yield to none in the fulfillment of our duties as citizens of America, and hold that the practice of our faith furthers the cause of our country. Through conviction and service, through consecration and sacrifice, we are connected with the soil and the soul of America. Our lives and our future are inextricably bound up with it. Here are our hopes for our children. Here is our homeland.’”8 The founders of Suburban Temple, then, believed that in beginning a new synagogue, they were helping reorient Judaism to better fit the lives of postwar American Jews. The Cleveland area’s synagogue history stretches back to the mid-­nineteenth century, The Euclid Avenue Temple (formerly Anshe Chesed) and The

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Temple–­Tifereth Israel are the Cleveland area’s two oldest congregations. Anshe Chesed was established in 1841, and a breakaway group from Anshe Chesed founded Tifereth Israel in 1850. A century later, the Cincinnati-­based weekly newspaper American Israelite reported in April 1948 that former members of The Temple–­Tifereth Israel and Euclid Avenue Temple in Cleveland had organized a new Reform congregation, Suburban Temple.9 Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver presided over The Temple–­Tifereth Israel from 1917 until his death in 1963. He earned an international reputation for his leadership in the Zionist movement, first becoming a national leader in the boycott against Nazi Germany. He became the head of the United Palestine Appeal in 1938 and led American Jewry’s effort to establish a Jewish state.10 Born in Lithuania, Silver’s Orthodox family upbringing on the Lower East Side and his Eastern European roots—­more traditional than many of his Reform colleagues—­are crucial to understanding his passionate support for a Jewish state well before it was the norm among Reform rabbis. In fact, Silver helped lay the groundwork “for replacing the Reform movement’s Pittsburgh platform with the 1937 Columbus Platform,” the latter of which stated Reform support for a Jewish state.11 Although he had a large national following through his Zionist leadership and had become the rabbi of one of the country’s largest Reform synagogues, Silver’s traditionalism (it was Silver who moved The Temple’s Sabbath observance from Sunday to Saturday) likely did not appeal to the Suburban Temple founders, as that new community’s less traditional programming suggests. Anshe Chesed, now Cleveland’s smaller Reform synagogue, became known as Euclid Avenue Temple after its move to Euclid Avenue. There, Rabbi Barnett Brickner, who had previously led Toronto’s Holy Blossom Congregation away from Orthodoxy to Reform, presided from 1925 to 1957. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Brickner was an active Zionist. Like Silver, Brickner also had Eastern European roots; he too did not fit the classical Reform model that had appealed to many of his Euclid Avenue Temple congregants. For Brickner, bringing his Reform temple closer to tradition included reinstituting the Kiddush at Friday night services, Kol Nidre at Yom Kippur, the yizkor service, the blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, and the celebration of Simhat Torah. Brickner also placed greater emphasis on Hebrew study in the synagogue religious school than had his predecessor, helping to expand the religious school that served more than 1,100 students. This was in a context, as the writer Samuel Freedman would observe, in which, “for postwar Beachwood, Saturday meant sandlot football, matinees at the local movie theater and . . . the occasional dinner at a Chinese restaurant.”12 But like Silver, Brickner’s leadership skills won over many.13 Both Reform temples, then, enjoyed strong leadership from rabbis who were well regarded locally and nationally. But they also had unusual leadership for Reform communities. Abba Hillel Silver, as noted by biographer Marc Lee Raphael and historian Michael

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Meyer, was not so much a Reform rabbi who was also a Zionist but, above all, a Zionist who chose to become a Reform rabbi as a tactic to lead Reform toward Zionism.14 Brickner also had his causes, which included improved interfaith relations. Around the same time that Suburban Temple was founded, and likely in response to somewhat similar needs among a younger generation, Brickner also established a Young People’s Congregation within his temple, serving married couples up to the age of thirty-­six to ensure the continuation of a Jewish religious identity.15 What had once seemed to occur naturally—­the imbibing of Jewish identity and religious know-­how from an older generation—­now required new communities specifically geared toward the postwar generation. Norman M. Goldburg became the first rabbi for Suburban Temple’s initial 234 members, which included well-­known residents of Jewish Cleveland, including some from both The Temple–­Tifereth Israel and Euclid Avenue Temple.16 As Rabbi Goldburg wrote in his first temple bulletin message, theirs would be the adventure of building a new religious community. And he correctly predicted that other communities would be watching their example: “As Americans and as Jews, may we be privileged to work with the inhabitants of this great land for the welfare of all and to the hurt of none . . . I am mindful of the challenge which Suburban Temple offers. Many critical eyes are upon us and friends throughout the country will watch our progress with keen interest.”17

Small Beginnings The beginning of Suburban Temple was characterized by a feeling of momentousness and a sense of trial and error. The congregation’s constitution expressed the temple’s belief that they were perpetuating a liberal interpretation of Reform Judaism for Americans of Jewish faith consistent with the following fundamental principles contained in the credo subscribed to by all the charter members of the temple: 1. We believe in the spirit of freedom as basic to any formulation of Jewish thought. 2. We believe that we are Jews because of our spiritual, ethical, and moral concepts. 3. We believe that our individual allegiance, as citizens, is to the United States of America and that there must not be conflict between our civil allegiance to the United States and our religious allegiance to Judaism. 4. We believe that we can make a contribution to American thought and life by furthering the development of Judaism. 5. We believe that it is our duty to teach our children the spiritual, ethical, and moral tenets of Judaism and the place of Judaism in American life.18

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Suburban Temple’s founders believed these goals were accomplished by following a limited membership policy: 250 at most. Keeping the congregation small allowed for intimacy, and as Jews moved into new social realms, a group like Suburban Temple provided members with the feeling of community belonging. When newcomers inquired about membership, Suburban Temple’s policy was explained in this way: “[It helps] make certain our membership does not exceed a size which permits and facilitates a spirit of close religious fellowship among all our members, and between each individual member and our rabbi.”19 Limiting membership was also explained as benefiting religious education, so that “sound pedagogic principles” could determine class size and the “character” of instruction.20 The membership committee was often responding to applicants with the understanding that if they were applying for membership, it indicated a belief in “the merit” of limited membership.21 Often, the membership committee was obliged to say that the congregation had reached its constitutional limit and to place applicants on a “stand-­by list,” but interested applicants were invited to attend religious services and to participate in cultural activities even when they were not yet members. Although the 250-­member policy was meant to cultivate a unified, intimate feeling, disagreement over the policy emerged soon after the synagogue’s founding, suggesting that some members were disturbed by the exclusiveness that ironically had become a routine part of a congregation initially inspired by a desire for community. One member pointed out the community’s inflexibility in adhering to the rule: “A question I think we should answer is this . . . Is our loyalty to the ‘bricks and mortar’ construction of the words that make up our Constitution . . . or the spirit and thought that went into the construction of that document?”22 By what principles and values are membership decisions being guided?, this member asked. Suburban Temple members continued to question the reasons for adhering to their limited membership policy. It was generally agreed that prospective members who were sixty-­five or older (without children to educate and who, given shorter life spans at the time, likely did not have many more mobile years) should be admitted.23 The age issue was only one of the ways that Suburban Temple made exceptions. As their popularity grew, Suburban continued to make accommodations, in part because members, including the congregation’s second rabbi, Rabbi Myron Silverman, felt that excluding newcomers who wished to join a synagogue was not actually very Jewish behavior. As Rabbi Silverman wrote in 1955 in response to a newcomer’s expressed interest in belonging, “[Although Suburban has had a] closed membership now for several years, with a large waiting list, which has imposed many difficulties as you must realize . . . we have long felt that we have some obligation to ‘the stranger in our midst’ and have made provisions for at least a few.”24 Still, exceptions were not always made. When the mother of a young child wrote to Suburban Temple in May 1955, she described her family’s need for Jewish

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community: “We are the only Jewish family living in a small town 35 miles from Cleveland and are interested in joining a congregation where our five-­year-­old daughter will receive a Jewish education.”25 While the chairman may have wished to respond that yes, the family could join, he instead delivered the routine line that Suburban was “a liberal reform congregation with a membership limited in numbers for the purpose of maintaining it as a small congregation.” Membership was full, the chairman explained. The membership committee regularly sent out letters of apology, encouraging applicants to seek other Sunday school options but also to participate in Suburban Temple’s religious services.26 The early years of Suburban Temple also reflected the congregation’s desire for a rabbi responsive to community needs. As the temple bulletin reported, the synagogue’s first rabbi and his wife participated in a series of Sunday afternoons at their home with members of Suburban Temple to become better acquainted with the congregation.27 The rabbi met with a group of the congregation’s younger couples. Before the meetings, a list of members submitted discussion questions to the rabbi. Suburban was becoming the kind of congregation in which the rabbi wanted to know what his congregants wanted to hear about from him. In 1952, the Suburban Temple treasurer reported a total of 368 members, up from 344 at the start of the year. The numbers had grown steadily from 282 in 1949, to 286 in 1950, to 334 in 1951.28 The waiting list had kept the overall numbers relatively small even as they increased. Rabbi Goldburg lasted a year in his position before Rabbi Silverman was hired and continued the goals of the temple’s founders. From the beginning, Suburban was a community that understood the appeal of more intimate communities for Jews who were mostly familiar with large suburban synagogues. Ten years after arriving at Suburban, when the congregation had already grown some, Rabbi Silverman wrote to his colleague Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman, “We have discovered that a limited membership is an attraction to people in the community and many of our applicants want to join because, if not a small congregation at this point, much smaller than the two gargantuan ones here in Cleveland.”29 Silverman explained to his colleague that despite their considerable needs in terms of religious education, young families with children had priority on the waiting list for membership: “It is, so far, a viable system but as you can well imagine it is not without its headaches.” Its small size and relative youth helped make Suburban Temple the kind of congregation in which the majority were involved in communal leadership. Suburban Temple’s exclusivity and intimacy also attracted prospective members. In 1955, after making many inquiries into Jewish religious facilities, one potential member and his wife chose Suburban: “[It is] the place of worship with which we would like to be affiliated even though the membership is closed at the present time. The one outstanding point of Suburban Temple that has made a deep impression on us is the fact that it was founded to have a small membership in order that the Rabbi would know all of the members personally.”30

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The limited membership policy continued to require reexamination, grappling, and justification. The policy presented dilemmas that troubled Silverman, who sought guidance from other clergy. In 1956, Silverman wrote to Rabbi Eugene Lipman of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations about Suburban’s policy of limited membership. Silverman noted that almost all the new applicants wanted Suburban to remain a small congregation but that almost all of them also had friends and relative they hoped would become members. Silverman wanted to know how to solve membership issues. By 1957, recognition of such problems led to the rules changing. The Board of Trustees of Suburban Temple approved an increase to 425 members.31

Jewish and Religious Education Jewish desires to provide the younger generation with a religious identity were fortified by the Cold War context and made the question of how to live Jewishly more urgent than for the Depression-­era generation. And yet those observing and writing about postwar American Judaism at midcentury have noted the paradox of increased interest in religion even as religious observance among Jews declined.32 These trends were apparent in Suburban Temple, where adult education became a central concern. While Suburban Temple members clearly wanted to learn about contemporary events and Jewish cultural contributions, Jewish religion was less often a desired topic. The synagogue explained in a 1948 letter to its members that there was interest in classes in Biblical history and literature and on current trends in ideologies and practices. The letter let members know that Suburban Temple’s first rabbi, Norman Goldburg, “had many years of experience with such groups.” It continued, “He uses the Englander method which embodies the principle of rapid text reading plus commentary. This is a stimulating and interesting way of studying Bible and history.”33 Members would only need to purchase a Bible (Jewish Publication Society or King James), and the class would not require outside reading or preparation, although discussion would be encouraged. The desire to make Jewish life meaningful for adults also took specifically religious forms. In 1949, Rabbi Goldburg made plans with the congregants for special, lay-­led services and explained that the committee had spent much time discussing religious ritual: “Most of the members are inclined to re-­interpret one or two of the rituals which have fallen by the wayside. They suggested that we try a Friday Evening Kiddush Service at the next children’s service. I related my satisfactory experience with this type of service in Brockton and they believed that it would add color and interest to our Friday Night Service.”34 The committee also spent time talking about the use of the Torah in their services: “We concluded that while it is not necessary to read from the Torah in Hebrew,

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Figure 9.1  Torah processional. Left to right: Mort. Dworken, David Dietz, Louis Fox, Rabbi Myron Silverman, and Bob Glick, 1963.

it would be an excellent idea to open the Ark and take out the Torah. I am going to try to work out a satisfactory prayer for this service.” On all these matters, the rabbi consulted laymen. It was not expected that the rabbi would unilaterally make all decisions.35 In such a small community with lay-led services, the rabbi’s responsiveness to synagogue member was valued. Under Rabbi Silverman, too, satisfying the community’s religious needs remained a priority. The purpose of both the Ritual Committee and the Executive Group was explained as “providing religious services for [their] membership that fills their spiritual needs and remains within the brackets of liberal Reform Judaism. All work must be done with the Rabbi.”36 Suburban Temple organized a forum series during the 1950s, with a plan for “spontaneous, enlightening, and enjoyable” discussions.37 The early forum series included topics such as “How Prejudice Breeds,” “The Jew Worships,” and “What Is Jewish Music?”38 “Communism and Its Effect on the Jew” was another topic after the Rosenbergs were executed in the summer of 1953.39 The years 1954–­1955 included topics such as “German Rearmament—­Why We Should Be Concerned” and “Marx, Freud, and Einstein—­Their Impact on the Modern World.”40 The temple also used the forum as an opportunity to appraise their own progress and regularly evaluated accomplishments and goals.41 Suburban Temple’s programming ideas caught the attention of other Reform leaders. When Rabbi Samuel Silver, the editor of American

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Judaism, heard about “Business and Religion—­Is There a Conflict?,” he wanted to run a feature about the event.42 A children’s ritual committee was also formed early on. The committee’s purview included selecting a Haggadah for the religious school.43 Very involved in outreach to children, Rabbi Norman Goldburg explained to his students what Jewish education would mean for their lives: Once upon a time, very long ago, there was no sun, or moon, or stars, or flowers, or even people as we know them today. Wouldn’t you like to find out how all these things have become everyday happenings for you? And how a very Great and Good Power guides you so that your mothers and daddies are able to teach you the difference between right and wrong, and how to be happy with your family and playmates? Mrs. Goldburg and I invite you to bring one or both of your parents with you to the Sunday School Registration at Lomond School on Sunday, October 3, between 10 and 12 noon, in order to meet us and find out the first step in our new adventure in religion.44

To an older age group, Rabbi Goldburg sent a letter encouraging students to consider Jewish learning part of their study of American history: “This is the day for question and answers! Information Please! Tell It To The Experts! The Quiz Kids! They’re popular radio programs to which millions of people listen each week. We are going to consider many interesting questions at Suburban Temple Sunday school this year. When did the first Jews come to America? What migration brought your grandfather to this great and wonderful land? Did you ever read about George Washington’s visit to the Newport Synagogue?”45 Concern for children’s religious experience continued into Rabbi Myron Silverman’s tenure. The quality of the teachers became central: most of the faculty, Silverman explained, were new teachers, many of whom had experience teaching in other religious and public schools. Rabbi Silverman engaged with his young members, too, writing to the religious school children about the congregation’s improved curriculum.46 Part of the religious education included service projects, such as donating gifts to the less fortunate children of other faiths. The superintendent of the Johanna Grasselli Home for Crippled Children in Euclid, Ohio, wrote to Rabbi Silverman in the fall of 1949, thanking the rabbi for the children’s gift of food, candy, and toys. That desire to help others extended to Jews of other communities. A 1957 flyer advertised, “Share Your Chanukah Happiness! HOW? Bring a Chanukah gift for the children in Morocco and Israel. WHY? Because YOU want to share with those who have so little. WHEN? Saturday and Sunday WHAT? Any of the many items listed below. The Council of Jewish Women’s SHIP-­A-­BOX Committee will collect, pack, wrap and ship your gifts overseas. If you had never owned a toy . . . Think how happy these bright new toys and gifts would make you.”47

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Introducing the synagogue’s religious school students to new faiths was also part of the curriculum. The religious school regularly invited and thanked Christian clergy: “On Mother’s Day the children of our seventh grades attended your eleven o’clock Mass, and were thrilled with the experience. Many of them commented on the beauty of the church, the impressive service and the meaningful sermon. We especially appreciated being seated at the front so that the children could really observe everything so easily.”48 Suburban Temple’s clergy looked in on their religious school classes with frequency. A May 1950 review of the eighth grade reported on the benefits of Rabbi Myron Silverman’s classroom visits, which were greeted with enthusiasm and interest.49 The synagogue also provided reviews of their students. The temple sent letters to students, recognizing them for regular attendance and reminding them that it should be a matter of pride.50 The religious school was a work in progress. In 1954, Silverman described the school’s changing curriculum as moving away from teaching history to teaching ethics, Bible, prayers, and Jewish morality. Rabbi Silverman shared the school’s curriculum with others who were interested and explained that he hoped to continue to revise it. He made clear that he was also thinking about the student’s enjoyment of religious school: “If it is not a pleasurable experience, it is a poor one from our point of view.”51

Suburban Temple’s Reputation The religious school would remain a community focal point. As the synagogue president wrote in the temple’s first bulletin, the Religious School Committee included sixty-­five members who met over the summer of 1948.52 Within their first decade, members of Suburban discovered that Jews elsewhere in the country sought to follow their model and to create similarly intimate, breakaway groups with new kinds of religious schools. Rabbi Silverman was often in the position of advising and encouraging these groups, as lay leaders from other parts of the country wrote to him, asking for guidance. He encouraged these leaders by sending the curriculum without charge and applauding the progress they made by establishing new congregations.53 But Suburban Temple had also angered members of the established Cleveland Jewish community. As Abba Hillel Silver wrote to Liberal Judaism, a journal that had profiled the new group, Gentlemen: At the outset I want to make it clear that I do not want any publicity of this letter, nor am I interested in entering into any debate. My purpose is to criticize inaccuracies as a result of which you have done a poor job of reporting. In your June–­July issue you state on page 20 that the organization of the Suburban Temple in this city is a good example of a development “due

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to the world situation and the difficulties of Jews in Europe and Palestine.” I do not know the source of your information or what efforts were made by you to secure conformation thereof. The real fact is that neither the world situation nor the difficulties mentioned had anything whatsoever to do with the formation of this congregation. All you need do is consult Rabbi Eisendrath to verify this. The truth is that the organizers are a dissident group who are opposed to the required study of Hebrew and the inclusion, in the teaching of the history of our people, of any reference to Zionism and Palestine. I can readily understand why you would want not to publicize the fact that a congregation came into being as a result of a controversy, but if you intend to make any reference to the organization of a congregation the truth should be stated and not fiction.54

Rabbi Silver’s angry words illuminate a surprising dynamic between an older generation of Reform and a younger generation: Silver’s and Brickner’s desires—­and successful efforts—­to bring Cleveland’s Reform communities toward a more traditional Jewish practice and lifestyle were not appreciated by all. The observations by Nathan Glazer, Will Herberg, Marshall Sklare and others at the start of this chapter regarding a postwar secular return to religion or “belonging without believing,” as it was sometimes called, find further support in the founding members of Suburban Temple.55 These founders of Suburban did in fact have a different perspective of Jewish religious education. Their plan was for a religious school without homework assignments and a curriculum that “would include the study of Judaism and of notable Jewish personalities through the ages, with thought-­provoking discussion of current happenings in Jewish life. A study of Jewish ethics, ceremonials, and history, together with an understanding of brotherhood and inter-­faith relationships will be stressed. Hebrew prayers, which are considered basic in modern worship, will be taught by the audio-­visual method in phonetic spelling and English lettering.”56 The curriculum was to include assembly programs and teacher training conducted by Rabbi Goldburg. That initial report of the Sunday school offerings included the explanation that the teaching would be that “utilized in the progressive Jewish Sunday schools of this country.”57 The religious school committee wrote in later bulletins that Sunday school programs would “concentrate primarily on the role of the Jew in America . . . the Junior High section will study the historical approach to customs and ceremonials.”58 Suburban Temple’s “historical” approach to studying Judaism—­instead of instructing students to observe Jewish law with their families—­would prove popular in other new suburban Jewish communities. Instead of being told what to do as Jews, members of Suburban were free to choose how and if they would observe, at home. For the Jews of Park Forest, a desire for children to learn about their Jewish identity without having this Jewish education conflict with the

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middle-­class norms in their homes was strong. Gans wrote of the mothers in Park Forest, “The women feared that the contradictions between the traditional Jewish home, whose features are now incorporated in the Sunday school curriculum, and the American home, which embodies their present-­day values, would lead to family tensions.”59 Religion, then, was understood as both an important component of postwar suburban life and, in the case of Jews recently settled in such communities, a potential threat to their new middle-­class status. Suburban’s leaders understood themselves to be creating a Judaism uniquely suited to their American context. A year after the temple’s founding, a bulletin expressed this thinking when it noted, “Suburban Temple exists because many people have had the courage to recognize the need for a new and American-­ centered concept of Judaism. Suburban Temple has made itself felt in this community, not because of its limited accomplishments in four months of earnest seeking in this new direction, but because others . . . are recognizing the validity of our concepts. Certainly it is commendable to work toward ‘helping our children learn to live more effectively as Americans and as Jews.’”60 By this point, though, Suburban’s founders were concluding that there were problems with treating Judaism so historically: “To do this with ‘third person objectivity,’ or to treat ourselves as being ‘aged beyond reach of the benefits of our labors,’ is to deny ourselves the very best that these labors have to offer.”61 The adults in Suburban Temple had come to recognize that they were denying themselves rich Jewish experiences by running the educational branch of their temple as though only children had Jewish educational needs. In their effort to counteract what they saw as a previous generation’s unwillingness to deal with the needs of suburban Jewish American children, Suburban Temple had become too child-­ centered. “The sense of understanding achieved and the satisfaction found in the very seeking of those bases of faith is its own reward,” the bulletin noted, intimating that adults, too, deserved those experiences.62 The path traveled by Suburban Temple members may be better understood by placing it alongside Gans’s study of suburban Park Forest, Illinois. Commentary’s editors noted that Park Forest was not so atypical in that it was “by and large second generation, mostly business and professional in occupation, and overwhelmingly middle class.” One of the “mysteries” that Gans sought to solve through his study was the how and why of Jews coming together. Although the new suburban community also included non-­Jews, Gans noted that Jews came together informally for community-­building purposes and, it turned out, for their children. Jews soon found a purpose in establishing “the single most important Jewish institution in Park Forest: the Sunday School,” for it was agreed that “Park Forest’s prime problem was a Sunday school for the forty-­odd eligible children then in the village, and for the others who were to come.”63 As Park Forest Jews discussed their plans for a Sunday school, similarities with the issues raised by the Suburban Temple founders emerged. Park Forest, too, struggled

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Figure 9.2  Consecration, Rabbi Michael A. Oppenheimer, center, 1982.

over decisions about the kind of Jewish education to offer. A “young Chicago rabbi” was called in to Park Forest to offer advice about the religious school plans of the community. The rabbi advised, “As we train the children . . . you will have to train yourselves . . . You’ll have to move toward a community center and a synagogue eventually.” Gans noted that “the parents’ major contribution would be to prevent such inconsistencies as would be apt to arise from not practicing at home the content of the Sunday school curriculum.” Parents objected. They sought a “secular” Sunday school, offering reasons that resembled those of Suburban Temple’s leaders. Park Forest Jews wanted a school that would teach their children “about Jewish traditions, but which would not place pressure on the parents to observe these traditions in the home.” The committee formed to address these challenges resigned, and a new committee was formed. This committee did not have sufficient background to set up a curriculum, so it called in a local Jewish professional couple for assistance. The husband was a group worker and the wife a trained Sunday school principal. The husband tried to reconcile the desire for a Jewish education with the lack of willingness to observe Jewish tradition: “The children will not be taught that parents have to light candles; the children will be informed of the background of candles . . . We’re teaching the child not that he must do these things, we just teach him the customs.”

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Mothers and wives feared the disruption to family life that a Sunday school would cause as it presumed to tell students—­and by extension, their parents—­what kinds of Jewish lives they should be living. Jews differed starkly from their suburban Catholic counterparts, then, in their view of Judaism as something that was good for the children, in terms of giving them an understanding of their heritage, but not crucial for their own lives. As Gans explained, “Many parents reject involvement in the cultural-­religious aspects of the Jewish tradition for themselves as adults, while they demand that their children involve themselves to the extent of learning about this tradition, without, however, getting so involved as to wish to practice it. The fruit of this might well be a Judaism that ends rather than begins with Bar Mitzvah.” Later generations would lament a Judaism seemingly and wholly unconnected from everyday life and geared toward a celebration, but it was, in fact, what some postwar suburban parents were hoping to achieve. With this kind of attitude, Gans was right to ask, “Why did the parents want their children to go to Sunday school at all?” Peer pressure was part of the answer, as it was for Clevelander and other suburban Jewish children. As a result, a few Park Forest children were actually sent to the Protestant Sunday school a couple of times, but the overwhelming majority of the parents found this intolerable, so the pressure that the children felt was translated into parental demand for a Jewish Sunday school. As Gans explained, “The parents wanted to send their children to Sunday school because they wanted to make them aware of their ethnic identity, to acquaint them with Jewishness through Jewish history and customs.” But why become aware of ethnic identity and of “Jewish customs”? Because parents want their Jewish identity explained to their children, often as a defense against hardships they might run into because they are Jews . . . Sometimes the children are stimulated by a remark made in school or kindergarten, sometimes by something overheard in parents’ conversation. One child may thus discover that he is Protestant, and that there are also Catholics and Jews. He brings this information to the group, which then tries to apply these newly discovered categories to its members. Soon the children come home and ask their parents what they are, and are they Jewish, and perhaps even “Papa, why do I have to be Jewish?” Here the Sunday school is asked to come to the rescue.

The notion that the Jewish child would have a choice between being Jewish or not Jewish, a decision he would make in adolescence or early adulthood, was voiced even by parents who admitted their own continuing confusion as to their Jewish practice and identity. The Jewish holidays became “the chief mechanism of teaching and reinforcing Jewish identity”; the “happy” holidays, including Passover, Purim, Sukkoth,

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and Hanukkah were turned into children’s festivals. Hanukkah, more than any other holiday, became child oriented. As in Beachwood, the Jews of Park Forest provided more for their children’s religious needs than for their own religious needs. As Gans explained, the Jewish housewife was part of the court’s general social life during the day. Jewish and non-­Jewish housewives belonged to the same bridge and sewing clubs. But as one woman summarized it, “My real close friends, my after-­dark friends, are mostly Jewish; my daytime friends are Gentile.” Of thirty Jewish residents who listed the names of Park Foresters they saw regularly, ten named only Jews; ten named mostly Jews and one or two non-­Jews; ten named a majority of non-­Jews or only non-­Jews. Thus one aspect of the new suburban Jewish experience that Gans’s study revealed that likely had relevance for Cleveland Jews was the experience of not necessarily knowing who was Jewish and figuring out how to decipher this aspect of others’ identities. What once could be assumed in Jewish urban enclaves—­that someone was Jewish—­now requires some deciphering and code-reading. Park Forest residents described to Gans their experiences of stumbling, often purposely, onto the topic of shared Jewishness in conversation with friends. Gans reports, People very skillfully explored each other through conversations, attempting to discover whether the other person was Jewish or not, and offering clues to their own Jewishness. “She’s been told I’m Jewish, and I know she’s Jewish, we haven’t discussed it, but she uses Jewish expressions she wouldn’t use in front of other people.” Others turned the conversation to favorite foods: “It was a slow process, we told them what kind of food we like, corned beef, lox. . . .” Sometimes there are no symbols or formulas which can be applied, and people find out by accident: “I asked before Passover if they wanted macaroons, and we found out.”

“Jewish mannerisms” were also used to establish another person’s Jewishness. What this meant for residents of Park Forest (as well as for Clevelanders and residents of other new suburban communities) was that there was an option of, if not necessarily “passing” as a non-­Jew, at least choosing not to act on one’s Jewishness. Gans’s study of Park Forest revealed that no matter their level of observance, most Jews sought out associations with other Jews. In part, the appeal may have been figuring out the mystery of Jewish identity and finding a “match” in a sea of suburbanites with whom one did not necessarily feel commonalities. Jewishness had a utility, then, for young, newly suburban Jews seeking to forge relationships outside of the older ethnic urban enclaves. No matter their religious level, young Jews found that they too felt commonalities with other Jews. Part of the purpose of this decoding of Jewishness was a new pride in it, even as this younger generation fell away from religious practice, as Jewishness related to a constellation of positive characteristics. One Park Forest

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Jew told Gans that a non-­Jew remarked that Jews were lucky because they were part of a community known for their “social conscience and liberal tendencies.” Quite apart from religiosity, then, Jews, partly through the vision of themselves reflected by their non-­Jewish neighbors, came to view Jewishness positively, as it was associated with “concern over political and social problems, [with] a tendency toward a humanistic agnosticism, and [with] an interest in more ‘highbrow’ leisure activities: foreign films, classical music, the fine arts, and in general the liberal intellectual-­aesthetic leisure culture of America, and perhaps the Western world.” Ethnic and cultural Jewishness continued to play an important role, even in an era when Jewishness was thought to be in retreat, as Judaism as a religion was emphasized during Cold War America. For new postwar Jewish communities such as Park Forest and Suburban Temple, that positive association with Jewishness, a pride that would grow in coming decades as a recent Pew survey revealed, became apparent in the founding of religious institutions and the goals these religious communities pursued.64 In spite of (and, indeed, in reaction to) the highly traditional roots of early twentieth-­century Reform Judaism in the Cleveland area and the strong leadership of Rabbis Silver and Brickner—­both of whom had Eastern European, Lower East Side, Zionist roots—­the younger Jews of Suburban Temple chose a different path. Responding to this more religious version of Reform that Silver and Brickner had brought to Cleveland Reform Jews, the founders of Suburban chose a Judaism that matched, in several ways, the kind observed among middle-­class postwar Jews by the main sociologists of the day (Glazer, Herberg, Gans, Sklare, et al.). Concern for children’s Jewish and middle-­class American identity as well as pride in a more secular version of Jewishness informed the founding of Suburban Temple. These were values that would continue to shape American Judaism in the coming decades.

notes 1. See Nathan Glazer, “The American Jew and the Attainment of Middle-­Class Rank,” in The Jews: Social Patterns of an American Group, ed. Marshall Sklare (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958), 138–­146. 2. Nathan Glazer, American Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957); Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955). 3. George Dugan, “Secular Revival in Judaism Found,” New York Times, March 25, 1957, 19. 4. Glazer, American Judaism, 132. 5. Herbert J. Gans, “The Birth and Growth of an American Jewish Community,” in Making Sense of America: Sociological Analyses and Essays (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 137. 6. Gans, 139. 7. Gans, 140. 8. Annual report of the president, April 22, 1949, 3, box 5, folder 22, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS).

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9. “New Cleveland Temple Led by David Dietz and Rabbi Norman Goldburg,” American Israelite, April 8, 1948, 1. 10. Ofer Shiff, The Downfall of Abba Hillel Schiff: And the Foundation of Israel (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2014), 8. 11. “Abba Hillel Silver,” Cleveland Jewish History, last modified November 2013, http://​ www​.clevelandjewishhistory​.net/​silver/​biography​.html. This 1937 statement of the Reform Movement’s guiding principles declares, “We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life.” 12. Samuel G. Freedman, “The Jewish Tipping Point,” New York Times Magazine, August 13, 2000, accessed November 13, 2018, http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2000/​08/​13/​magazine/​the​-jewish​ -tipping​-point​.html. 13. “Biography of Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner,” Finding Aid, MS 3957 Barnett R. Brickner Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS), Cleveland, Ohio, accessed November 13, 2018, http://​catalog​.wrhs​.org/​collections/​view​?docId​=​ead/​MS3957​.xml​;chunk​.id​=​bioghist​_1​ ;brand​=​default​;query​=​Brickner. 14. Michael A. Meyer, “Abba Hillel Silver as Zionist within the Camp of Reform Judaism,” in Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, ed. Mark Raider, Jonathan Sarna, and Ronald Zweig (New York: Frank Cass, 1977), 9. 15. “Biography of Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner,” Finding Aid, MS 4538 Barnett R. Brickner Papers, Series 2, WRHS, accessed November 13, 2018, http://​catalog​.wrhs​.org/​collections/​ view​?docId​=​ead/​MS4538​.xml​;chunk​.id​=​headerlink​;brand​=​default​;query​=​Brickner. 16. “Biography of Brickner,” MS 4538, 3. 17. Rabbi Norman M. Goldburg, “A Message from Your Rabbi,” Bulletin 1, no. 2 (September 24, 1948), box 5, folder 22, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 18. 1952 Constitution of the Suburban Temple, an Ohio Corporation, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, with amendments of 1949, 1951, and 1952, box 2, folder 2, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 19. Louis A. Fox, president, to Mr. and Mrs. Simon S. Newmark, April 17, 1953, box 4, folder 7, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 20. Louis A. Fox to Mr. and Mrs. Simon S. Newmark, April 17, 1953. 21. Louis A. Fox to Mr. and Mrs. Simon S. Newmark, April 17, 1953. 22. Alvin Fisher to Mr. Louis Fox, October 16, 1953, box 4, folder 7, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 23. Louis Fox to Mr. Herbert Rosenthal, February 12, 1955, box 4, folder 8, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 24. Rabbi Silverman to Rabbi Albert Minda, March 24, 1955, box 4, folder 8, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 25. Mrs. Daniel Grayson to “Dear Sirs,” May 3, 1955, box 4, folder 8, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 26. Harold Fallon to Mr. and Mrs. George R. Bernon, September 17, 1953, box 4, folder 7, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 27. November 19, 1948, box 5, folder 22, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 28. The 368 at the end of 1952 consisted of 240 regular members, 89 sustaining members, 11 associate members, and 28 young adult members. Treasurer’s report for annual meeting of Suburban Temple, April 18, 1952, box 1, folder 15, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 29. Rabbi Silverman to Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman, November 4, 1959, box 5, folder 15, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 30. David Grossman to Mr. Louis Fox, August 10, 1955, box 4, folder 8, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 31. Robert S. Garson to members of the Membership Committee, November 21, 1957, box 4, folder 8, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS.

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32. Glazer, American Judaism; Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew. 33. Letter to Suburban Temple members, September 30, 1948, box 1, folder 24, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 34. Rabbi Goldburg to David Dietz, January 13, 1949, box 1, folder 24, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 35. Rabbi Goldburg to David Dietz, January 13, 1949. 36. Notes of August 22, 1949, meeting, Executive Group and Ritual Committee, box 1, folder 24, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 37. Lester T. Miller, chairman of Cultural Committee, to members, September 29, 1953, box 2, folder 3, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 38. See Lester T. Miller to Morris F. Mayer, October 12, 1953, box 2, folder 3, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS; Lester T. Miller to Reuben P. Caplin, music director of Euclid Avenue Temple, November 16, 1953, box 2, folder 3, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 39. Lester T. Miller to Abraham L. Feinberg, November 16, 1953, box 2, folder 3, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 40. Flyer from the Suburban Temple Forum Series 1954–­1955, box 2, folder 3, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 41. Lester T. Miller to Louis A. Fox, October 13, 1953, box 2, folder 3, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 42. Rabbi Samuel M. Silver to Rabbi Myron Silverman, February 1, 1955, box 2, folder 3, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 43. Letter from Emily Hibshman, chairwoman of Children’s Ritual Committee, April 10, 1949, box 6, folder 1, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 44. Letter from Rabbi Norman Goldburg, September 15, 1948, box 6, folder 1, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 45. Letter from Rabbi Norman Goldburg, September 15, 1948. 46. Rabbi Myron Silverman to “My Dear Young Friend,” September 13, 1949, box 6, folder 1, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 47. “Share Your Chanukah Happiness!,” December 1, 1957, box 6, folder 2, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 48. Mrs. Stanley B. Kent to Father Arthur Gallagher, May 23, 1957, box 6, folder 2, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 49. Louis Mielziner Jr. to Mrs. Alice Kalish, May 26, 1950, box 6, folder 1, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 50. Helen Margolis to Miss Patricia Fields, May 29, 1958, box 6, folder 2, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 51. Rabbi Myron Silverman to Mrs. Maurice Bloch, January 22, 1954, box 6, folder 1, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 52. Bulletin 1, no. 1 (August 27, 1948), box 5, folder 22, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 53. Myron Silverman to Harold J. Feldman, March 23, 1955, box 5, folder 16, MS 3753 Suburban Temple Records, WRHS. 54. Abba Hillel Silver to Liberal Judaism in New York, August 6, 1948, reel 225, box 84, folder 151, MS 4787 Abba Hillel Silver Records, WRHS. 55. On midcentury “belonging without believing,” see Lynn Rapaport, “The Holocaust in American Jewish Life,” in The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism, by Dana Evan Kaplan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 187–­208. 56. “A Message from your Rabbi,” Suburban Temple Bulletin 1, no. 2 (September 24, 1948), container 5, folder 22, bulletins, 1948–­1955, MS 3753. 57. “A Message from your Rabbi,” Suburban Temple Bulletin. 58. Suburban Temple Bulletin 1, no. 3 (October 22, 1948), container 5, folder 22, bulletins, 1948–­1955, MS 3753.

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59. Rapaport, 142. 60. Suburban Temple Bulletin (January 21, 1949), container 5, folder 22, bulletins, 1948–­1955, MS 3753. 61. Suburban Temple Bulletin. 62. Suburban Temple Bulletin (April 14, 2016), container 5, folder 22, bulletins, 1948–­1955, MS 3753. 63. For the Gans study, see Herbert J. Gans, “Park Forest: Birth of a Jewish Community: A Documentary,” Commentary, April 1951, accessed March 22, 2019, https://​www​.commentary magazine​.com/​articles/​park​-forest​-birth​-of​-a​-jewish​-communitya​-documentary/. Quotations and descriptions of Park Forest throughout the rest of the chapter are also drawn from this source. 64. This survey can be found online at https://​www​.pewforum​.org/​2013/​10/​01/​jewish ​-american​-beliefs​-attitudes​-culture​-survey/.

chapter 10

Q

PEOPLE-­TO-­PEOPLE cleveland’s jewish community and the exodus of soviet jews Shaul Kelner

The exodus of more than 1.5 million Soviet Jews from the 1970s through the fall of communism represents the last major Jewish migration of the twentieth century. Most Soviet citizens remained in the lands of their birth after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, but Jews disproportionately chose a different option. This was not simply due to the distinctive troubles Jews faced under a regime that had been broadly oppressive. It was also the result of a decades-­long human rights campaign that fought for Jews’ freedom to emigrate and helped lay the legal, logistical, administrative, and financial groundwork for routes to new homes in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere. In published histories of this worldwide campaign, Cleveland is acknowledged as the home of the first American organization created to advance the Soviet Jewish cause—­the Cleveland Committee (later “Council”) on Soviet Anti-­ Semitism (CCSA), established in October 1963 by Herbert Caron, Louis Rosenblum, Rabbi Daniel Litt and other members of a men’s study group from Beth Israel-­The West Temple. This small organization’s role in seeding local activism across the United States included forging local efforts into a coordinated national campaign through the creation of the umbrella Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, using grassroots efforts to prod more well-­resourced national Jewish agencies toward sustained Soviet Jewry activism, and developing the American movement’s strategy of building campaigns around contact with Soviet Jews themselves.1 As important as the pioneering activism of the CCSA was, Cleveland’s efforts to secure the emigration of Soviet Jews went beyond the work of any single organization. On Capitol Hill, Cleveland Democrat Charles A. Vanik gave his 2 03

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sponsorship and name to the movement’s flagship legislative accomplishment, the Jackson-­Vanik Amendment, which tied American trade preferences to Soviet respect for free emigration. In Cleveland, the Jewish Community Federation along with partner agencies including the Jewish Family Service Association, Jewish Vocational Service, Jewish Community Center, as well as local synagogues and day schools, the Cleveland Jewish News, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, and more all helped mobilize Cleveland’s Jewish community, first to advocate for Soviet Jewish emigration and then, more quickly than anticipated, to help émigrés build new lives in Cleveland. Through Clevelanders’ efforts to pry open the Iron Curtain, a population that was first known to them only as a collective abstraction—­“Soviet Jewry”—­ became known individually, as new members of the Jewish Community Center, new students in the Jewish day schools, and new coworkers and employees. But before this shift from imagined abstraction to neighbor, colleague, and friend, Soviet Jews were first given a human face through CCSA’s efforts to personify the Soviet Jewish plight by highlighting the particular sufferings of individual prisoners and would-­be émigrés. Through mail, telephone, and tourism, CCSA established personal connections between Jews in Cleveland and those in the USSR despite the miles between them. Such “person-­to-­person” efforts were a unifying thread in Cleveland’s work on behalf of Soviet Jewry. As these efforts moved from focusing on names and voices overseas to helping ex-­Soviet Jews close to home, they mobilized ever-­ wider segments of Cleveland’s Jewish community. This chapter traces the evolution of these person-­to-­person connections, from CCSA’s mobilization for Jews in the USSR to local Jewish communal agencies’ work to resettle two waves of Soviet Jewish migration, first in the 1970s and then in the late 1980s, when former Soviet Jews joined as new Americans in the efforts to assist in the resettlement of the newer arrivals.

CCSA and the People-­t o-­P eople Strategy Cleveland’s role in launching the American mobilization for Soviet Jewry is at once surprising and understandable. On one hand, Cleveland is far removed geographically from Jews in Moscow and Leningrad, from policymakers in Washington, D.C., and from national Jewish organizations and news media based in New York City. On the other hand, with an estimated 85,000 Jews, Cleveland in 1963 was one of the ten largest Jewish communities in the country. Still, this translated into only 1.5 percent of the American Jewish population.2 Cleveland, however, was known for its strong Jewish Federation and for thriving synagogues that provided national leadership in Jewish political and philanthropic affairs. And yet the activism that positioned Cleveland as a national leader early in the movement for Soviet Jews came less from the institutions that traditionally

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represented Cleveland to the broader American Jewish community and more from a small group of outsiders in a newly founded synagogue on the west side of the city, far from the center of the Jewish community. Geography was no asset to Cleveland’s leadership in the Soviet Jewry movement nationally, nor to the West Temple’s leadership within Cleveland. Organizations such as the New York–­based Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry were able to develop strategies that relied on their geographical advantages.3 Enjoying few place-­specific resources, CCSA developed a repertoire that enabled activists, wherever they were, to transcend the particulars of place. CCSA’s approach evolved as a response to the strategic dilemma that the most important place for the movement was an ocean and a continent away. The Jews whom American activists wanted to help and the Soviet officials whom they wanted to pressure were remote and remained so whether activists were campaigning from New York or Washington, Cleveland Heights or West Park. True, the distance was mitigated in those places where the Soviet Union touched U.S. soil. Americans could protest directly to the Soviets at diplomatic offices in New York, Washington, and San Francisco, at docking points for cargo ships in Cleveland and other ports of call, and any American theater hosting the Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow Circus, or Moiseyev Dance Company.4 But these would have a limited effect on Soviet policy. Mainly, they raised American public awareness, laying grassroots support for governmental intervention with the Soviets.

Figure 10.1  Placing calls to the USSR in offices of Cleveland Jewish Community Federation. Left to right: Hugh Daneceau, Lou Rosenblum, unidentified, and Sue Somers (with back to camera), September 1971. (WRHS)

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Raising awareness that a problem exists and that one should respond is the first task of any social movement.5 Elie Wiesel’s 1966 chronicle of his travels among Soviet Jewry concludes with the admonition, “What torments me most is not the Jews of silence I met in Russia, but the silence of the Jews I live among today.”6 Countering this silence was the focus of CCSA efforts in its first years. It published the first national newsletter on Soviet Jewry (Spotlight, 1965), the first handbook for community action on the issue (1965), and an array of multimedia educational materials. CCSA also engaged in an ongoing battle to press national Jewish organizations to commit sufficient resources to their coordinating body for Soviet Jewry activism, the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ), a push that dated back to the founding of the AJCSJ itself in April 1964, when Rosenblum and Caron forced a motion from the floor to this effect over the opposition of the conference organizers.7 Frustration over insufficient resourcing of AJCSJ contributed to CCSA’s shift in emphasis away from consciousness-­raising and public education toward direct action on behalf of individual Soviet Jews. So too did conflict with representatives of the Israeli government’s agency for Soviet Jewish affairs, Nativ, on whom American Jewish movement organizations largely depended for information about Jewish matters inside the Soviet Union before 1970. The public conscience had also already been aroused for the better part of a decade with little to show for it in terms of Soviet policy changes: in 1965, a ban on matzah baking was lifted and the government authorized the publication of ten thousand new Jewish prayer books, but vilification of Jews continued in the Soviet press, and through 1970, the annual number of emigrants never rose above three thousand.8 For CCSA, establishing direct connections with Soviet Jews promised to address all these problems simultaneously. CCSA would either establish an alternative voice for American Jewry to Soviet Jews or spur the AJCSJ to fill the vacuum itself. (In fact, it ended up doing both.) Direct connections would secure organizational independence, breaking Israel’s monopoly on information about Soviet Jews and enabling CCSA and its partners to formulate policy without regard for Nativ. They would also provide opportunities for Americans to make a difference, if not immediately for Soviet Jewry as a whole, then individually, one person at a time. The establishment of direct lines of communication became the centerpiece of a strategy of empowerment—­empowerment for CCSA in its organizational rivalry with AJCSJ and Nativ, empowerment for Soviet Jews by providing them a conduit to Western activists, and empowerment for American Jews by providing them with the means of providing direct assistance to Soviet Jews. CCSA did not adopt this strategy alone. In shifting to what it referred to as people-­to-­people initiatives, it partnered with local Soviet Jewry councils around the country. Led by CCSA, which had helped cultivate the groups, these organizations banded together in 1970 to create a new national Soviet Jewish umbrella

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organization, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. CCSA’s activities thereafter often bore the Union of Councils’ seal. The shift toward activism that fostered direct contact with Soviet Jews is evident when comparing the first and third editions of CCSA’s handbook for community action, published in 1965 and 1970, respectively.9 The 1965 edition offered twelve recommendations under the heading, “Action for Soviet Jewry.” These included things like setting up a speaker’s bureau, writing letters to U.S. and Soviet officials, and holding rallies and demonstrations. Direct assistance to Soviet Jews was not on the agenda, and none of the recommendations involved any form of actual contact with Soviet Jews.10 Five years later, much had changed. Distinguishing between “information programs” and “action programs,” the handbook condensed most of its suggestions from the 1965 edition into a single sentence, treating them as self-­evident and in need of no elaboration. It devoted its commentary instead to “action programs,” which Rosenblum divided into two groups—­mass participation projects and spearhead projects, which engaged fewer people but had a significant impact.11 Most of the recommendations still focused on domestic action, but in each category, readers were encouraged to make direct connections with Soviet Jews. As a “mass participation” project, CCSA recommended sending special greeting cards to Soviet Jews at Rosh Hashanah and Passover. For a spearhead project, CCSA recommended that Soviet Jewry councils brief and debrief people planning to visit the USSR to help them meet Soviet Jews. The greeting card project was first conceived by activists in the Washington (D.C.) Committee for Soviet Jewry (soon a member of the Union of Councils). In a June 1968 letter to Rosenblum, they proposed sending “a multitude of Rosh Hashanah greeting cards to Soviet synagogues” as a way of “help[ing] raise the morale of Soviet Jews and to make it clear that [American Jews] care about their fate.”12 Since the Soviet government made it hard for Jews to live according to the rhythms of Jewish sacred time, the D.C. activists also proposed including a Jewish calendar with each card. The Minnesota Rabbinical Association followed by asking its members to send Passover greetings in Russian the following spring.13 In July 1969, Harold (Hal) Light, of the year-­old Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry (BACSJ) set out to launch the campaign on a nationwide basis. He turned to the AJCSJ, asking it to encourage people to send Rosh Hashanah greeting cards to synagogues in the USSR as well as to Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin. AJCSJ chairman Lewis Weinstein rejected the proposal, concerned that it “would be interpreted in the eyes of Soviet authorities as a conspiracy and a propaganda effort, that could ultimately be harmful to Soviet Jewry.” Light proceeded independently, circulating the addresses of eight Soviet synagogues. Jewish Telegraphic Agency coverage was picked up by Jewish newspapers across the United States and Europe, and by the end of the campaign, BACSJ estimated that more than fifty thousand cards were sent from around the world.14 AJCSJ

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reversed its position the following summer, launching its own greeting card campaign for Rosh Hashanah 1970.15 In Cleveland, meanwhile, Rosenblum decided to adapt the program for a spring 1970 Passover greeting card campaign. Like AJCSJ’s Weinstein, who expressed doubt that synagogue officials would inform worshippers of any greeting cards the congregation had received, Rosenblum remained skeptical of reaching Soviet Jews through synagogues. Recalling the situation, he commented, “One only has to know the basics about a police state to realize it would be a rather futile exercise. In the USSR, the head of each of the few remaining synagogues and its rabbi (if any) were appointed by and subservient to the Soviet authorities.”16 Better, he thought, to send cards directly to people’s homes. Reassured by Sovietologist Maurice Friedberg and by new Soviet immigrants in Israel (via the Tel Aviv–­based activist Ann Shenkar) that this would not endanger the recipients and might, with enough letters, even afford them a measure of protection, Rosenblum gathered the names and addresses of Soviet Jews who had signed petitions appealing for exit visas.17 Whereas the Washington and San Francisco campaigns asked individuals to add Soviet addresses to their own greeting card lists, Rosenblum, seeing fund-­ raising potential, sold specially designed CCSA greeting cards, five to a pack, with five addresses. Cleveland, in this instance, offered a place-­specific advantage: the vice president of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland’s board was Irving L. Stone, also chairman of the Cleveland-­based American Greetings Corporation. He volunteered the company’s resources to design and produce the cards.18 A few months later, CCSA brought the project under Union of Councils auspices for Rosh Hashanah, featuring it, along with one of the greeting cards themselves, in the 1970 handbook. Establishing some of the first ties between Jews in Cleveland and Jews in the USSR, the greeting card project helped Clevelanders think of Soviet Jews not just as a collective but as individuals. Yet compared to what would come later, it was a small step. Even as it began individuating Soviet Jews, it did so by presenting people only as names on a list. There is an inherent tension in this. Lists treat each person as uniquely worthy of being recorded. But by presenting the same type of information in the same way, one entry after another, lists also draw attention away from each person’s uniqueness. Each appears on the page to be just another entry, more or less equivalent to the ones above and below it. By rendering each item as an element in a set, lists also draw attention toward the category of which the individual elements are a part.19 Advertisements for the CCSA greeting cards read, “Kit of 5 cards with message of solidarity in Russian & English. Includes names and addresses of 5 Soviet Jews.”20 Just as people buying the cards were not specifically purchasing the addresses of Valeri Gorlik or Jane Vykhodetz but of “5 Soviet Jews,”21 the interchangeability of the names and addresses on the lists themselves conveyed the importance of the overarching category.

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Tourism afforded a deeper connection to a smaller number of people. Estimating that 7,500 Jews were among the more than 50,000 Americans visiting the USSR annually, CCSA’s 1970 handbook presented tourism as holding untapped potential. CCSA recommended that local Soviet Jewry councils work to ensure that tourists were “properly briefed as to the best ways of meeting Jews and of assessing accurately the true conditions.”22 Travel to meet “refuseniks” (Soviet Jews denied permission to emigrate) would grow over the years, and dozens of Clevelanders would take part, both through CCSA and, in the 1980s, through the local Jewish Federation, which ran its own mission trips to the Soviet Union.23 In 1970, however, CCSA could not yet support the type of tourist briefings it had called for. Rosenblum had at his disposal an article published by the biologist David Weiss in the magazine Dissent, reporting on meetings he had held with Soviet Jews during a May 1966 trip to a USSR Academy of Medical Sciences conference.24 Rosenblum reprinted this in the 1966 (second) and 1970 (third) editions of the handbook and recommended it be provided to prospective travelers. But effective briefing demanded up-­to-­date information and practical advice. Having published a call for local councils to begin briefing and debriefing tourists, Rosenblum also stepped up CCSA’s own activities in this area. The handbook was sent out in 1970. In 1971, Rosenblum began corresponding with travelers from across the country, receiving trip reports from them. With Daniel Litt, he began debriefing travelers from the Cleveland area, even as CCSA began collecting cassette recordings of debriefing interviews conducted by Soviet Jewry councils in other cities.25 He also encouraged CCSA activists to travel, bringing materials in and information out. Among those who did were Carol Mandel and her husband, Morris, a physician, who went to the USSR in November 1971 as part of a delegation organized by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Accompanied by a Russian-­speaking Oberlin student, Susan Somers (later a prosecutor in the United Nation’s war crimes tribunals in the former Yugoslavia), the Mandels left their group from time to time to visit Soviet Jewish activists. They received names, addresses, and documents to take out, and they delivered items including a telephone call–­recording machine. Upon their return, Rosenblum appointed the Mandels as heads of a new Union of Councils “tourist briefing project.” They went on the local speaker’s circuit and briefed other Clevelanders planning to travel, but ambitions for a national project were not realized beyond initial memos announcing its formation.26 Aware of the drawbacks of relying, ad hoc, on travelers who happened to present themselves, Rosenblum experimented in the early 1970s with various ways of securing greater control over the process and product. Operating under Union of Councils auspices, he worked with colleagues in California on two abortive initiatives to coordinate the sending and debriefing of tourists. “Have Guts, Will Travel”—­planned in early 1972 with Doug Kahn, a twenty-­one-­year-­old Berkeley graduate and former president of the Reform Movement’s National Federation

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of Temple Youth—­envisioned recruiting college students to travel in three waves over the summer. Kahn based himself in London, but recruitment fell short and only two travelers were sent. The program was never repeated, but Kahn’s final report back to Rosenblum provided names, contact information, and sometimes brief bios for dozens of Soviet Jews wishing to emigrate.27 Having information like this enabled CCSA and the other affiliates of the Union of Councils to develop their person-­to-­person efforts, which grew to include letter-­writing campaigns, phone calls, adoptions of families, twinned bar and bat mitzvahs, and more. In July 1974, shortly after returning from their own trip to the Soviet Union, Rosenblum and Zev Yaroslavsky of the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews circulated a proposal (never implemented) for “Project Lifeline,” a one-­hundred-­thousand-­dollar initiative to subsidize travel by “courier-­tourists,” who would “penetrate” the Soviet Union and establish ongoing two-­way communication between refuseniks and the West. Project Lifeline was partly a response to the Soviets’ cutting of refuseniks’ phone lines, but it also was spurred by Rosenblum’s ambivalence about the way tourism-­based links, initially conceived as a spearhead project, had grown to resemble a mass participation project. Average tourists were viewed as less reliable than the Union of Councils’ more engaged activists.28 Skepticism about tourists’ seriousness of purpose was also evident in a 1974 trip report by Sheldon Benjamin and Miriam Rosenblum (Lou’s daughter), who traveled together to the USSR to meet refuseniks that same July. In addition to reporting their own experience observing other tourists (“We returned, by arrangement, to [refusenik Vladimir] Slepak’s place about 11 p.m. and had our first taste of the average performance of the average tourist: ignorance, small talk, and overstaying of welcome”), they also reported that their Soviet Jewish hosts had expectations of their own, such as wanting visitors to be well-­informed and to bring useful or valuable items, that tourists were not necessarily meeting.29 When Clevelanders first began working in the 1960s on behalf of a distant and anonymous Soviet Jewish population, the choice to take up the Soviet Jewish cause was purely a personal decision implicating the activists alone. This began to change as the movement shifted toward strategies that involved personal connections. By sending greeting cards, writing letters, placing phone calls, and making visits, activists forged relationships with real people on the other side of the Iron Curtain, people whose names they knew and to whom their names were known. These relationships created expectations and brought on responsibilities and obligations: to not waste Soviet Jews’ time, to follow through on promises made, and to not quit in the middle and leave friends to manage on their own. When the gates of the USSR began to open in the 1970s, these obligations carried over into the work of resettling Soviet Jewish émigrés in their new homes.

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People-­t o-­P eople Comes Home: Resettling the First Wave of Soviet Immigrants CCSA’s strategy of personalizing the campaign for Soviet Jews and building person-­to-­person connections through overseas mail, phone, and travel links helped set in motion the transformation of Clevelanders’ relationships with Soviet Jews. As the efforts succeeded in influencing Soviet emigration policy, Soviet Jews in the thousands began arriving in cities across the United States, including Cleveland. The Jewish community’s national campaign for Soviet emigration rights created a need for local Jewish action to resettle the immigrants. In Cleveland’s local efforts, activism evolved from initial advocacy for Soviet Jewry writ large, to mobilizations for individual prisoners and refuseniks, and then to direct-­service work in Cleveland with dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of individual Soviet immigrants. Substantial Jewish emigration began in 1971, when just over 13,000 Jews left the USSR. In the six years preceding, emigration figures averaged a tenth of that, at about 1,400 per year with a low of 379 in 1968. At first, almost all the émigrés went to Israel. Only about 60 came to the United States in 1971. Emigration more than doubled from 1971 to 1972, but of the approximately 32,000 Jews who left the Soviet Union in 1972, 250 came to the United States. After U.S. policy changes in October 1972 and August 1973 enabled Soviet Jews to enter as refugees, the proportion of émigrés choosing resettlement in the United States rose steadily, reaching 81 percent by 1981, when Soviets began curtailing the emigration flow.30 For Cleveland, the opening of America’s gates had immediate consequences. Of approximately 1,700 Soviet Jews entering the United States from August 1973 through the end of the year, 51 settled in Cleveland.31 They were the first of about 2,500 who would resettle in Cleveland over the course of the decade.32 Communal agencies responded quickly. Cleveland’s Jewish community had a long history of experience resettling immigrants and refugees, but the last major resettlement initiative had taken place decades before, as Holocaust survivors arrived in the aftermath of World War II. Still, the Jewish Family Service Association (JFSA), the lead agency in the Jewish community’s resettlement efforts, had maintained its expertise through continued work resettling new arrivals.33 JFSA had the advantage of some foreknowledge of the newcomers’ arrivals. Nationally, the American Jewish community coordinated resettlement through the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Founded in 1881, the New York–­based HIAS had personnel on site at European transit points for Soviet Jews. HIAS worked with émigrés, U.S. immigration officials, and local Jewish communities, coordinating the allocation of refugees to Jewish communities across the United States. Cleveland’s JFSA knew how many immigrants they would be expected to take in over the upcoming months, but notice of particular arrivals sometimes came with only days’ notice.34 JFSA’s executive director,

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Burton S. Rubin, explained that in practical terms, this “necessitated somewhat of an emergency approach to meeting the flights, greeting the newcomers, providing immediate housing, food, clothing and so on.”35 JFSA worked with other Jewish communal agencies to address needs, but the sudden influx of fifty immigrants in the last half of 1973 and the expectation of many more to come made the need for community-­wide coordination apparent to the Jewish Family Service Association and its partners in resettlement, the Jewish Vocational Service (JVS), the Jewish Community Center, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Menorah Park senior center, and Hebrew Shelter Home. The organizations turned to the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland for assistance. Jewish Federations often serve to convene local Jewish organizations to help them coordinate efforts and function as something greater than the sum of their parts.36 Invitations from Cleveland’s Federation were sent in January 1974 to volunteer and professional leaders of agencies and synagogues involved in resettlement work, requesting their service as members of a new Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees.37 In February, twenty-­two men and women gathered over lunch in Federation offices to begin the task force’s work.38 Volunteer recruitment was at the top of the list. As Cleveland’s efforts to facilitate a Soviet Jewish exodus expanded beyond mass political action targeting the Kremlin to encompass individualized social service work with new arrivals, agency staff quickly found themselves stretched. Professionals such as Sidney de Leon and William Feldman in JFSA’s resettlement services office, Judith Hindin at the Jewish Community Center, William Fink and Meyer Sarkin at JVS, and others were primary points of contact for the first wave of Soviet immigrants. But as the number of arrivals skyrocketed from a handful to dozens to hundreds, the organizations bolstered their resettlement workforce through a small number of new hires and a large push for volunteer recruitment.39 Within three months after the establishment of the task force, the number of JFSA volunteers more than doubled, from thirty to seventy-­six, a jump that de Leon credited to the task force’s efforts. Organizational networks were important in fostering voluntarism. Many new volunteers came by way of fraternal organizations such as B’nai B’rith Women and congregations such as the Young Israel Synagogue.40 The creation of staff positions to coordinate the volunteer work also helped. Until 1979, the Jewish Community Center was running courses in English as a Second Language with one hundred volunteer teachers, without the benefit of a volunteer coordinator on staff.41 The list of needs that volunteers were being asked to fill was lengthy. To have housing ready and waiting for a newly arrived family required volunteers first to locate apartments available for rent, inspect the properties, and report back to JFSA, which would handle the rental contracts. Then, before the refugees arrived, volunteers had to collect, move and assemble furniture, stock closets with basic supplies, purchase groceries for the first few days, and bring the food

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to the apartment. All this could be done without actually meeting the occupants and with no special language skills, opening the work to broad segments of the Jewish community.42 The Jewish Family Service Association also sought volunteers who spoke Russian or Yiddish. They greeted émigrés at the airport, drove them to their new apartments, or, if the apartments were not yet ready, hosted them in their own homes, sometimes for up to a week. They also assisted with vital services, serving as interpreters at doctors’ appointments, job interviews, meetings with JFSA case workers, bank visits, and the like. JFSA also looked to them to help ease the newcomers’ social integration, hosting them for meals, touring them around Cleveland, taking them to the symphony and to sporting events, and—­with integration into the Jewish community in mind—­inviting them to synagogue or to home holiday celebrations.43 While volunteer labor was vital to the resettlement efforts, it alone could not suffice. Professional staff was needed, especially to help Soviet immigrants find work. When the Soviet immigration began in 1973, Jewish Vocational Service shifted one full-­time staff person to work exclusively on helping the immigrants find employment. It soon became apparent that this was insufficient. Immigration to Cleveland was accelerating, and JVS anticipated a doubling of its caseload in 1975, a difficult challenge further complicated by the stagflation and tightening job market to which the immigrants were arriving.44 In response, JVS expanded its staff and shifted more personnel to help the immigrants find jobs.45 JVS’s Committee on Job Development also received assistance from the Federation’s Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees, which contacted Federation donors who were business owners and employers in Cleveland, “to sensitize them to the desirability of developing new employment opportunities for the Russian refugees.”46 The chair of the task force, James Reich, was among those responding early to the call, hiring three Soviet immigrants in his family business, Magic American Chemical Corp. Reich reported back to the task force in October 1974, however, that he “was experiencing problems [with his new hires] in terms of not working a full week.”47 It was an early indication of conflicts yet to come, as Clevelanders’ idealized imaginings of Soviet Jews qua Jews were complicated by a growing awareness of cultural gaps between Homo americanus and Homo sovieticus. For Soviet immigrants, there was also a gap between their expectations and the reality they encountered. Many of the immigrants were skilled professionals whose identities were, like their American counterparts, bound up in their work. For most, it would take time before they would find employment in their fields at the level they had been working at prior to emigration, and the loss of occupational prestige struck hard. Jewish Vocational Service personnel reported a reluctance among immigrants to accept work they considered beneath them, complicating the JVS efforts to help them quickly secure employment.48 The experience,

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sometimes referred to as a “crisis of mutual failed expectations,” was hardly unique to Cleveland.49 For Jewish organizations, unemployment was not merely a personal matter for those immigrants not working; it had communal consequences. Resettlement was expensive. The Jewish Family Service Association had initially budgeted $114,000 for 1974–­1975 based on a projection of 110–­120 immigrants—­an amount in the midrange relative to other large Jewish communities, whose per-­immigrant outlays during the same period ranged from $650 in Pittsburgh to $2,700 in metropolitan New Jersey. By year’s end, however, JFSA ended up spending closer to $200,000.50 Two years later, the organization was estimating resettlement costs to be even higher, at $3,500 per person.51 Numerous elderly and handicapped immigrants, large family sizes, and high inflation were partially responsible for the higher-­than-­anticipated costs. So too was unemployment. JFSA sought to shift as much financial responsibility as possible to the immigrants, in as reasonable a time frame as possible. The sooner they found work, the better. And while there was little that could be done about the shrinking job market of the 1970s, JFSA did have to weigh the budgetary implications of immigrants choosing to decline jobs and remain dependent on community support. Deliberating whether to “terminate maintenance allocations” to immigrants who repeatedly turned down job offerings, JFSA expressed concern that those terminated might apply for public assistance and thereby jeopardize their chances of receiving permanent residence status and eventual citizenship.52 In 1976, the Jewish Family Service Association decided to restructure its financial assistance as an interest-­free loan.53 As immigration peaked in the late 1970s, community outlays and services increased accordingly. With no expectation that the months and years ahead would bring the chilling of Cold War relations that would reduce the Soviet Jewish emigration to a trickle, the Jewish Community Federation’s coordinating task force spent the latter part of 1979 preoccupied with the question of “how to stretch [their] communal resources to resettle increasing numbers of Soviet Jewish refugees.”54 There was no consideration of a large-­scale fund-­raising effort. A decade later, with the USSR’s implosion, a mass exodus whose numbers dwarfed the earlier wave of emigration would create a sense of “now or never” among American Jews, prompting nationwide emergency fund-­raising campaigns.55 In the 1970s, however, immigration increased at a gradual enough pace that Cleveland’s Jewish organizations treated the matter as a concern, later as a problem, but never actually as a crisis. Organizations adapted, additional funds were allocated, personnel were added, staff responsibilities were shifted around, and volunteers were recruited. By the end of the first wave of Soviet Jewish immigration, Jewish communal organizations in Cleveland had amassed a decade’s worth of expertise in Soviet resettlement. They had learned how to partner effectively with one

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Figure 10.2  Rabbi Louis Engelberg of Taylor Road Synagogue with two Soviet Jewish immigrants, 1970s. (WRHS)

another. They had come to know the needs and cultural sensitivities of the Soviet Jewish population. They had traded wisdom with Jewish communities around the country, initiating and responding to inquiries and requests for assistance,56 presenting at national conferences, and publishing in national journals of Jewish social work.57 This expertise would be invaluable for resettling the next wave of Soviet Jewish immigrants. So too would be the involvement, as volunteers and as Jewish communal professionals, of the Soviet Jews who had immigrated in the 1970s. Their participation as new American Jews in the resettlement effort became an important part of the story that Cleveland’s Jewish community told itself through its press coverage of the later immigration wave. It was a story that expressed confidence in the Jewish community’s ability to successfully bridge Soviet-­American cultural divides and that imagined a successful resettlement as one in which Soviet immigrants would refashion themselves in the model of the Jewish community that was hoping to embrace them.

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People-­t o-­P eople in the Press: Telling the Story of Second-­W ave Resettlement “We have to change the focus from going to Washington and standing on the Mall and being important, to the nitty-­gritty of helping 150 people settle in Cleveland,” the head of the Federation’s Task Force on Resettlement, Joseph Shafran, told the Cleveland Jewish News in March 1989.58 Cleveland’s Jewish Federation had initially budgeted for only forty-­five, but soon the immigrants would number not in the dozens but in the thousands. With resettlement costs estimated between $2,200 and $2,500 per person, the financial burden was poised to skyrocket.59 Jewish organizations would shoulder a larger proportion of the costs of resettlement than they had in the 1970s, because the U.S. government had changed its policy regarding Soviet émigrés, no longer automatically presuming them to be refugees fleeing persecution, and therefore no longer automatically eligible for refugee benefits. Cleveland’s Jewish communal agencies covered a substantial portion of resettlement costs, launching an emergency “Passage to Freedom” fund-­raising campaign and soliciting grants from funders such as the Cleveland Foundation and the Gund Foundation.60 Unlike in the 1970s, however, the Jewish Community Federation now expected that most of the costs would be absorbed by the Cleveland-­based families who were sponsoring their relatives to come to the United States. (Communal agencies did provide free loans to help families do this.)61 The Soviet immigrants of the 1970s thus became the American hosts of the 1990s.62 Because it involved so many different funders, organizations, professionals, and volunteers doing such a diverse array of work, telling a coherent story about the resettlement effort became a priority for the Jewish community. Press coverage of the resettlement efforts appeared regularly in the Cleveland Jewish News (CJN) from 1989 through 1992 and sporadically in general media such as the Plain Dealer, Sun Press, and Cleveland Edition. While articles commonly provided information about the broad contours of the immigration, a dominant feature of the coverage was a human-­interest angle that emphasized the personal relationships uniting new Soviet émigrés with native-­born American Jews and with the now-­Americanized members of the earlier wave of Soviet Jewish migration. Coverage of Russian-­American involvement in the resettlement of new Clevelanders tended in two directions: a focus on professionals and a focus on volunteers. The Jewish Family Service Association and the Jewish Vocational Service remained the lead agencies working on resettlement. As they expanded their staffs and brought them under one roof in Cleveland Heights, where many of the new immigrants were living, the organizations hired Russian speakers who had moved to the United States in the first wave of Soviet Jewish migration. All four of the resettlement workers at JFSA and two of the four at JVS were Russian

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speakers, and their own immigration histories were frequently recounted in press coverage of their work. JFSA’s Irina Suris, who came to the United States from the Soviet Ukraine in 1981, was among the most frequently quoted in CJN press coverage. Her story, alongside a large front-­page photo of her at work, led the four-­page spread, “Resettling Soviet Jews in Cleveland,” the CJN’s first major profile of the resettlement efforts: For Irina Suris, a resettlement worker for the Jewish Family Service Association (JFSA) of Cleveland, helping the new influx of Soviet refugees conjures up personal memories that are still fresh. “I look at them and I wonder if I would be able to get through it again,” she says. “I think, ‘No,’ I couldn’t. When we came we didn’t understand how difficult it was. That’s why we were so successful.”63

With Suris as guide and translator, the reporter (and CJN’s readers) entered the Coventry-­area apartment that was home to the Blumin family, newly arrived from Gomel, in Belarus, where the article’s human-­interest focus shifted to their story.64 Press coverage of Soviet-­born volunteers focused on their role as “anchor families,” who provided financial sponsorship for new arrivals. Anchor families worked with JFSA in advance of their relatives’ arrival, depositing funds with JFSA that would be used toward their resettlement.65 A November 1989 CJN article profiled Rosa and Vladimir Yakunin, who arrived from Odessa in 1978 and who were anchoring Vladimir’s brother and his family of five. Beneath a photograph of a husband, wife, and teenage daughter dressed in fashionable American attire, the article described how the Yakunins, unable to find an apartment to rent for their brother, took the family into their own three-­bedroom home in South Euclid. Details about the anchor role were trickled into the story, including information on the availability of loans from the Hebrew Free Loan Society and the time that anchor families devoted to “help[ing] the immigrants look for apartments, arrange for Social Security and English classes and begin a job search.” The Yakunins’ volunteer efforts were represented as a sign of their own Americanization and their successful enculturation as Jewish Americans, a point that the author chose to end with, letting Vladimir have the last word: “We have to help them, because someone (the Jewish community) helped us when we came.”66 CJN reporter Marcy Spiegel, who covered the resettlement beat, opened the Yakunins’ story with the brother’s arrival at Hopkins International Airport. It was a scene often featured in human interest stories about the immigration.67 Reporters described tearful family reunions; excited crowds assembled to shower the newcomers “with flowers, balloons, and shouts of ‘welcome’”;68 and exhausted children sleeping on piles of luggage. Accompanying photos showed smiling newcomers at the airport standing or walking together in family groups, looking expectantly at or in conversation with resettlement workers.

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Although the arrivals provided the hook on which the stories were hung, much of the reporting centered not only on the experiences of immigrants but also on the Clevelanders who came to greet them—­JFSA resettlement officers, family members already settled in the United States, and volunteers from the Jewish community, American-­and Russian-­born alike. Consider the opening lines of this January 1990 CJN article: “Expressions of joy mingled with tears, excitement and a touch of nervousness as a disparate group of Jews—­some speaking as much Russian as English—­gathered at Gate 6 of Cleveland Hopkins Airport Tuesday evening to meet TWA Flight #717. For the second straight night, Flight #717 from Kennedy Airport in New York was bringing a record number of Soviet Jews to settle in Cleveland.”69 The new arrivals had not yet entered the reception area. The emotional scene was, at that point, referring only to the Clevelanders who were waiting to welcome the immigrants. In a first-­person account published the following week, college student Anne Dettelbach related the excitement she and her fellow volunteers felt as they saw “their” family (“I think this one’s ours”) walk down the airport corridor. The welter of feelings that the newly arrived Boltyansky family experienced during their first days in Cleveland—­joy, confusion, gratitude, wonder, trepidation—­became legible through the family’s interactions with Dettelbach and the other volunteers who helped them navigate the Social Security office, the supermarket, and their technology-­equipped American kitchen.70 The CJN’s focus on volunteers was important to a communal resettlement effort that could not be sustained by agency professionals alone. Some coverage provided contact information to encourage would-­be volunteers: all were welcome. One article profiled an eighty-­six-­year-­old volunteer who visited a senior center to speak Yiddish with elderly immigrants and a fifteen-­month-­old baby whose “volunteer” work consisted of serving as “an unofficial ‘ice-­breaker.’”71 Resettlement was a community-­wide enterprise, dependent on large amounts of volunteer labor. Although relatives of the new immigrants were expected to serve as anchor families, about a quarter of the Soviet Jewish immigrants that Cleveland took in did not have relatives in the area.72 To support these “free cases,” JFSA partnered with synagogues to recruit volunteers to take on the role of anchor families.73 It also instituted a “host family” program in 1988 to help immigrants integrate socially into Cleveland’s Jewish community.74 Similarly, Cleveland’s section of the National Council for Jewish Women partnered with the Women’s Committee of the Federation to form the Soviet Resettlement Project, which focused on integrating the newcomers into the Jewish community.75 Press coverage served also to represent the community to itself. A 1989 article about JFSA’s host family project described the evolution of a friendship between American host Anita Siegel and new immigrant Rashella Polyak, from “it was like a blind date between families,” to meals and Shabbat services together, to

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weekly phone calls and help with carpooling, and eventually to both women volunteering together to help even newer arrivals from the USSR.76 In this friendship between an American-­born Jew and a Soviet-­born Jew who were volunteering together for the welfare of Cleveland’s Jewish community, the CJN suggested an ideal to strive toward. The friendship also suggests how far the Soviet Jewry movement had come from its origins in the West Temple three decades before. For American Jews in 1963, the Jews of the USSR were a distant and unfamiliar population, often referred to as “Soviet Jewry,” in the homogenizing collective singular. By the end of the Cold War, Soviet Jews, in the diversity of the plural, were no longer distant and unknown. Nor would they remain simply recipients of American aid. They had become Russian-­speaking American Jews, mediators between two cultures and indispensable participants in Cleveland’s efforts to secure freedom for the Jews of the USSR. Their role as part of the Cleveland Jewish community was something that the founders of the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-­Semitism could probably not have foreseen. It is, however, one of the surprising results of the Soviet Jewry campaign’s success. A movement launched with the hope of mobilizing Cleveland’s entire Jewish community ended up expanding the boundaries of the community itself.

notes The author thanks Sean Martin, Louis Rosenblum, and Herb Caron. Support for this research was provided by the Western Reserve Historical Society, National Endowment for the Humanities (FT-­229663-­15), University of Michigan Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, Brandeis-­Genesis Institute for Russian Jewry, and Hadassah-­Brandeis Institute. 1. Gal Beckerman, When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010); William W. Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979); Pauline Peretz, Le combat pour les Juifs soviétiques: Washington–­Moscou–­Jérusalem, 1953–­1989 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2006); Philip Spiegel, Triumph over Tyranny: The Heroic Campaign That Saved over 2,000,000 Soviet Jews (New York: Devora Publishing, 2008). 2. Alvin Chenkin, “Jewish Population in the United States, 1963,” in American Jewish Year Book, ed. Morris Fine and Milton Himmelfarb (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1964). 3. Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 135. 4. Deliverance 1, no. 3 (April 1973), box 3, folders 97, 2, 5, MS 4011 Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-­Semitism (CCSA), Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio (WRHS). 5. David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization,” International Social Movement Research 1, no. 1 (1988). 6. Elie Wiesel, The Jews of Silence: A Personal Report on Soviet Jewry (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966), 127. 7. Box 3, folder 70, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS; Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 70–­7 1. 8. Petrus Buwalda, They Did Not Dwell Alone: Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union, 1967–­1990 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997), 223; “Current Developments in the Soviet Union,” Spotlight, November 1965, pp.1, 3, box 4, folder 123, MS 4011

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CCSA, WRHS; Bernard A. Poupko, “Mission to Soviet Jewry,” Jewish Life, Spring 1965, reprint edition, 14. 9. Louis Rosenblum and Daniel Goldin, Protest Soviet Anti-­Semitism: Handbook (Cleveland: Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-­Semitism, 1965), p. 1, box 1, folder 6, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS. 10. Rosenblum and Goldin, 7–­8. 11. Louis Rosenblum, Hear the Cry of the Oppressed: A Handbook on Soviet Anti-­Semitism (Cleveland: Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-­Semitism, 1970), p. 1, box 1, folder 7, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS. 12. Lawrence M. Lewin to CCSA, June 25, 1968, box 1, folder 19, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS. 13. Louis H. Weinstein to Harold Light, August 11, 1969, p. 2, box 3, folder 29, RG I-505, Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews (BACSJ), Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement (AASJM), American Jewish Historical Society, New York, New York (AJHS). 14. Louis H. Weinstein to Harold Light, August 11, 1969 (emphasis in original); “San Francisco Launches Campaign to Send Rosh Hashanah Greetings to Soviet Jews,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 5, 1969; “Alexei Kosygin Premier . . . ,” press release, c. summer 1969, box 33, folder 12, RG I-505, BACSJ, AASJM, AJHS; “Holiday Greetings Urged to Cheer Soviet Jews,” flyer, July 1969, box 33, folder 12, RG I-505, BACSJ, AASJM, AJHS; Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, “Over 50,000 Cards!,” flyer, October 1969, box 33, folder 12, RG I-505, BACSJ, AASJM, AJHS. 15. Rabbi Herschel Schacter to conference membership, “Re: Sending Greeting Cards to Soviet Synagogues,” August 21, 1970, box 1, folder 6, RG I-181, National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), AASJM, AJHS. 16. Louis Rosenblum and Daniel Rosenblum, “Involvement in the Soviet Jewry Movement: A Personal Account, 1961–­1978,” 1996–­1999, p. 66, box 1, folder 12, MS 4926 Louis Rosenblum Papers, WRHS. 17. On the emergence of the Soviet Jewish petition campaigns, see Shaul Kelner, “The American Soviet Jewry Movement’s ‘Uneventful’ 1968: Cold War Liberalism, Human Interest, and the Politics of the Long Haul,” American Jewish History 102, no. 1 (2018): 16–­19. 18. Rosenblum and Rosenblum, “Involvement in Soviet Jewry Movement,” 67. 19. Michal Kravel-­Tovi, “Introduction: Counting in Jewish,” in Taking Stock: Cultures of Enumeration in Contemporary Jewish Life, ed. Michal Kravel-­Tovi and Deborah Dash Moore (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 17–­20. 20. CCSA order form, November 10, 1972, box 8, folder 219, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS. 21. Gorlik and Vykhodetz were two Soviet Jews who received greeting cards from the Union of Councils. Their responses were reprinted in promotional materials. Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ), “People to People Project,” p. 3, box 8, folder 252, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS. 22. Rosenblum, Hear the Cry, 13. 23. Local U.S. communal organizations representatives travel reports, Cleveland, box 79, folder 7, RG I-181A, NCSJ, AASJM, AJHS. 24. Weiss, David W. 1966. “The Plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union,” Dissent 52, no. 2, 447–­464. 25. Stephen Shemin to Louis Rosenblum, February 3, 1972, box 4, folder 125, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS; Israela and Michael Meyerstein to Louis Rosenblum, July 2, 1972, box 4, folder 125, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS; Allan Shall to Louis Rosenblum, October 31, 1972, box  4, folder 125, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS; accession no. 64, Series 1, subseries B, tourist debriefings, unprocessed collection, Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-­Semitism Audio Collection, 1965–­1977, WRHS. 26. CCSA membership newsletter, February 1972, box 3, folder 97, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS; Carol Mandel and Morris Mandel to UCSJ Members, memorandum re: “Tourist Briefing Project,” December 13, 1971, box 9, folder 11, RG I-540 Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry, AASJM, AJHS; Carol Mandel, interview with author, July 10, 2018.

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27. Douglas Kahn to Louis Rosenblum, received August 23, 1972, box 48, folder 243, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS. 28. Louis Rosenblum and Zev Yaroslavsky, “Project Lifeline,” July 1974, p. 3, box 9, folder 259, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS; Zev Yaroslavsky, interview with author, September 13, 2018. 29. Sheldon Benjamin and Miriam Rosenblum, Trip Report: Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow and Leningrad, July 8–­­21, 1974 (Cleveland: Action Central for Soviet Jews, 1974), pp. 2–­3, box 8, folder 224, MS 4011 CCSA, WRHS. 30. Buwalda, They Did Not Dwell Alone, 224; Peretz, Le combat, 362; Victor Rosenberg, “Refugee Status for Soviet Jewish Immigrants to the United States,” Touro Law Review 19, no. 2 (2015); “800 Soviet Jews in Rome to Get Speedy Entry to U.S.,” New York Times, July 31, 1973; “Soviet Jewish Family Welcomed by Mitchell,” New York Times, January 8, 1972. 31. “A Prospectus for Planning for an Expanded Russian Refugee Resettlement Program” (hereafter “Prospectus for Planning”), November 1974, Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland (JCFC), p. 1, box 9, folder 182, MS 4696 Jewish Community Centers of Cleveland Records (JCC), Series 2, WRHS. The Federation’s prospectus begins counting the first wave of Soviet Jewish immigration to Cleveland from August 1973. Some individuals arrived earlier, such as Soviet émigrés who had been living in Israel. Violet Spevack, “Doctor’s Odyssey from Moscow,” Cleveland Jewish News (CJN), April 20, 1973. 32. Rachel Davidson, Resettlement of Russian Speaking Jews to Cleveland (Cleveland: Jewish Federation of Cleveland, 2013), 14–­15; Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, s.v. “Soviet Immigration,” by Irene Shaland, accessed March 19, 2018, http://​ech​.case​.edu/​cgi/​article​.pl​?id​=​SI2; Sharon Mandel Peerless, “Resettling Soviet Jews in Cleveland,” CJN, March 24, 1989. 33. Minutes, Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees, February 18, 1974, JCFC, box 9, folder 182, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS; Sydney de Leon, “Progress Report on Jewish Family Service Association (JFSA) Soviet Resettlement Program” (presentation to JFSA Board of Trustees, March 1, 1976), box 9, folder 182, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 34. Minutes, Refugee Resettlement Committee, October 9, 1974, Jewish Family Service Association of Cleveland (JFSAC), p. 2, box 9, folder 182, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 35. Minutes, Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees, February 18, 1974, 1. 36. Daniel J. Elazar, Community and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of American Jewry (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976); Shaul Kelner, “Religious Ambivalence in Jewish American Philanthropy,” in Family, Friend, Foe? The Relationship of Religion and Philanthropy in Religious Philanthropic Organization, ed. Thomas J. Davis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). 37. James Reich to Harold L. Klarreich, January 30, 1974, box 8, folder 163, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 38. Minutes, Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees, May 30, 1974, JCFC, box 9, folder 182, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 39. “Prospectus for Planning.” 40. Minutes, Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees, May 30, 1974, 4. 41. “Review and Project of Refugee Resettlement Services,” November 27, 1979, p. 1, box 9, folder 183, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 42. James Reich to members of Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees, memorandum, March 20, 1974, box 8, folder 163, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 43. James Reich to members of Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees. 44. “Prospectus for Planning,” 2–­3. 45. Alvin L. Gray to members of the Task Force on Resettlement, memorandum, December 17, 1979, p. 3, box 9, folder 182, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 46. Minutes, Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees, February 18, 1974; James Reich to members of Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees, memorandum, March 20, 1974, 2. 47. Minutes, Refugee Resettlement Committee, October 9, 1974. 48. Minutes, Refugee Resettlement Committee, October 9, 1974.

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49. Larissa I. Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2007), 371. 50. “Prospectus for Planning,” 7. 51. Minutes, Refugee Resettlement Committee, June 29, 1976, JFSAC, p. 2, box 9, folder 182, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 52. “Alternative Considerations to Questions Relating to Delivery of Services to Russian Immigrants,” March 5, 1975, JFSAC, p. 2, box 8, folder 163, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 53. Minutes, Refugee Resettlement Committee, June 29, 1976. 54. Alvin L. Gray to members of the Task Force on Resettlement, December 17, 1979, 1. 55. Gerald S. Nagel, Operation Exodus: The Inside Story of American Jews in the Greatest Rescues of Our Time (New York: Contemporary History Press, 2006). 56. Sid L. Brail to Stephanie Kipperman, January 15, 1975, box 8, folder 163, MS 4696 JCC, WRHS. 57. William Feldman, “Social Absorption of Soviet Immigrants: Integration or Isolation,” Journal of Jewish Communal Service 54, no. 1 (1977); Burton S. Rubin, “The Soviet Refugee: Challenge to the American Jewish Community Resettlement System,” Journal of Jewish Communal Service 52, no. 2 (1975). 58. Shafran was referring to the 250,000-­person demonstration for Soviet Jewry at the U.S. Capitol in December 1987. The Task Force on Resettlement was a later iteration of what had been the Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees. 59. Sharon Mandel Peerless, “Financial Realities of Resettlement,” CJN, March 24, 1989. 60. Marcy Spiegel, “Settling In,” CJN, October 27, 1989; Jane G. Lefko, “Bridging the Distance,” CJN, January 10, 1992. 61. Spiegel, “Settling In,” A14. 62. Immigrants’ oral histories describe being sponsored by relatives in Cleveland and sponsoring others. See, e.g., Alla Sherman, interview with Jordan Rothkopf, June 19, 2014, box 4, folder 20, MS 5389 Soviet Jewish Oral History Collection, WRHS. 63. Peerless, “Resettling Soviet Jews in Cleveland,” 1. 64. Peerless, 1. 65. Spiegel, “Settling In.” 66. Marcy Spiegel, “Helping Resettle Family and Friends from the USSR,” CJN, November 24, 1989. 67. Violet Spevack, “Welcome!,” CJN, October 13, 1989; Marcy Spiegel, “New Soviet Arrivals Greeted by Throng at Hopkins,” CJN, January 12, 1990; Anne Dettelbach, “A Day in the Life . . . : Helping a New Soviet Family Settle In,” CJN, January 19, 1990; Marcy Spiegel, “JFSA Works Overtime to Keep Soviet Family of 30 Together; 1,014 Arrive Here since July,” CJN, May 25, 1990. 68. Spiegel, “New Soviet Arrivals.” 69. Spiegel. 70. Dettelbach, “Day in the Life.” 71. Lefko, “Bridging the Distance.” 72. Lefko. 73. Marcy Spiegel, “Area Congregations, Federation Form Partnership,” CJN, February 2, 1990. 74. Marcy Spiegel, “Soviet Émigrés Learn the Ropes from Local Host Families,” CJN, October 20, 1989. 75. Lefko, “Bridging the Distance.” 76. Spiegel, “Soviet Émigrés Learn the Ropes.”

A F T E RWOR D Sean Martin

The general picture of Cleveland’s Jewish community in the twentieth century is one of growth and stability, punctuated by periods of international crisis and migration. Jewish immigration to the region increased after the First World War, but the population stabilized once federal restrictions limited immigration in the 1920s. The international crisis of the 1930s and subsequent war brought more refugees from Europe to the Cleveland area. After the Second World War, Cleveland’s Jewish community welcomed Holocaust survivors and, later, Jews from the Soviet Union. While these groups of immigrants were not numerous enough to fundamentally change Jewish life, they left their mark by integrating into the Jewish and general communities and by becoming involved in already existing congregations and institutions. The absorption of these groups illustrated Jewish Cleveland’s ties to Jews abroad and its willingness to adapt local institutions to the newcomers’ needs. Cleveland’s Jews shared in America’s midtwentieth-century prosperity. They were able to move to the suburbs, respond to crises in Europe and Israel, and build necessary institutions to develop as Jews, both individually and communally. The Cleveland area saw significant population loss as a result of late twentieth-­ century industrial decline, but the Jewish community remained stable, both numerically and geographically. The 2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study confirmed that stability, estimating 80,800 Jews in the area.1 In addition, 23 percent of the total was under the age of seventeen, while only 19 percent was over sixty-­five. Having made the move to the eastern suburbs midcentury, the community stayed there. There was some growth further south and east, especially in Solon, but well into the twenty-­first century, 27 percent of the area’s Jewish population remained in the inner-­ring suburb of Cleveland Heights and surrounding communities. Community institutions remained stable as well. Cleveland’s four largest congregations, Anshe Chesed and The Temple–­Tifereth Israel (both Reform) 2 23

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and Park Synagogue and B’nai Jeshurun (both Conservative), were all founded before 1870. The Jewish presence in the city dates back to 1839, when a group from Unsleben, Bavaria, arrived with the intention to settle in the area and build new lives as Jews and as Americans. If this volume betrays a bias to view the region’s Jews as a “community,” it is precisely because local Jews have organized themselves so effectively over the past two centuries, in spite of the significant diversity present in any cultural group. The history of Cleveland’s Orthodox Jewry, 10 percent of the Jewish population in 2011, reveals how different groups within the larger Jewish community cooperated over the decades to forge a population generally respectful of a wide diversity of religious and cultural expression. Founded in 1903, the Jewish Federation continues to unite the fund-­raising efforts of the region’s Jewish social service and cultural agencies. While the Federation and its agencies certainly cannot represent everyone in the area who identifies as Jewish, it certainly affects the lives of most Jews seeking help with raising children, caring for older adults, or simply looking for greater engagement with other Jews. This picture of communal stability should not, however, be exaggerated. There has been significant change since the majority of Jewish immigrants arrived in the first years of the twentieth century. For these immigrants, that change included linguistic assimilation to English, the largely successful effort to achieve financial security, the move to the suburbs, and the absorption of later refugee and immigrant populations. There was also significant cultural change, stemming at least partly from greater interaction with non-­Jews. Institutions have come and gone. In 1995 the city’s Jewish hospital, the venerable Mt. Sinai Medical Center, was sold to a for-­profit company. Mt. Sinai closed in 2000. The Siegal College of Judaic Studies, an outgrowth of the work of the Bureau of Jewish Education, closed in 2012, but some of its operations continue as the Laura and Alvin Siegal Lifelong Learning Program at Case Western Reserve University. In part, these closings reflect wide-­ranging changes in the delivery of health care and higher education. Changes within the community were evident as well. The Hebraist education of Chet Aleph [Abraham Hayyim] Friedland, always as much cultural as religious, eventually gave way to supplementary education in the congregations, even as Hebrew helped tie American Jews to the young state of Israel. Due to declining enrollment, Cleveland Hebrew Schools closed in 2009. Rather than auguring a decline, the closure of these significant institutions might also be taken to suggest the community’s flexibility and a willingness to transform to meet the needs of its members. Throughout the twentieth century, Cleveland’s Jews built, strengthened, and transformed the institutions of their community. Among the many other tasks of their daily lives, they also found work, learned English, studied Yiddish and Hebrew, supported Zionism and the state of Israel, aided Holocaust survivors and Soviet Jews, moved to the suburbs, donated generously to Jewish and general causes, and intermarried. This volume offers the views of an impressive

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group of scholars, but it cannot claim to be an exhaustive presentation of every topic important to Cleveland Jews in the twentieth century. The choice of topics addressed here reflects the ongoing work of scholars engaged in a variety of fields other than local history. While the reader has been offered a general outline of twentieth-­century Jewish Cleveland, there are many topics not treated here worthy of our attention. Perhaps most neglected is the history of the area’s Jewish women. At least two of the city’s most important institutions, the Jewish Community Center and Mt. Sinai Medical Center, trace their origins to women’s volunteer associations. In addition, turning our attention to questions of gender or the experiences of women in the economy, suburbanization, education, Jewish religious life, and other areas of endeavor would likely lead to different understandings of community and regional development. Also worthy of investigation is Jewish participation in the economy, in fields such as the garment industry, law, medicine, finance, and real estate. Each of the articles gathered here introduces a topic that could be explored in greater depth or taken further chronologically. It is hoped that these studies will spark interest in late twentieth-­century changes in the Orthodox community, education, internal migration, relationships with other non-­Jewish ethnic groups, and Jewish participation in arts and culture, among other topics. Focusing on the local—­often on very specific stories of individuals, leaders, and institutions unknown to many—­helps us see how personal and professional experiences can take on larger meaning. These studies are offered as a starting point for our discussions of local Jewish history in Cleveland, and beyond, in the twenty-­first century.

note 1. 2011 Greater Cleveland Jewish Population Study (Cleveland: Jewish Federation of Cleveland, 2012), accessed March 29, 2018, http://​www​.jewishdatabank​.org/​Studies/​details​.cfm​ ?StudyID​=​581.

ACK N OW L E D G M E N TS

This work stems from decades of cooperation between the Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS) and the Jewish Federation of Cleveland. The Cleveland Jewish Archives, located at the Cleveland History Center of WRHS, was established in 1976 through a collaborative relationship of WRHS and the (then named) Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland through the generosity of community members who recognized the importance of preserving local Jewish history. WRHS is in the unique position of being a nonprofit, non-­Jewish historical society that serves as the repository for the region’s Jewish history. The work of the Jewish archives was made possible through the vision of Judah Rubinstein, employed as a historian and archivist for the Federation, and his cooperation with John J. Grabowski, a historian at WRHS who saw the need to develop special collecting programs to enhance the institution’s strong holdings in local history. Among the earliest community supporters of the Cleveland Jewish Archives were the Gries Family Foundation, the David and Inez Myers Foundation, and the Ratner Miller Shafran Foundation. The idea for this volume owes much to the inspiration and dedication of Alan D. Gross, a Jewish Federation vice president who served as liaison to the historical society for nearly thirty years. He approached WRHS with the idea of updating the work of Lloyd P. Gartner, whose 1978 History of the Jews of Cleveland has long been a standard source of Cleveland history. Gartner offers a comprehensive survey of the community’s origins, growth, challenges, and achievements from the 1830s to the 1940s. Written with the support of the American Jewish Historical Society as part of the Jewish Theological Seminary Regional History Series, Gartner’s History was published jointly by WRHS and the Federation in 1978. Other publications followed, including Merging Traditions: Jewish Life in Cleveland, by Rubinstein and Sidney Z. Vincent (again published jointly, in 1978, then revised by Rubinstein with Jane A. Avner and reprinted in 2004 by Kent State University Press), and Remembering: Cleveland’s Jewish Voices, a collection of primary 2 27

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sources edited by Sally H. Wertheim and Alan D. Bennett (Kent State University Press, 2011). The present volume stems from our recognition of the need for a new study of the city’s Jewish history, one that goes beyond the 1940s and incorporates fresh perspectives from a variety of disciplines. The editors are grateful for having had the opportunity to work with such a distinguished group of contributors and for their insights into local history. Their participation has helped us bring the story of one community to a much larger public. Many of the topics addressed here were first presented to the public in a 2015 seminar cosponsored by WRHS, the Jewish Federation, the Baker-­Nord Center for the Humanities, and the Laura and Alvin Siegal Lifelong Learning Program at Case Western Reserve University. This project is, perhaps more than others, the result of a communal effort involving both individual and institutional partners. The Cleveland Jewish Archives at WRHS are generously endowed by donors to the Federation. Those donors include Barbara and Earl Franklin, the Gries Family Foundation, Carolyn and Jack Lampl Jr. and family, the David and Inez Myers Foundation, the Lotte Schreiber Pinkus Fund advised by Kathe and Jim Mayer, the Ratner Miller Shafran Foundation, Judah Rubinstein (of blessed memory), and Sally H. and Stanley E. Wertheim. The work of John J. Grabowski and Sean Martin is also supported, respectively, by the Department of History at Case Western Reserve University and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. Many others made significant contributions to our thinking about Jewish Cleveland, especially Brian Amkraut, Alanna Cooper, Jay Geller, Peter Haas, Kathryn Hellerstein, Alan Levenson, Jonathan Sarna, and Gary Zola. WRHS chief executive officer Kelly Falcone-­Hall and staff members Hilary Beatrez, Jennifer Dukes, Margaret Roulett, and Tom Verbosky aided our work immeasurably with their helpful advice and assistance. As always, WRHS Research Library staff Ann Sindelar and George Cooper offered invaluable research suggestions to both authors and editors. From the Jewish Federation, Jessica Cohen, Ann Garson, Steve Hoffman, Jackie Reed, Erika Rudin-­Luria, Chris Sebrasky, and Janet Shapiro provided necessary guidance and practical support. The counsel of Alan D. Gross and Sally H. Wertheim—­from the conception of the volume to the final product—­is most appreciated. In their roles at WRHS, the editors work closely with local community members, students, and staff at related institutions. For both practical assistance and provocative discussions, they would like to thank Nate Arnold, Samantha Baskind, Arnold Berger, Ken Bravo, Matthew Gauthier, Jeff Morris, and Jeffrey Zuckerman. Thanks are also due to Elisabeth Maselli and the staff of Rutgers University Press for their guidance in the final stages of publication.

N OT ES

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C O N T R I BU TO R S

Sylvia F. Abramsis a professor emeritus of Jewish education and the former dean and chief academic officer of Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies. Her most recent article, “Moreshet: A Comprehensive Initiative to Promote and Improve Hebrew Language Acquisition in Cleveland, Ohio,” appears in Studies in Judaism and Jewish Education in Honor of Dr. Lifsa B. Schachter. Samantha Baskind, a professor of art history at Cleveland State University, has authored five books and is a coeditor of the foundational volume on Jewish graphic novels. She served as the editor for U.S. art for the revised Encyclopaedia Judaica and is currently the series editor of “Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination.” Rachel Gordanis an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. She researches Judaism and Jewish culture from the early twentieth century to the present, with a focus on the immediate post–­World War II era, middlebrow culture, and American Jewish literary history. John J. Grabowskiis the editor of the online edition of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History and the Dictionary of Cleveland Biography and coeditor of Cleveland: A Tradition of Reform and Identity, Conflict and Cooperation: Central Europeans in Cleveland, 1850–­1930. David C. Hammackis the Haydn Professor of History emeritus at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century and editor of the widely used reader Making the Nonprofit Sector in the United States. Shaul Kelneris an associate professor of sociology and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage and Israeli Birthright Tourism. 2 29

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Eli Lederhendleris the Stephen S. Wise Professor of American Jewish History and Institutions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and chair of the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry. His major publications include New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950–­1970, Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism, and American Jewry: A New History. He is coeditor of Studies in Contemporary Jewry. Sean Martinis the associate curator for Jewish history at Western Reserve Historical Society. He is the author of Jewish Life in Cracow, 1918–­1939 and A Stitch in Time: The Cleveland Garment Industry and author and editor of For the Good of the Nation: Institutions for Jewish Children in Interwar Poland. Mary McCuneis an associate professor of history at the State University of New York at Oswego, where she also served as the director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program. She is the author of “The Whole Wide World, Without Limits”: International Relief, Gender Politics, and American Jewish Women, 1893–­1930. Todd M. Michneyis an assistant professor in the School of History and Sociology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900–­1980. Ira Robinsonis the chair of Quebec and Canadian Jewish studies in the Department of Religions and Cultures and the director of the Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, Concordia University in Montreal. His most recent books are A History of Antisemitism in Canada and History, Memory, and Jewish Identity. Lifsa Schachteris a professor emeritus at the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies. Her professional interests and published articles relate to the study and teaching of the Hebrew language, the professional development of educators, and the study and teaching of the Bible. She developed the Hebrew through Movement curriculum used widely in the United States. Zohar Segevis a professor of Jewish history at the University of Haifa. He is the author of From Ethnic Politicians to National Leaders: American Zionist Leadership, the Holocaust and the Establishment of Israel and The World Jewish Congress During the Holocaust: Between Activism and Restraint. J. Mark Southeris a professor of history and the director of the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University. He is the author of Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in “The Best Location in the Nation” and other books and articles on U.S. urban and suburban history.

I N D E X

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. ACLU. See American Civil Liberties Union activism, 10; feminist, 12, 123, 131–­132, 137; for Soviet Jews, 203, 205, 207, 222n58; Zionist, 109 Adelstein, Carole, 122 African Americans, 9, 84, 91, 135; housing discrimination, 144, 148, 171; Jewish-­ built housing for, 155; in politics, 152; racial clashes and, 91, 144–­145; religious structure and, 47; residential expansion, 142, 143–­145, 146–­151, 163, 168, 173, 174; as teachers, 48 AIPAC. See American Israel Public Affairs Committee AJCSJ. See American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry AJYB. See American Jewish Year Book Akiva (Hebrew high school), 72 Alexander Hamilton Junior High School, Cleveland, Ohio, 144, 152, 173 Alsbacher Document, 14, 37 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 49 American Greetings Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio, 208 American Israelite, 186 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), 119n17 American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ), 206, 207–­208 American Jewish Year Book (AJYB), 16, 20 American Jewry: Holocaust and, 106; international opinion of, 107; Israel and, 102, 105, 106, 186; political activity of, 115; as political force, 104; as secular citizens, 108; unification of, 117

American Judaism (book; Glazer), 184–­185 American Judaism (journal), 191–­192 American Palestine Campaign, 69 American Splendor (comic; Pekar), 80, 81–­85, 87, 93, 96; adaptations of, 81, 82, 90; Jewishness and, 82–­83 American Splendor (film; Springer Berman and Pulcini), 82, 93 anchor families, for Soviet Jews, 217–­218 Andrew Rickoff School, Cleveland, Ohio, 147 Anisfield, John, 56n74 Anisfield-­Wolf Book Awards, 49 Anshe Chesed, Cleveland, Ohio, 15, 30n21, 38, 52nn10–­11, 185–­186, 223; suburbanization and, 166, 171–­172, 175, 178. See also Euclid Avenue Temple; Fairmount Temple Anshe Emeth, Cleveland, Ohio, 16, 17, 20, 30n21, 38; suburbanization and, 148, 165. See also Park Synagogue Anshe Marmoresh Bnei Yaakov, Cleveland, Ohio, 16 Antioch Baptist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, 135, 136 anti-­Semitism, 48, 105, 108, 148, 183; African American, 149; European, 106, 165; in suburbs, 171–­173 anti-­Zionism, 103 Arlington House, Cleveland, Ohio, 152, 153, 168, 173 Ashkenazim, 16 Asmonean, 15 Association of Orthodox Rabbis, 113 “Austere Youth” (Pekar), 84, 87, 88 BACSJ. See Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry Baker, E. M., 66

23 1

23 2 I n de x Band, Jordan, 48 Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry (BACSJ), 207, 208 Beachwood, Ohio, 4, 166, 169, 171–­172; Jewish relocation to, 174, 176, 177–­178 Beats: A Graphic History, The (Pekar), 90–­91 Beaumont Hall, Cleveland, Ohio, 51 “Before I Was Born” (Pekar), 83–­84 Beit Midrash L’Morim. See Hebrew Teachers’ Seminary Beit Sefer Le’umi (National School), New York, New York, 60, 61 Bellefaire JCB. See Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum Benderly, Samson, 60 Benderly Boys, 60, 69, 72 Benesch, Alfred, 48, 64 Ben-­Gurion, David, 104–­105, 107, 115, 116, 118n13 Benjamin, I. J., 16 Benjamin, Samuel, 17 Benjamin, Sheldon, 210 Berman, Lila Corwin, 2, 163, 170 Bernath, Charles, 155 Bernath, Stanley, 155 Beth Hamidrash Hagodol Beth Israel, Cleveland, Ohio, 16, 20, 29 Beth Israel Chevra Kadisha, Cleveland, Ohio, 16 Beth Israel–­The West Temple, Cleveland, Ohio, 38, 203, 205, 219 Beth Tefilo, Cleveland, Ohio, 17, 20, 165 Bet Moshav Zekenim. See Jewish Orthodox Home for the Aged Bialik, Chaim Nachman, 68 Black, Morris, 48 blockbusting, 147, 155, 174 Bloom, Sol, 109–­110, 120n27 B’nai B’rith, 40–­41, 49, 167, 172 B’nai B’rith Women, 212 B’nai Jacob Kol Israel. See Kinsman Jewish Center B’nai Jeshurun, Cleveland, Ohio, 16, 17, 38, 165, 175, 224. See also Temple on the Heights Bond, Douglas, 128–­130 Botwin, Benjamin, 25, 26–­27 Brabner, Joyce, 82, 91, 93, 96 Brandeis, Louis, 105 Braverman, Libbie, 68 Brickner, Barnett, 25, 65, 66, 69, 166, 186–­187; positions held by, 63, 64, 71; as traditional, 194, 199 Brilliant, Nathan, 65, 72

Brown, Isabelle G., 127 Buhle, Paul, 90 Bureau of Jewish Education, Cleveland, Ohio, 44, 62–­67, 65, 73; finances of, 63, 70; staff of, 70, 72. See also Jewish Education Center of Cleveland Burke, Thomas, 111, 154 Burnham, Daniel, 48 Call & Post, 147 Camp Wise, Cleveland, Ohio, 42, 43 Carey, Drew, 98 Caron, Herbert, 203, 206 Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, 49, 73 Catholics, 46–­47, 142, 162, 170, 197 CCSA. See Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-­Semitism CEA. See Council Educational Alliance Cedar-­Central neighborhood, Cleveland, Ohio, 144, 147, 163 charity, 19, 35, 36, 40. See also philanthropy Charles Dickens School, Cleveland, Ohio, 147 chief rabbis, 20–­21, 25 Cincinnati, Ohio, 41–­42 civil rights movement, 56n70, 123, 146, 155 Civil War, 37, 40 CJE. See Council for Jewish Education CJN. See Cleveland Jewish News Cleveland, Ohio: as “city without Jews,” 3, 155, 162; demographics, African American, 143, 147, 151–­152; demographics, immigrant, 211; demographics, Jewish, 2–­3, 4, 9–­10, 11n4, 29, 44, 142, 147, 151–­152, 162, 165, 178–­179n3, 223; Jewish neighborhoods, 142–­143, 147–­148, 151–­153, 155, 165; local politics in, 110–­114, 152, 163; as “mistake by the lake,” 87, 98; scholarship on, 3–­4; urban renewal of, 10, 178 Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education, 58, 224 Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, 46, 48 Cleveland City Club, 51 Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-­Semitism (CCSA), 203, 219; people-­to-­people strategy, 204–­210 Cleveland Edition, 216 Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthropy, 47 Cleveland Foundation, 49, 56n74, 216 Cleveland Gazette, 145 Cleveland Hebrew Schools, 22, 23, 58, 61–­62, 63, 72; branches of, 63; closing of, 73, 224; enrollment, 62

I ndex  Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 63, 148, 164, 165, 169, 177, 216, 223; instability in, 173; Jewish departure from, 175, 178; Jewish relocation to, 147, 167, 170–­171, 173; racial integration of, 174 Cleveland Heights Assembly, 175 Cleveland Heights City Council, 170, 171 Cleveland Heights High School, 171, 174 Cleveland Heights Public Library, 97 Cleveland Institute of Jewish Studies, 65, 73 Cleveland Jewish Center, 21, 148, 165 Cleveland Jewish News (CJN), 204, 216–­219 Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum, 40, 41, 49 Cleveland Kosher, 29 Cleveland Museum of Art, 49, 50–­51, 56n76 Cleveland Orchestra, 49, 50–­51, 56n76 Cleveland Press, 167 Cleveland Public Library, 55n66, 56n74, 92, 98, 153 Cleveland Section, National Council of Jewish Women, 7, 42, 122, 124, 129, 192, 218; abortion and, 131, 136; activism and, 124; education and, 61, 64; evening branch, 132–­133; feminism and, 128–­129, 131, 136–­137; generational differences, 127, 128, 130, 132–­135; history of, 126; membership of, 126–­128, 132–135; programming, 128–131, 135, 136; subgroups, 132–135, 136. See also Council Educational Alliance Cleveland Welfare Federation, 56n74, 174 Cleveland Zionist District, 69 Cohen, Armond, 165–­166, 176 Cohen, Benjamin, 26–­27, 105 Cold War, 103, 184, 190, 199, 214 College of Jewish Studies, Cleveland, Ohio, 73 Commentary, 88, 185, 195 Commentary Reader, The (ed. Podhoretz), 88 Committee of Kashruth, Cleveland, Ohio, 28–­29 “Committee of 100,” 17 Committee on Benevolent Institutions, Cleveland, Ohio, 46–­47 Communist Party, 146 community chest, 19 confirmation, 18, 21 Congregational Plenum, Cleveland, Ohio, 73 Council, the. See National Council of Jewish Women Council Educational Alliance (CEA), Cleveland, Ohio, 18, 29, 40, 42, 143, 147, 148, 164, 167, 168–­169; branches of, 167–­168; extension programs, 164–­165; interracial efforts of, 148, 150–­151

233 Councilettes, Cleveland Section, 122, 124, 134–­136 Council for Jewish Education (CJE), 69 Council Ms. group, Cleveland Section, 134, 136 Council of Jewish Federations. See Jewish Federations of North America Coventry area, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 174, 217 Crumb, R., 81, 82, 84, 85, 98–­99 Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 5 Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, 27, 28 Cuyahoga River, Ohio, 98 Danches, William, 27–­28 Daneceau, Hugh, 205 Dark Horse Comics, 81, 83 Dauby, Nathan, 51, 53–­54n36 Dauby Charity Fund, 56n75 Davis, Emma C., 16 Davis, Russell, 147 Dearborn Independent, 48 de Leon, Sidney, 212 demographics, Jewish: in Cleveland, 2, 4, 9–­10, 11n4, 44, 142, 147, 151, 162, 178–­179n3, 223; in Detroit, 178–­179n3; in suburbs, 162, 165, 169, 171; in United States, 2, 142 Detroit, Michigan, 142, 178–­179n3 Dettelbach, Anne, 218 Deutschman, Daniel, 131 Dewey, Thomas, 110, 116, 121n51 dietary law. See kashrut Dietz, David, 191 Dissent, 209 divorce (get), 15 Dubin, George, 155 Dumm, Gary, 84, 85 Dworken, Mort, 191 Eastern European Jews, 15–­16, 19, 20–­21, 126, 143. See also Soviet Jews East 105th Street, Cleveland, Ohio, 150, 152, 166, 168, 169, 170, 174 Ebin, N. H., 18 Eddy Road Jewish Center, Cleveland, Ohio, 152 education, 4, 18, 21–­24, 224; adult, 190, 195; congregational, 72; Hebrew, 58; identity and, 7; Jewish, 61, 71, 166, 185; methods of, 67–­69; Orthodox, 65; perspectives on, 194; for the poor, 42; professional system of, 58; religious, 183–­184, 192–­193; residential movement and, 10. See also schools

23 4 I n de x Ego and Hubris: The Michael Malice Story (Pekar), 90 Eisenberg, Azriel, 72 Eisenhower, Dwight, 116 Elazar, Daniel, 44, 47, 72 employment: of African Americans, 145; of rabbis, 19; Sabbath observance and, 17, 31n30; of Soviet Jews, 213–­214 Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (ed. Van Tassel), 50, 56n70, 56n74 endowments, 44–­45 Engelberg, Louis, 215 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), 125, 131 Ethiopia, refugees from, 45 ethnicity, as term, 4 ethnic politics, 6, 102–­105, 106, 116, 117 ethnoburbs, 1–­2 Euclid, Ohio, 172 Euclid Avenue Temple, Cleveland, Ohio, 65, 185–­186; Young People’s Congregation, 187 Euclid Jewish Center, 172 Ever, Isaac, 25 Fairmount Temple—­Anshe Chesed, Beachwood, Ohio, 38, 48, 171–­172 Fantastic Four (Marvel Comics), 85–­87 Federal Homes, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio, 155 Federation for Community Planning, Cleveland, Ohio, 47 Federation of Jewish Charities, Cleveland, Ohio, 44, 62, 63 Federation of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (Va’ad ha-­Kehillot), 27, 28 Feiffer, Jules, 99n1 Feldman, William, 212 Fellenbaum, Cyndy, 136 feminism, 12n21, 122–­125, 128, 131–­132, 137; domestic, 125; origins of, 123 Feuer, Leon, 65, 106 Fink, William, 212 Flock, Joseph, 61 Flock-­Garber Cheder, Cleveland, Ohio, 61 Ford, Henry, 48 Forest City Materials, Cleveland, Ohio, 170 Forest Hill Homeowners Association (FHHA), Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 171 Forest Hill neighborhood, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 171 Forest Hill Park, Glenville, Cleveland, Ohio, 152 Forest Hill Park pool, Glenville, Cleveland, Ohio, 145 Fox, Louis, 191 Frank, Ḥayyim Mikhl, 22

Frankfurter, Felix, 105, 107–­108, 119n21 fraternal organizations, 212 Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness (Gastwirth), 24 Freedman, Samuel, 186 Freiberger Library, Cleveland, Ohio, 51 Friedberg, Maurice, 208 Friedland, Abraham Hayyim (Chet Aleph), 8, 22, 42, 58–­74, 59, 66, 224; death of, 71; educational methods, 67–­69, 74; legacy of, 69–­74; personal qualities, 62, 63, 71; poetry of, 70; testimonials to, 71; Zionism and, 65–­66 Friedland, Yonina, 60, 72 Friedland Foundation, 71 fundraising, 44, 45, 71; for education, 63; for Soviet Jews, 208, 216 GACC. See Glenville Area Community Council Gamoran, Emanuel, 71 Gans, Herbert, 163, 185, 195–­199 Garber, Aaron, 61, 64 Garber, Bernard, 61 Garber, Moses, 61 Garson, Sue, 129 Gartner, Lloyd P., 3, 5–­6, 15, 22, 32n58 Gastwirth, Harold, 24 Gemara. See Talmud get. See divorce Gilmore, Stephanie, 123 Gittelson, Benjamin, 20, 22, 25, 32n58 giving, 35–­37 Glazer, Nathan, 184–­185, 194 Glenville Area Community Council (GACC), Cleveland, Ohio, 148, 149, 153, 168 Glenville High School, Cleveland, Ohio, 151 Glenville neighborhood, Cleveland, Ohio, 20, 143, 165; black expansion into, 144–­145, 146–­151, 168; demographics, 144, 151–­152; housing discrimination in, 148; Jewish departure from, 147, 150, 164–­165; promotion of tolerance in, 148; social distancing in, 149–­150 Glick, Bob, 191 Glueck, Nelson, 185 Gogolick, Marianne, 127–­128 Goldburg, Norman, 187, 189, 190, 192 Goldhamer, Samuel, 62 Goldman, Sam, 146 Goldman, Solomon, 16, 17, 18, 65 Goldsmith, Samuel A., 18–­19 graphic narratives, 82, 88 Great Depression, 7–­8, 19, 24, 63, 70 Green, Howard Whipple, 147, 169

I ndex  Greenberger, Ernestine, 128 Green Road Synagogue, Cleveland, Ohio, 38 Greenstein’s Hardware, Cleveland, Ohio, 153 Gries, Moses, 38, 39 Gries, Robert Hays, 56n74 Gund Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, 216 Hadassah, 105, 119n15, 137–­138n9 ha-­Ivri ha-­Tzair (The Young Hebrew), 61 halakha. See Judaic law ha-­Rabbonim, Agudas, 32n72 Hartman, Hershl, 90 Hartmann, Susan M., 123 “Harvey Pekar Meets the Thing” (Pekar), 85–­87 Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland (Pekar), 87, 90–­93, 98 Hasidim, 16 Haspiel, Dean, 87 ha-­Yehudi ha-­Tzair (The young Jew), 60 Hebraists, 60, 68, 224 Hebrew Academy, Cleveland, Ohio, 29 Hebrew Benevolent Society, 40 Hebrew Cultural Garden, Cleveland, Ohio, 68 Hebrew Free Loan Society, Cleveland, Ohio, 217 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), 211 Hebrew language, 15; readers, 67; study of, 60, 103, 186; teaching of, 22, 64–­65, 67–­68, 70, 72, 73; Zionism and, 60, 70 Hebrew Shelter Home, Cleveland, Ohio, 153, 212 Hebrew Teachers’ Seminary (Beit Midrash L’Morim), Cleveland, Ohio, 65, 66 Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio, 38, 41–­42, 103, 185 Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, 45 Hed ha-­Moreh (The teacher’s voice), 60 Heights Area Project, Cleveland, Ohio, 49, 56n70, 175, 176–­177 Heights House, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 167, 168, 169 Herberg, Will, 184, 194 high schools, 64, 72, 162 Hillman, Sidney, 108 Hindin, Judith, 212 Histadrut Ivrit, 70 History of the Jews of Cleveland (Gartner), 3, 5–­6 “Hitherto Untold” (Pekar), 84 Hollinger, David, 51 Holocaust, 93, 100n7, 102, 104, 106, 117, 120n27, 166

235 homes for the elderly, 19, 40, 42, 174 Horowitz, Joseph, 152 Howe, Frederick C., 48 Hungarian Aid Society, Cleveland, Ohio, 40, 53n27 I. L. Peretz Workmen’s Circle School, Cleveland, Ohio, 61, 65 immigrants, 40, 103, 223; city improvement and, 48; Eastern European, 15–­16, 82–­83, 104, 174; first generation, 2, 14, 37; first-­ generation, 224; philanthropy and, 125; political attacks on, 108 Independent Kosher Meat Association, 27, 28 integration, 48, 56n70; education and, 72; of Soviet Jews, 213, 218 International Women’s Year, 131–­132 Israel, 45, 55n59, 102; establishment of, 105, 115, 117; Jewish identification with, 106; role of, 115; Soviet Jews and, 206, 208, 211; Zionism and, 60 Izrael, Jimi, 92 Jackson, Perry B., 153 Jackson-­Vanik Amendment, 204 JCC. See Jewish Community Centers JCF. See Jewish Community Federation JECC. See Jewish Education Center of Cleveland Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, Israel, 104–­105 Jewish Agency for Palestine, 69, 115 Jewish Center, Cleveland, Ohio, 17, 18 Jewish Community Center, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 169–­170, 171, 173, 176–­177 Jewish Community Centers (JCC), Cleveland, Ohio, 40, 42, 150–­151, 152, 153, 164, 204, 212, 225; branches of, 168–­169, 172, 173–­174, 176–­177; non-­Jewish membership, 176; suburbanization and, 167, 168, 175 Jewish Community Council, Cleveland, Ohio, 26, 28–­29, 64–­65, 145, 149 Jewish Community Federation (JCF), Cleveland, Ohio, 40, 46, 154, 162, 163, 164, 177, 205, 208; Soviet Jews and, 204, 212, 213, 214; suburbanization and, 175 Jewish Cultural Institute on Radio, 68 Jewish Daily Bulletin, 65 Jewish Education Center of Cleveland (JECC), 73–­74 Jewish Encyclopedia, 16 Jewish Family Service Association (JFSA), Cleveland, Ohio, 152, 204, 211–­213, 214, 216–­217

236 I n de x Jewish Federation of Cleveland, 3, 4, 18–­19, 29, 204, 224; Orthodox Jews and, 19; suburbanization and, 177 Jewish Federations of North America, 45 Jewish institutions, 40, 166; communal, 37; Jewish vote and, 108; Orthodox, 40, 41, 178; outside Cleveland, 41–­42; philanthropy and, 37, 39; as portable, 147; race relations and, 147, 152–­153; Reform, 40; religious, 37; suburbanization and, 163–­164, 167, 171–­177 Jewish Ladies Benevolent Society, 40 Jewish lobby, 106–­107, 109, 119n19 Jewishness, 5–­6, 82, 85, 88; decoding of, 198–­199; positive view of, 199; suburbanization and, 163, 185, 198–­199 Jewish Normal School of Cleveland, 65 Jewish organizations, 2–­3, 40; coordination of, 212; Orthodox, 18–­19; social, 42; Soviet Jews and, 214–­215, 216; women’s, 7, 12n21, 119n15, 212, 218; Zionist, 105 Jewish Orphan Home, Cleveland, Ohio, 19 Jewish Orthodox Home for the Aged, Cleveland, Ohio, 41 Jewish Sabbath Association, Cleveland, Ohio, 31 Jewish Secular Community, Cleveland, Ohio, 83 Jewish Teachers Institute, Cleveland, Ohio, 65 Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), 19, 28, 207 Jewish Vocational Service (JVS), 212, 213–­214, 216–­217 Jewish Vocational Service, Cleveland, Ohio, 204 Jewish vote, 6, 104–­105, 116–­117; cautiousness about, 107, 108–­109; as crossing parties, 112; effectiveness of, 113; Zionist influence on, 107 Jewish Welfare Federation (JWF), Cleveland, Ohio, 44–­45, 164, 166, 167, 168 Jewish World (JW), 17, 26, 28, 31n36, 167 JFSA. See Jewish Family Service Association Joint Federation / Congregational Plenum Commission on Jewish Continuity, Cleveland, Ohio, 74 Jr. Mrs. group, Cleveland Section, 133–­134, 135, 136 JTA. See Jewish Telegraphic Agency Judaic law (halakha), 15, 19, 26–­27 Judaism: American, 183, 184–­185, 190, 195, 199; Conservative, 17–­18, 38; study of, 194–­195, 197 Judaism, Orthodox, 7–­8, 14, 15–­16; demographics of, 29, 224; discontent and, 18–­19;

education and, 21–­24, 65; institutions and, 40; kashrut and, 24–­29; lack of support for, 19; organizations, 18–­19; rabbis, 19–­21; synagogues and, 16–­18, 38–­39 Judaism, Reform, 7, 15–­16, 17–­18, 52n10; Cleveland as center of, 38; education and, 21, 62, 66; institutions and, 40; Israel and, 186; organizations, 19; synagogues and, 186; Zionism and, 200n11 Jung, Leo, 20 Jung, Maier, 20 JVS. See Jewish Vocational Service JW. See Jewish World JWF. See Jewish Welfare Federation Kabakoff, Jacob, 73 Kahn, Doug, 209–­210 Kalisch, Isidor, 15, 38 “Kaparra” (Pekar), 100n7 kashrut (dietary law), 19, 24–­29. See also kosher Kazin, Alfred, 88 Kehilla (Cleveland, Ohio), 21 Kehillat Yaakov, Cleveland, Ohio, 38, 39 Keneder ‘Adler, 34n119 Kerruish Park, Cleveland, Ohio, 155 Kesher Shel Barzel, 41 Kinsman Jewish Center (B’nai Jacob Kol Israel), Cleveland, Ohio, 87, 153 Kinsman Road, Cleveland, Ohio, 87, 143, 150, 153, 168, 170 Klein, George J., 71–­72 Knesseth Israel, Cleveland, Ohio, 20 Kohn, Lazarus, 14 Kohrman, S. Lee, 45–­46 kosher, 15, 24–­29; institutions and, 18, 19; rabbinical employment and, 19 Kosher Retail Butcher’s Association of Cleveland, 25 kosher supervisors (mashgiḥim), 19, 27, 28, 29 Ladies Benevolent Society, Cleveland, Ohio, 54n38 Ladies Sewing Society, Co, 54n38 Lafayette Elementary School, Cleveland, Ohio, 147 Land, Yetta, 146 landsmanshaftn (immigrant aid societies), 40, 53n27 Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies, Cleveland, Ohio, 73, 224 Laura and Alvin Siegal Lifelong Learning Program, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, 73, 224

I ndex  Lausche, Frank, 111 Lee-­Harvard neighborhood, Cleveland, Ohio, 148, 150, 152, 154; black expansion into, 155 Lee Road, Cleveland, Ohio, 168, 169 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 150, 155, 167 Leeser, Isaac, 15 Leifer, Meir, 16 Lelyveld, Arthur, 48, 51 Letterman, David, 81, 96–­97, 101n48 Levenberg, Judah Heshel, 21, 23–­24, 26, 27, 28, 32n72 Levy, Joseph, 15 Liberal Judaism, 193 libraries, 48, 51, 55n66, 67, 77n64, 91–­92 Liebman, Charles S, 49 Light, Harold “Hal,” 207 Litt, Daniel, 203, 209 liturgy, 16 Louis D. Beaumont Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, 50, 53–­54n36, 56n75, 56n76 Lutheran High School, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 171 Lyndhurst, Ohio, 176 Lynn, Susan, 123–­124 Lytton, Timothy D., 24 Macedonia (Pekar), 90 Maeroff, Eugene, 130 Magic American Chemical Corp., Cleveland, Ohio, 213 Maimonides, 36 Mandel, Barbara, 132 Mandel, Carol, 209 Mandel, Morris, 209 Mandel, Morton L., 170 Mannix, John, 43 “Man Who Came to Dinner—­and Lunch and Breakfast, The” (Pekar), 100n7 Maple Heights neighborhood, Cleveland, Ohio, 155 Marcus, Jacob, 103 Margolies, Moses Sebulun, 20 Margolies, Samuel, 17, 20, 21, 38 Marks, Martin, 46 Marshall, Harry T., 152 Martha House, Cleveland, Ohio, 42 Maschke, Maurice, 48 mashgiḥim. See kosher supervisors Maus (Spiegelman), 82, 100n7 Mavo’ ha-­Talmud (Porath), 23 Mayer, George B., 169–­170 Mayerik, Val, 84–­85

237 Mayfield Heights, Ohio, 176 Medini, Mordecai, 64, 66, 69, 72 Meir, Golda, 68, 71 Menorah Park Senior Center, Beachwood, Ohio, 174, 212 Merging Traditions (Jewish Federation of Cleveland), 3, 6 Merida, James, 144–­145 Merkaz ha-­Rabbonim. See Orthodox Rabbinical Council Meyerowitz, Joanne, 124 middle class, 2, 163, 164, 183, 184, 185; Jewish identity and, 195; philanthropy and, 126–­127 Minnesota Rabbinical Association, 207 Mintz, Alan, 67, 70 “Miracle Rabbis” (Pekar), 83 Misrad ha-­Rabbonim of Cleveland, 28 Moishe House Cleveland, 178 Montefiore Home, Cleveland, Ohio, 19, 40, 41–­42; suburban relocation of, 165, 174 Moore, Alan, 92–­93 Moore, Deborah Dash, 163 Morris, Jeffrey S., 38–­39 Mount Pleasant Community Council (MPCC), Cleveland, Ohio, 153–­154 Mount Pleasant neighborhood, Cleveland, Ohio, 87, 143, 153, 165; black expansion into, 144, 146–­151, 155; demographics, 152; Jewish departure from, 147, 150, 167; Jewish institutions and, 152; promotion of tolerance in, 148; racial interactions in, 145–­146 MPCC. See Mount Pleasant Community Council Mt. Pleasant Advisory Committee, Council Educational Alliance, 168–­169 Mt. Pleasant House, Cleveland, Ohio, 152, 168, 169 Mt. Sinai Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio, 40, 43, 49, 50, 224, 225; kosher food and, 18; Soviet Jews and, 204, 212; suburbanization and, 166 Muskin, Jacob, 153 mutual benefit organizations, 40 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 49, 145, 149 National Conference of Christians and Jews, 154 National Council of Catholic Women, 125 National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), 7, 42, 122, 134–­135; activism and, 124; feminism and, 125, 131–­132; history of, 125–126. See also Cleveland Section; Council Educational Alliance

23 8 I n de x National Council of Negro Women, 125 national-­cultural views, 60, 72, 74 National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives, Denver, Colorado, 42 National Negro Congress, 146 National Women’s Agenda (NWA), 131–­132 Nativ, 206 NCJW. See National Council of Jewish Women Negev Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, 55n59 New Haven Yeshiva in Cleveland, 23–­24 Newman, Paul, 88, 98 nonprofit organizations, 47 Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me (Pekar), 87, 92, 93, 94+95, 97 Nowak, Abraham, 65 Nusach Ari, Cleveland, Ohio, 16 N’vai Zedek, Cleveland, Ohio, 153 NWA. See National Women’s Agenda Occident and American Jewish Advocate, 15 Oheb Zedek, Cleveland, Ohio. See Taylor Road Synagogue Ohio Status of Women Commission, Inc., 131 Ohio Supreme Court, 172 old-­age homes. See homes for the elderly Oppenheimer, Michael A., 196 orphanages, 40–­41, 42 Orthodox Jewish Orphan Asylum, Cleveland, Ohio, 19, 40, 41 Orthodox Rabbinical Council (Merkaz ha-­ Rabbonim), 29 Our Cancer Year (Pekar and Brabner), 93, 101n40 “Pa-­ayper-­Reggs!!” (Pekar), 82–­83 Palestine, 45, 65, 68, 69–­70, 104 Park Day Camp, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 166 Park Forest, Illinois, 163, 185, 194–­199 Park Hebrew Academy, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 166 Park Home Owners Association, Glenville, Cleveland, Ohio, 148 Park Religious School, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 166 Park Synagogue, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 166, 175–176, 177, 224. See also Anshe Emeth Partition Plan for Palestine, 115, 121 Patrick Henry Junior High School, Cleveland, Ohio, 151 Peixotto, Benjamin Franklin, 40, 45 Pekar, Harvey, 80–­88, 90–­93, 96–­99; Cleveland and, 87, 90–­93, 96, 98–­99; funeral

of, 96; Israel and, 93; Jewish identity, 83, 87–­88, 90, 96; Jewishness and, 82, 85; personal qualities, 81, 82; posthumous celebration of, 97–­98; superhero tradition and, 99; working method, 84–­85; Yiddish language and, 83, 85, 90, 100n7; Yiddish name of, 83, 88 Pepper Pike, Ohio, 171, 172, 175, 176 Personal Services Society, Cleveland, Ohio, 54n38 philanthropy, 9, 19, 125, 128; aim of, 49; children and, 192; Christian views on, 39; definitions of, 34–­36; donation amounts, 36–­37, 44; institutions and, 37; interfaith engagement and, 51–­52; Israel and, 105; Jewish, 35, 37–­52; non-­Jewish contributors, 40; to non-­Jewish institutions, 45, 49; outside Cleveland, 37, 45–­46; religious, 39, 42; restructuring of, 37, 49; schools and, 48; secular, 49–­51; as shaping society, 46–­52; social, 42 Phillips, Bruce, 2 Plain Dealer, 15, 41, 45, 51, 93, 98, 175, 216 Poalei Zion, 109 politics: local, 110–­114, 152, 163; women in, 130; Zionist, 6, 110. See also ethnic politics Polyak, Rashella, 218–­219 Porath, Israel, 21–­22, 25–­26, 28–­29, 167, 173 postwar period, 3, 6, 7 Powell, Homer G., 26 Prell, Riv-­Ellen, 7 Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, 125 Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Herberg), 51 Protestant Establishment, The (Baltzell), 51 Protestants, 46–­47, 48, 51 Pulcini, Robert, 93 Quitter, The (Pekar), 87–­88, 89, 90 rabbis, 19–­21; authority of, 15, 25, 26; Hasidic, 16; Orthodox, attempts to unify, 25–­26, 27, 29; relations between Orthodox and Reform, 32n72; salary of, 19, 24; in Soviet Union, 208. See also chief rabbis “Rabbi’s Vife” (Pekar), 83 race relations, 9, 49, 142, 147, 174; advantage taken of, 155; councils for, 148–­149; Jewish institutions and, 152; Jewish tradition and, 149; racial clashes, 91, 144–­145; social distancing, 149–­150. See also African Americans racketeering, 26, 27–­28 Raphael, Marc Lee, 12n10

I ndex  Ratner, Leonard, 170 Ratner, Max, 170 refuseniks, 209, 210, 211 Reich, James, 213 Reliable Kashrut, Cleveland, Ohio, 29 religion: identity and, 7, 184; increased interest in, 184, 190; observance of, 36, 184, 190, 196; as term, 4. See also Catholics; Judaism; Protestants Religious Schools of the Council of Jewish Women, 64 relocation. See residential movement Remnant, Joseph, 90 residential movement, 10, 142; within Cleveland, 143–­144, 167; Jewish, 147, 154–­155, 173; to suburbs, 147, 148, 150, 155. See also African Americans: residential expansion Rocker, Samuel, 18, 22 Rogow, Faith, 125 Romania, 45 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 104, 105, 108, 110, 111–­112, 116 Rosenberg, Janet, 130 Rosenberg, Phillip, 22, 28 Rosenblum, Louis, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210 Rosenblum, Miriam, 210 Rosenman, Samuel, 109 Rosenthal, Rudolph M., 175 Ross, Brian, 46 Rothenheim, Wolf, 38 Rubin, Burton S., 212 Sabbath observance, 15, 17, 31n30, 153, 186 Sachs, Alfred, 62, 63, 65 Sachs, Leonard, 69 Saint Cecelia’s Roman Catholic Church, Cleveland, Ohio, 153, 154 Sarkin, Meyer, 212 Saturday Review of Literature, 49 Scharfstein, Tzvi, 71 schools: African Americans in, 147–­148, 173; anti-­Semitism in, 172; funding for, 39, 62; Hebrew, 22, 64, 66, 87; Jewish enrollment, 151, 152, 162, 168, 173, 174, 176; parochial, 18, 21; public, 21, 48, 61, 64–­65, 152, 162; racial tension in, 148; religious, 42, 166, 186; suburbanization and, 176; Yom Kippur absences, 165, 173. See also education; high schools; Sunday schools Science, Jews, and Secular Culture (Hollinger), 51 Sefer Zikaron (Histadrut Ivrit), 71 Segal, Louis, 109, 110

239 “Self-­Justification or Anticipating the Critics” (Pekar), 93 Shaarey Tikvah, Cleveland, Ohio, 38 Shafran, Joseph, 216, 222n58 Shaker Heights, Ohio, 56n70, 88, 148; anti-­ Semitism in, 171; instability in, 173; Jewish relocation to, 150, 167, 168–­169, 170–­172 Shaker-­Lee House, Cleveland, Ohio, 152, 153–­154, 169, 173 Shamray, Gerry, 100n7 Shapiro, Edward S., 163 Shapiro, Ezra, 64, 66, 69 Shechita Board, 25 “Sheiboneth Beis Hamikdosh” (Pekar), 84 Shenkar, Ann, 208 Sherith Jacob, Cleveland, Ohio, 152 Shiron L’vatei sefer (Songbook for schools; Friedland), 67, 72 shoḥtim. See slaughterers Shomre Shabbos, Cleveland, Ohio, 17 Shuster, Joe, 80, 85, 97, 99 Siegel, Anita, 218–­219 Siegel, Jerry, 80, 85, 97, 99 Silver, Abba Hillel, 32n72, 46, 111, 114, 166; anti-­Semitism and, 109; autobiography of, 115–­116; conflict with Abraham Friedland, 65–­67, 69; early life, 103; Jewish vote and, 109–­110; neutrality, in 1944 elections, 110; political strategy, 102, 104, 106–­110, 116–­117, 121n53; positions held by, 62–­63, 65, 103, 115; Suburban Temple and, 193–­194; Robert Taft and, 110–­114, 121n53; as traditional, 186–­187, 194, 199; Zionism and, 45, 65–­66, 103, 107, 108–­109, 116 Silver, Eliezer, 28, 113 Silver, Samuel, 191–­192 Silver, Virginia Horkheimer, 103 Silverman, Myron, 188, 189, 190, 191, 191, 192, 193 Sippurim Yafim (Nice stories; Friedland), 67, 69, 72 Sir Moses Montefiore Hebrew School, Cleveland, Ohio. See Talmud Torah Sklare, Marshall, 194 slaughterers (shoḥtim), 15, 19, 25, 27, 28 Smith, Harry C., 145 Sobocinski, Carole, 100n7 socioeconomics, 2, 4, 11n5, 17, 19, 117, 173, 183 Sokol, Joseph, 154 Sokol, Laurie, 124 Solender, Sanford, 148 Solon, Ohio, 4, 178, 223 Somers, Susan, 205, 209

2 4 0I n de x Southern California Council for Soviet Jews, 210 Soviet Jews, 203–­219; American visitors to, 209–­210; conflicts with, 213; expenses of, 214, 216; first-­wave emigration, 211–­215; greeting cards for, 207–­208; raising awareness of, 206; second-­wave emigration, 216–­219 Soviet Resettlement Project, Cleveland, Ohio, 218 Soviet Union, 2, 8; emigration policy, 204, 211; fall of, 203; Jewish policy, 206; refugees from, 45, 211, 216; travel to, 209–­210 Spiegel, Marcy, 217 Spiegelman, Art, 82, 100n7 Spiegelman, Marvin, 175 “spiritual Depression,” 7–­8, 12–­13n23 Spotlight, 206 “Standing behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines” (Pekar), 82, 93 Stanley Building Company, Cleveland, Ohio, 155 Stewart, Genevieve, 154 Stewart, Wendell, 154 Stone, Irving L., 208 Strange Tales (Marvel Comics), 86–­87 suburbanization, 4, 49, 71, 135, 147, 150, 155; challenges of, 170–­173; deterioration and, 173; effect on community, 6–­7; increase in, 151; interwar, 163; Jewishness and, 163–­164, 185 Suburban Temple, Beachwood, Ohio, 7, 172, 183–­195; background of, 184; constitution of, 187; early years, 187–­190; education and, 190; founding of, 185; membership policy, 188–­190; as model, 193; programming, 191–­192; rabbis of, 189; religious school, 186, 192–­193, 194; reputation of, 193–­195; self-­assessment, 195; values of, 199 suburbs, 3; anti-­Semitism in, 171–­173; culture of, 7; decline in, 173; flight to, 48–­49, 91; housing discrimination in, 171–­172; Jewish identity in, 163–­164; socioeconomics in, 173 Sugarman, Norman, 45, 54n49 Sunday schools, 21–­22, 61, 62, 64, 192, 194; in Park Forest, 195–­197 Sun Press, 216 Sunrise Development Company, Cleveland, Ohio, 170 Superior-­Through neighborhood, Cleveland, Ohio, 143, 150, 152, 164, 167, 168 Superior-­Through Neighborhood Organization, Cleveland, Ohio, 168 Superman, 80–­81, 85, 97, 99, 99n1

Suris, Irina, 217 Swift & Co. Meat Packing, Cleveland, Ohio, 26–­27, 28 Synagogue Council of America, 184 Synagogue of the Government of Grodno, Cleveland, Ohio, 17 synagogues, 15, 16–­18, 223–­224; attendance at, 3; breakaway groups, 185; conflict within, 17–­18; education and, 72; formation of, 38; funding for, 39; leadership and, 204–­205; membership of, 2–­3; mixed seating in, 17; number of, 16–­17, 39; sale of, 148, 152; in Soviet Union, 208; suburbanization and, 167, 175–­176, 185 Taft, Daniel, 113 Taft, Robert, 102, 110–­114, 111, 114, 120n30 Taft, William Howard, 113 Talmud: kashrut and, 27; study of, 19, 21, 22–­24 Talmud Torah, Cleveland, Ohio, 22–­23, 23, 42, 61 Task Force on Help to Russian Refugees, Jewish Community Federation, 212, 213, 214, 222 Task Force on Resettlement, Jewish Community Federation, 216, 222 Taylor Road, Cleveland, Ohio, 29, 71, 169, 171, 176 Taylor Road Synagogue (Oheb Zedek), Cleveland, Ohio, 17, 21, 38, 152 teachers’ colleges, 60, 64–­65 Telshe Yeshiva, Cleveland, Ohio, 29 temple-­center movement, 38 Temple on the Heights, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 65, 165, 167, 175. See also B’nai Jeshurun Terminal Tower, Cleveland, Ohio, 91, 92 The Temple–­Tifereth Israel, Cleveland, Ohio, 45, 62, 166, 185–­186, 223 The Temple—­Tifereth Israel, Cleveland, Ohio, 38 Tifereth Israel, Cleveland, Ohio, 15, 38, 39, 52nn10–­11, 103, 186 Tivenan, John, 153 Torah, 35–­36, 190–­191; processional, 191 tourism, to Soviet Union, 209–­210 Trinity Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, Cleveland, Ohio, 152 Truman, Harry S., 105, 116, 121n50 UJRS. See United Jewish Religious Schools Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 38, 190

I ndex  Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, 207, 208, 210 Union of Jewish Organizations, 20 Union of Orthodox Congregations of Cleveland, 20 Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, 20–­21 Union of Orthodox Rabbis, 25, 27 Union of Reform Rabbis, 103 United Jewish Appeal, 104 United Jewish Religious Schools (UJRS), 64 United Nations, 104, 114, 115; Year of the Woman, 131–­132 United Palestine Appeal, 186 United States: anti-­Semitism in, 105, 109; charity policy, 35, 45; demographics, Jewish, 2; immigration policy, 211, 216, 223; Palestine policy, 105, 107, 109; religious freedom in, 37–­38, 46 United Synagogue of America, 18 University Circle neighborhood, Cleveland, Ohio, 166, 169, 170, 178 University Heights, Ohio, 175 University Hospitals, Cleveland, Ohio, 43, 49 Unsleben, Bavaria, 14, 15, 224 upward mobility, 143, 147, 154, 155, 164, 167, 169 urbanization, 4 USSR. See Soviet Union Vaad ha-­Kashrut, 26–­27 Vaad ha-­Kashrut of Cleveland (VKC), 29 Va’ad ha-­Kehillot. See Federation of Orthodox Jewish Congregations Vaad ha-­Rabbonim ha-­Chareidim, Cleveland, Ohio, 29 Vanik, Charles A., 203–­204 Van Sweringen Company, Shaker Heights, Ohio, 171, 172 Vincent, Sidney, 6, 44, 162, 170, 172, 176 “Violence” (Pekar), 84–­85 VKC. See Vaad ha-­Kashrut of Cleveland volunteering, 127–­128, 132, 134, 135; Soviet Jews and, 212–­213, 216–­219 Wade Park Elementary School, Cleveland, Ohio, 135 Waldman, J. T., 93, 96 Walker, William O., 147 Walter, Paul, 111–­112, 113 Warrensville Center Synagogue, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 153

241 Warshaver Kosher Sausage Manufacturing Company, Cleveland, Ohio, 25 Washington (D.C.) Committee for Soviet Jewry, 207, 208 Wasserstrom, Peggy, 122, 132 Weiner, Jo, 127 Weinstein, Lewis, 207 Weinstein, Ruth W., 132–­133 Weisberger, Herman, 28 Weiss, David, 209 Weizmann, Chaim, 116–­117 Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, 43, 50–­51, 88. See also Case Western Reserve University West Temple, Cleveland, Ohio. See Beth Israel–­The West Temple “What Superman Means to Me” (Pekar), 85, 86 Wheeling, West Virginia, 103 Wiesel, Elie, 206 Wiesenfeld, Leon, 18, 20 Wise, Isaac Mayer, 15, 38 Wise, Stephen, 104, 107–­108, 110, 116, 119n18, 119n21 Witek, Joseph, 84 Wolf, Edith Anisfield, 49, 56n74 Wolsey, Louis, 65 Wolstein, Bert, 176 women: African American, 145; changing roles of, 123–­125, 126–­128, 130–­131; civic involvement of, 124–­125, 130; Jewish identity and, 125, 126, 132, 195; residential movement and, 10; schools for, 60; self-­perception of, 128; synagogue seating and, 17 Women’s Action Alliance, 131–­132 Women’s Committee, Jewish Community Federation, 218 women’s organizations, 7, 12n21, 42–­43, 212, 218. See also Cleveland Section; Hadassah; National Council of Jewish Women; and other individual organizations women’s rights, 123, 124–­125, 132, 136–­137; nonfeminist-­identified groups and, 123. See also feminism Woodland Hills Park pool, Mount Pleasant, Cleveland, Ohio, 145, 146, 146 Woodland neighborhood, Cleveland, Ohio, 82–­83, 143 Workmen’s Circle, 83, 87, 96, 153 Workmen’s Circle School, Cleveland, Ohio, 153 World Jewish Congress, 115 World War I: philanthropy and, 45; residential movement and, 143, 173

2 4 2 I n de x World War II: immigration after, 211; international arrangements after, 102, 105, 115, 117; Jewish suffering during, 106, 115; residential movement after, 142, 146–­151, 172, 183; women’s roles after, 122, 124, 126; women’s work during, 131 World Zionist Organization, 104, 106, 115, 116 Wouk, Herman, 163 YABI. See Yeshivath Adath B’nai Israel Yakunin, Rosa, 217 Yakunin, Vladimir, 217 Yaroslavsky, Zev, 210 yeshiva, 21, 22–­24 Yeshivath Adath B’nai Israel (YABI), Cleveland, Ohio, 22, 61, 65 Yiddishe Velt, Die. See Jewish World Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land (ed. Pekar, Buhle, and Hartman), 87, 90

Yiddish language, 22, 61; influence of, 90. See also under Pekar, Harvey Young Israel Synagogue, Cleveland, Ohio, 212 Young Ladies Hebrew Association, 42–­43 Zionism, 45, 60, 63, 103, 186, 187, 194; activism and, 109; American leaders and, 104, 105; as antigovernment, 109; conflicts over, 65–­66, 69–­70; cultural, 60; education and, 68, 69, 72; foreign policy and, 107; international, 107; monetary support for, 105–­106; U.S. Congress and, 109–­110, 112 Zionist Emergency Committee, 104, 106, 110, 120n27 Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), 63, 104, 115 Zohar Hebrew Dramatic Studio, Cleveland, Ohio, 69 Zucker, Henry, 44