Background and History
According to an article in the Jewish Quarterly Review entitled "The Jewish Sunday School Movement in the United States" and printed in 1900, “the exact beginning of the American Jewish Sunday Schools is obscured by uncertainty and difficulty of opinion…” though it is largely credited with the works of Miss Rebecca Gratz, a Philadelphia Native, who sought to provide Jewish schooling to those most in need. As students received secular schooling, Miss Gratz understood the need to provide Jewish history and Jewish traditions to those most lacking a basic understanding in Jewish Education. In fact, Jewish Sunday School grew largely in response to Christian Sunday School as a means of providing proper Jewish Education to students who otherwise lacked any religious grounding in Jewish traditions and history or lacked the financial means necessary to attend such a school. As a devout Jew, Gratz dedicated her life to helping the poor and neglected. In 1818, “under the sponsorship of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, the Hebrew Sunday School Society of Philadelphia was created on March 4, her birthday, with about 60 students.” To this day, Rebecca Gratz is referenced as “the foremost American Jewess of her day.”
Read more about this topic: Hebrew School
Famous quotes containing the words background and, background and/or history:
“... every experience in life enriches ones background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877?)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didnt know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)