Cleveland gemach

Download PDF. It begins to consider the postwar period by examining some significant issues with respect to Orthodox Holocaust survivors coming to Cleveland. It continues with a discussion of the founding of the Telshe Yeshiva and deals with its considerable significance in the postwar development of Cleveland Orthodoxy.

It discusses the founding of the first Orthodox day school in Cleveland, the Hebrew Academy, in , and the significance of the proliferation of day schools in the s. It discusses developments in the regulation of kashrut in this era including the influence of the Cleveland Jewish Federation on local kashrut through the s and the Haredization of kashrut standards at the end of the twentieth century.

Postwar relations and tensions between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews in Cleveland, both institutionally and on a grassroots level, are considered. Eastern European Jews designed to adhere as closely as possible to the in Cleveland had perforce to establish their traditional synagogue models those Jews knew.

By the late nineteenth twentieth century followed patterns common century, however, the established Jewish com- to most North American Jewish centers. Another criterion was lit- When the late nineteenth and early twenti- urgy, with some congregations praying in the eth century wave of Eastern European Jewish Ashkenazic liturgy prevalent in much of Eastern immigrants arrived in Cleveland, the accultur- Europe while others prayed with the essentially ated German-Jewish establishment of Cleveland Hasidic liturgy of Nusach Sfard.

Robinson Sabbath observance was another criterion. This tional, many of their members were not strict experiment in higher Talmudic learning in Sabbath observers because of the economic Cleveland did not go well. There was internal realities of America, where jobs enabling obser- dissension among yeshiva faculty, and the vance of the Sabbath were scarce.

However, Depression made for hard financial times for several Cleveland congregations at the turn of the institution. The first Cleveland experiment the century accepted only Sabbath observers as with a yeshiva ended, in , with Rabbi members.

The issue of with each other. The synagogues they served separate seating of men and women, which in could not give them an adequate salary, so most particular came to define the difference between of them depended economically on positions Orthodox and non-Orthodox congregations in in the kosher meat industry. The fact that there the twentieth century, caused the breakup of were never enough such positions meant that several synagogues and the establishment of rabbis found themselves in a tight economic Orthodox breakaway congregations.

Though in consumers. It was a recipe for disaster. Consumer discontent was given public rescue Orthodox institutions, leaving a mutual expression in strikes against the high price of bitterness that lasted for decades. Orthodox Jews in Cleveland sent their chil- Despite these divisive forces, the first decades dren to the Cleveland public school system of the twentieth century also saw attempts to in the prewar years.

These included Sunday Schools, which met In the mids a Shechitah Board, headed once weekly, and were inspired by the dom- by Rabbi Benjamin Gittelsohn was founded. Most prom- Rabbi Israel Porath. In , rabbis and laymen inent among these was the Cleveland Hebrew founded a Vaad ha-Kashrut to support kashrut School. In , Rabbi larist bent did not sit well with more tradition- Levenberg attempted to unite the Orthodox alist elements who established Yeshivath Adath rabbinate and lay leadership of Cleveland in a Bnei Israel [YABI], a school more in line with Federation of Orthodox Jewish Congregations traditional Judaic education, in However, the situ- resist JFSA pressure to go to work.

However, in ation was changed for the better in March , their struggle with JFSA they had the important when a new rabbinic organization called Merkaz institutional backing of the Telshe Yeshiva. The new in the period of the s and early s was Cleveland yeshiva began with ten students.

Because not like the Yeshiva and the newcomers to the majority of the Holocaust survivors relocat- Cleveland it attracted. In most Cleveland was then in short supply. The Cleveland get to New York. From the as long as possible. He attributed this development to cial stability, the Telshe Yeshiva did two seem- the yeshiva and its influence. A typical Telshe initiative was that of a graphically from the Cleveland Jewish commu- yeshiva faculty member, Rabbi Aizik Ausband, nity while also attempting, with some success, to who arranged for the first regular supply of milk exercise an influence on Cleveland Orthodoxy.

In the a stricter interpretation of kashrut in Cleveland, s and s, the Jews of Cleveland, who of which more will be said below. As a contemporary report states, For some Cleveland Jews, this was their second it was founded: neighborhood relocation within a generation.

Cleveland Jews, individually and institutionally It will operate within the framework of the pat- chose to relocate from Glenville and Kinsman to tern set by the Jewish Community Council. The yeshiva out the context of the founding of this organi- broke ground for its new Wickliffe campus in zation. It ranks again as a first gation to work for the ideals of Torah. This was to include educational nity, an effort that yielded considerable success organizations such as Telz, Hebrew Academy, over a period of years.

HA penniless refugees sitting next to children of was the first day school in the city and among truly affluent parents. You have a Chasidic the first to open outside the greater New York child with earlocks next to the child of a area.

Cleveland Jewry, including its Orthodox Conservative rabbi. Pressure was brought ership and did not grow out of YABI, which to bear on HA from opposite sides of the was a community educational institution that Orthodox ideological spectrum. HA Yeshiva or who were more pro-Israel than opened, somewhat ironically, in the basement the yeshiva leadership, were restive as early of the Conservative Cleveland Jewish Center on as the s.

Thus, in a letter to Rabbi East th Street with eleven students in kin- Shubert Spero, a Cleveland couple expressed dergarten and grade one,23 though in its later their desire for a new day school in the literature HA enshrined the number of twen- following way: ty-four original students.

Robinson de-emphasizing the importance of the State of The HA administration, despite numerous Israel. Rabbi Elazar Muskin gives an example: meetings, was unable to come up with a for- mula that would satisfy the pro-Zionist ele- I vividly recall how in , while I was in ment in the school. My of the State of Israel and Zionism] has been father. The where boys would be present.

In those years, the HA assembly and performance. Our community is fortunate to have resale stores that sell furniture and household items at discounted prices as well as gemachs that offer or loan items such as clothing, housewares and furniture.

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