Record Group 12: Teachers Institute/Seminary College of Jewish Studies

• Dates:
  • 1915 - 1992
• Size: 10 linear ft.
• Number of Boxes: 13
• Languages:
  • English
  • Hebrew
• Location: Special Collections Reading Room, Jewish Theological Seminary Library.
• Restrictions: Jewish Theological Seminary records are available for research, with permission, through 1972; records dating from 1973 and afterward are currently closed. For permission to see records of The Jewish Theological Seminary write to: Archivist, Ratner Center for the Study of Conservative Judaism, Jewish Theological Seminary, 3080 Broadway, New York, NY 10027. Reproduction of fragile items is not permitted; consult the archivist about literary rights.
• Related Collections: R.G. 1, General Files; Diaries of Mordecai Kaplan; Ratner Center Photograph Collection

JM, 2/4/92; EK 8/7/2004

Table of Contents:

• A Note on Folder Headings
• Historical Note
• Collection Description
• Series List
• Series Descriptions
• Box List

A Note on Folder Headings

Individual folders are identified in the following way: record group# -- box# -- folder#, as in R.G.1-10-32. Please use this format in citations and when referring to files for any other reason.

Historical Note

Teachers Institute student Tziporah Heckelman (class of 1950) at the Institute's school for observation and practice at the Inwood Hebrew Congregation in northern Manhattan, late forties. Photographer: Virginia F. Stern.

The Teachers Institute, or TI as it was familiarly called, was the teacher training department of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Courses for teachers were first offered at the Seminary in 1904, but the Teachers Institute did not formally open until 1909. Funding was originally provided by Jacob Schiff and Louis Marshall. Mordecai Kaplan was the principal, 1909-1931, and dean, 1931-1946; Samuel Dinin was the registrar.

Before the establishment of the Seminary's coeducational graduate and undergraduate programs and long before it accepted women into its rabbinical and cantorial programs, the TI was the only place at the Seminary where women could study for a degree.  As a result of this, and also because of the identification of teaching as a women's profession, the majority of students at the TI were women.

For many years the TI was geographically separate from the rest of the Seminary.  While rabbinical students traveled long distances to reach the Seminary campus on Morningside Heights, TI classes were held within easy reach of the Institute's students. During its first years the Teachers Institute met at the Uptown Talmud Torah on East 111th Street, the Downtown Talmud Torah on East Houston Street, and the Hebrew Technical Institute, downtown on Stuyvesant Street. In 1930 the Teachers Institute joined the rest of the Seminary, moving into the Unterberg Building, part of the Seminary's new group of buildings at 3080 Broadway in Morningside Heights.

The Teachers Institute offered both undergraduate and graduate degrees, and participated in a joint degree program with Columbia University's Teachers College. In 1931 the Teachers Institute became the Seminary College of Jewish Studies, the Seminary's undergraduate division, now the Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies.

In 1919 the Teachers Institute opened an extension department, which in 1922 was named the Israel Friedlaender Classes after the Seminary professor who was killed while doing relief work in Russia. The Classes met at the Seminary, and at branches in Yorkville and Harlem in Manhattan; Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Brownsville, and Flatbush, in Brooklyn; at University Heights in the Bronx; and in Newark, New Jersey.

The purpose of the classes was to train Sunday school teachers and Jewish club leaders, and to provide classes in Hebrew and Jewish history and literature for adults. Both men and women were admitted to the Israel Friedlaender Classes and, as was the case with the Teachers Institute, most of the students were women. Between 1942 and 1944 the school became the Seminary School of Jewish Studies.

The TI Alumni Association was founded in 1912 (with the first graduating class) and was incorporated in 1940.

Dr. Israel S. Chipkin was the registrar of the Israel Friedlaender Classes (beginning in 1921) and an instructor. He was also director of the Seminary's Women's Institute of Jewish Studies, which was affiliated with the Israel Friedlaender Classes.

Chipkin was born in Vilna in 1893 and came to this country as a child. In addition to his Seminary responsibilities Chipkin was active in the Jewish Education Association of New York and in Zionist organizations, including the Zionist Organization of America and Young Judaea.

For more information about the Teachers Institute see: David Kaufman, "Jewish Education as a Civilization" in Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: JTS, 1997).

Collection Description

The Teachers Institute and its extension division, the Israel Friedlaender Classes are only sparsely documented. So far, records of the Israel Friedlaender Classes, mainly correspondence of its registrar, Israel Chipkin, and a few files of correspondence belonging to Teachers Institute registrar Samuel Dinin, are available for research.

Some additional material about the Teachers Institute can be found in the files of Mordecai Kaplan in the Seminary's General Files, designated as Record Group 1. See also the diaries of Mordecai Kaplan, held by the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Series List

• A. Israel Friedlaender Classes/Seminary School of Jewish Studies, 1919-ca.1944
• B. Registrar, Samuel Dinin Files, 1941-1942
• C. Teachers Institute Alumni Association, 1915-1992
• D. Teachers Institute Minutes, 1921-1934
• E. Students' Reports, 1919-1937
• F. Course Packets, 1919-1921, 1926, n.d.

Series Descriptions

A. Israel Friedlaender Classes/Seminary School of Jewish Studies Records, 1919-ca.1944; (1920s-1930s, bulk) Boxes 1-3

Records of the Israel Friedlaender Classes date principally from the 1920s and 1930s and consist mainly of correspondence of the registrar, Israel Chipkin. Also included are: minutes, lists, publications, questionnaires, statistics, songs and poems, bills, examples of forms and form letters, class attendance sheets, lists of library books, clippings of newspaper advertisements for the Classes, posters, brochures, programs, scholarship applications and letters of recommendation for scholarship applicants, and application forms completed by students.

The largest group of material is Chipkin's correspondence with prospective and current students, alumni, faculty members, and administrators. Included among the correspondents are: Cyrus Adler, Samuel Dinin, Louis Finkelstein (in his roles as assistant to the president and provost), Mordecai Kaplan (dean of the Teachers Institute), Israel Levinthal, Arthur Oppenheimer, student organization president Rose Rosenberg, and others. The correspondence concerns such matters as scholarships, graduation, choice of prize books, publicity, absences and departures of students, student payments, scheduling of classes, and other administrative matters. Some of the correspondence concerns Chipkin's activities at the Jewish Education Association where he was involved in an effort to have Hebrew taught in the public high schools during the 1930s. Typescripts of some of his articles on this and other topics are included with his correspondence.

Student life is documented by songs and poems from the twenties and thirties, and by issues of student publications, including Extension '22 a journal published by members of the class of 1922 (the first class), and one issue of the Alumni News, February 13, 1926.

Of particular interest are some notes, and compilations and lists of information from a survey done of Teachers Institute alumni who entered the school between 1916-1921. This material was found among these records, but it is unclear whether or not the alumni surveyed include graduates of the Israel Friedlaender Classes.

B. Registrar, Samuel Dinin Files, 1941-1942; Box 4

Included are two folders of material, 1941-1942, of Samuel Dinin, registrar of the Teachers Institute and the Seminary College of Jewish Studies. The bulk of the material is correspondence - mainly in English, with some in Hebrew - between Dinin and students and faculty of the Teachers Institute/Seminary College; with Mordecai Kaplan, its principal; and with representatives of various Jewish educational organizations and schools. Also included are a scattering of documents, including: a newsheet about Teachers Institute alumni, 1942; a list of prize money available, 1942; examination schedules; lists of students; notices to students; bibliographies; and a report on student activities, 1940-1941.

C. Teachers Institute Alumni Association, 1915-1992; Boxes 5-9

This collection consists of records of the TI's alumni association.  Included is correspondence, circular letters to members in both final and draft form, flyers, membership lists, photographs, and financial data.  Cumulatively this material dates from the 1930s through the early 1990s.  In addition there are minutes of the association, 1942-1975, with gaps; issues of the association's publications; and suveys of alumni gathered for publication in the association's bulletin.

A small amount of this material was donated by Ruth Weschler, a former president of the association.  The two groups have been kept separate.  Note that there is duplication between them.  Of note in the Wechsler material are additional questionnaires, and a binder of material gathered to document the career of Frances Krasnau Thau (this has been disbound for reasons of preservation and put in a folder).

All of the material documents the alumni association's continuing efforts to support the Seminary through awards and scholarships to students and faculty chairs; events, such as meetings, alumni days, kallahs, celebrations in honor of former teachers; as well as internal association matters

The questionnaires were completed by members of the classes of 1912 through 1971 in 1968-1969, and the classes of 1912-1979 in 1977.  Class lists compiled in 1971 of all classes up to that point are also included.  In the questionnaires alumni report on their careers, families, education, achievements, and extent of Jewish affiliation.  In some cases letters, resumes, biographical sketches and other material that reports more fully on the lives of alumni is attached.

While the above questionnaires were sent out in order to gather information to include in the TI's Alumni Bulletin  Ruffman, himself a 1922 graduate of the TI, asked a selected group of alumni to comment more fully on the effect the Institute had had on their lives in the years following graduation.  Included here are copies of the letter Ruffman sent out to alumni, the responses, and  summaries of data about respondents compiled by a statistician, C. Morris Horowitz.  Some of the respondents comment at length about their experiences at the TI and its effect on their later lives.  Many of  them mention the influence of faculty, particularly Mordecai Kaplan.  For some, the TI, and particularly Kaplan's teaching, provided a way to leave the world of Orthodoxy while still remaining observant Jews.  Included are letters from: Miriam R. Ephraim, Emanuel Gamoran, Ernestine [Goldstein], Harry Goldstein, Simon Greenberg, Emanuel Halpern, Minnie Halpern, Harold D. Kastle, Lotta Levensohn, Shonie Levi, Abraham E. Millgram, Jacob Sloan and Hajnalka Winer

D. Teacher's Institute Minutes, 1921-1934; Box 10 

Minutes from various group meetings within TI date from September of 1921 through December of 1934. Included are minutes from groups such as:

• Attendance Committee
• Committee on Budget
• Committee called to consider plans for reorganizing the work of the Teachers Institute
• Committee of Special Admissions
• Committee on Teachers Institute
• the Faculty of Teachers Institute
• Executive Committee
• Executive Council of Israel Friedlaender Classes
• Freshman Committee
• Instructors of the Post-Graduate Department,
• Israel Friedlaender Classes: Meeting of the Faculty
• Post-Graduate Committee
• Scholarship Committee
• Sophomore Committee
• Student Council of Israel Friedlaender Classes
• Student Organization of the Extension Department of Teachers Institute
• Teachers Institute Staff

Of particular interest are the attendees of the various committee meetings which include such significant figures as Cyrus Adler, Mordecai Kaplan and Hillel Bavli. The Committee on Teachers Institute was one of the most prominent committees of TI, as it was in direct contact with JTS's Board of Directors, and was responsible for overseeing the budget of TI. The members of the Committee on Teachers Institute included Cyrus Adler, Mordecai Kaplan, Solomon Stroock, Samuel Unterberg, Felix Warburg and Samuel Dinin. The minutes are organized chronologically by year, from 1921 through 1934. The bulk of this series are minutes from the TI Staff which give a detailed description of the rules and policies of TI, especially in regards to absences, examinations and grading. Of further interest within the minutes of Teachers Institute committees is a detailed list of entrance requirements potential applicants had to possess to be admitted to TI. The students' role in TI is represented in the series in the minutes of the Student Organization of the Extension Department of Teachers Institute and the Student Council of the Israel Friedlaender Classes.

E. Students' Reports, 1919-1937, Boxes 11-12

The students' reports of the Teachers Institute (TI) include progress reports, monthly reports of the material covered in particular classes, and attendance reports.

Students' Progress Reports make up the bulk of the series and are arranged in chronological order from September 1919 till June of 1937, with gaps in the years 1925, 1927, and 1930-32. Information included on the Progress Reports is the name of the professor, subject, class list and grades for each student in Proficiency and Effort. Within each year, the files are arranged in alphabetical order according to subject. Monthly reports of students' work date from October 1922- June 1930, with gaps in the years of 1926 and 1927. Monthly reports include such information as ground covered within a month span of particular classes, and names of students that were called to the registrar. Within each year, the monthly reports are arranged by Department and Class. Attendance reports date from 1928 till 1929, and serve as a record of students who were absent or late for specific class dates. Each attendance report covers a one month time span, and the reports are arranged in chronological order.

F. Course Packets, 1919-1921, 1926, n.d.; Box 13

The course packets from various classes offered at the Teachers Institute are included. The bulk of the course packets are from Hebrew literature courses, which date from 1917-1921. Of note is an outline from a Modern Jewish History class for the Training School of Jewish Social Work dated 1926 which offers a detailed account of Jewish history in Europe prior to the French Revolution through 1920s Jewish life in the United States.