GREENBERG, Ira, ed. (with R. G. Safran & S. G. Arcus), THE HEBREW NATIONAL ORPHAN HOME; Memories of Orphanage Life

Abstract

GREENBERG, Ira, ed. (with R. G. Safran & S. G.Arcus), THE HEBREW NATIONAL ORPHAN HOME; Memories of Orphanage Life. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001,328pp., $74.95 hardcover. This collection of essays weaves personal reminiscence, factual history and photographs, into a mosaic of experiences of 1300 to 1800 hundred boys who spent their formative years in The Hebrew National Orphan Home (HNOH) in Yonkers, New York, between 1914 and Home's closing in 1958. While falling initially into broad category of Jewish social history, book has a broader appeal in a comparative context. McClelland' s (1989) study of orphans brought to Canada through Canadian Catholic Emigration Society, comes to mind as does Hamelin's (1997) more recent work on British orphans brought to Canada and hired out to work through Orphan Homes of Scotland Resettlement village. Maunders (1994), in comparing upbringings of children in Protestant Orphanages in Canada, Australia and United States, found orphanage life characterized by same strict discipline, corporal punishment and chores described in this volume. Thus there may well be, at least in past history of orphanages, a universal character despite particularities of specific institutions. This volume has significance in ongoing debate in North America as to whether orphanages might not be a better alternative to shoddy and poorly supervised foster care. While individuals writing here do not claim to be spokesmen for all their mates, they provide a detailed and even-handed picture of life at the home. The wrenching circumstances of parental deaths, family poverty, abandonment and families split by immigration, brought boys to home initially. Those with families were lucky to receive intermittent visits, since a two-mile walk waiting visitors beyond end of street-car line. Recollections of physical and sexual abuse and bullying, often visited upon weak, friendless or new boys, are chilling and indignation and anger of these aging orphans comes through to readers. But many memories are fond ones; recollections of staff members and administrators of exceptional character and caring, as well as conscientious in-house teachers of New York Public schools, who prepared their boys for larger world of Yonkers' Roosevelt High School. Some recollections are quite humorous suggesting that HNOH was hardly a bleak place - far from it. The well-rounded curriculum, sports, art, music and hobby activities, and concern for individual development, suggest that administrators were attuned to (then) modern currents of Progressive Education. In earlier years, many children came from immigrant families but later many were native born. The popular perception of affluence of Jewish communities in North America is misleading. For example, in Canada Jews are less than 1% of population in poverty, but rate is 17% within Jewish population (Torczyner, 1994). Thus while numbers are small, there are significant numbers of individuals fitting profile of poverty. …