The Jewish Cultural School and Society was known as the Suburban Jewish School in 1973, when its graduating class gathered for study.
July 3, 2008
When Rivke Levine of Rockaway walked into the West Orange Community House in 1964 to decide if the Suburban Jewish School would be right for her children, she knew it was bashert — fated.
The first sound she heard was a familiar “booming” voice — that of Ben Field, the principal of the folkshul she attended in the East New York section of Brooklyn decades earlier, and knew she had found the right place for her children.
Like the folkshul, the SJS was “a politically progressive environment that offered non-religious Jewish education,” Levine said in an interview at the Aidekman campus in Whippany, where she teaches Yiddish to adults for The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life agency.
Not only did she send all three of her children through the secular Jewish school, she also taught Yiddish there and eventually served as principal from 1974 to 1985. “I’m proud to have been affiliated with the school,” she told NJJN.
On June 8, the Jewish Cultural School and Society, as it is now known, celebrated its 50th anniversary at its annual graduation exercises. (A celebration was also held at the JCSS Passover seder.)
The school was established in 1958 in Newark by a group of parents seeking a secular Jewish education for their children. Among the founders were Anita Vigoda Shapiro, Gerri Kogan, and Florence Strindberg. Although several of these women now live at Winchester Gardens in Maplewood, they could not be reached for this article.
The purpose of the school — which by 1964 had moved to West Orange — according to a statement written in a 1970 graduation booklet by then school director Neal Salzman, was to purvey education in “the culture, history, tradition and way of life consisting of music, literature, folklore, body of customs, languages, holidays, and an ethnic identity.”
The culmination of the students’ studies was not a bar or bat mitzva — in which a 13-year-old demonstrates worship and text skills — but rather graduation exercises, where the same 13-year-old presents a research paper on a chosen area of study.
The school, a cooperative, flourished almost from the beginning. By the time Levine arrived, it had to offer double sessions to accommodate all its students. Although enrollment has ebbed and flowed, at its high points, it had about 100 students. At its low, there have been as few as 25 students; one year — 1994 — only two students graduated.
Enrollment is now on an upswing, according to Borenstein, with a student body of 45.
Some of the things Levine loved so much when she discovered the school — the passion of the teachers; the secular approach; the fact that it was a cooperative; the focus on literature, history, culture, and music — are still a part of the school; others have gone by the wayside.
“I’ll never forget the man who taught the Yiddish word for sky, himmel,” said Levine. “‘Think of the Himalayas, how they reach for the sky,’” he said. It was such a picturesque approach.”
In place of Yiddish language, the school now teaches conversational Hebrew; in place of the chiefly left-wing intellectual Jewish parents who ran the school as a cooperative are many intermarried couples who, in Levine’s view, “want something that is the least invasive as possible” in terms of religion.
Still, plenty of those now affiliated with the school, including current principal Paula Borenstein, former president Peter Cole, and educator Bennett Muraskin, were all either raised in the folkshul environment and hold fast to its values, or developed a passion for it as adults.
Borenstein acknowledged that not everyone at the JCSS is deeply affiliated, but many members are, she said, and they maintain the school’s progressive approach.
“They are people who want not only to educate their kids but to give them a worldview that says you need to make change, move things forward, move in a progressive direction,” she said. “A lot of activists are attracted to the school. They want their kids to grow up and take part in the world, not just to take, but also to give. That’s why we have a mitzva project for our graduating class in addition to their research papers.
“This is a place for people not affiliated with a religious congregation who want to live out their Judaism.”
‘Big shift’
Changes reflecting a shifting Jewish community crept in during the late 1980s. In 1986, a b’nei mitzva ceremony made its first appearance at the graduation exercises, which now continues to be called a b’nei mitzva program. Although the content remained the same, it was the beginning of an embrace of certain aspects of Jewish ritual.
Rhea Seagull served as principal from 1988 until 2000, and many changes occurred during her tenure. She too had been educated at a folkshul, in Washington, DC, and came to SJS in 1979. “I was living in Montclair, but I’m not a synagogue person. I thought there was a richer kind of way to be Jewish,” she said in a phone interview.
She had a broad vision for SJS. “Yiddishkeit and social justice were always the cornerstone of the folkshul,” she said. “But I also wanted to expand the focus to include a multitude of Jewish backgrounds.” She had relatives, through marriage, who were Syrian Jews or who spoke Ladino, which gave her an early sensitivity to issues of diversity. The language at the school shifted from Yiddish — no longer spoken at home by students — to Hebrew. Even if no one spoke Hebrew at home, she said, it was the vernacular in Israel and it was easier to find teachers and adjunct materials.
Muraskin of Parsippany, who joined in 1988 and developed the SJS adult education program, called that switch “a big shift.” He said, “The folkshul came out of the Yiddish/leftist movement that considered Yiddish language critical for a secular Jewish identity.”
Seagull also felt they ought to have contact with other Jewish secular groups, and they affiliated with the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations. “It’s important to feel that your way of being Jewish is as good as any other way. Going to conferences and seeing other people from Australia or Vancouver with a similar background is important for a young person’s self-awareness and self-worth,” she said.
Seagull became a certified celebrant, a precursor to today’s secular rabbis. That enabled her to officiate at members’ life-cycle events, from baby namings to weddings. Finally, it was her goal to make secular Judaism more a part of the mainstream Jewish community. She pushed to get space at the Cooperman JCC in West Orange — where they now hold the school and most of their gatherings (before then they had rented space in different places, from public schools in East Hanover to the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University — and to have the group included in the synagogue listings in the New Jersey Jewish News.
Seagull also initiated the move to change the name of the group to the Jewish Cultural School and Society for the 1997-98 academic year to better reflect its identity. “Our secular humanistic approach to Judaism sets our group apart from the other branches of Judaism, but the trunk of the tree is the same,” declared SJS copresidents Carol Mann-Consoli and Marsha Kalman in the 1997 graduation program explaining the coming name change.
Muraskin began offering adult education courses in the late 1990s. “When I arrived, they didn’t have much beyond a school. I remember attending the occasional Shabbos dinner at people’s houses,” he said.
A photo taken in the 1970s shows Suburban Jewish School director Neil Salzman, left; Rivke Levine, his successor; and Murray Hurwitz, a longtime faculty member.
More holiday celebrations were added to the JCSS calendar. Muraskin created a Shavuot celebration and Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur observances. He pointed out that the observances are a “radically different way of honoring our Jewish heritage” from a synagogue service; secular celebrations include prose and poetry readings, stories, personal reflections, and songs, rather than prayers. “It’s very Jewish in a completely different way from a synagogue service,” he said.
Today, JCSS draws the majority of its members from Maplewood, South Orange, and Montclair (one-third each), but people come from other communities as well, as they always have.
While there are about 30 auxiliary members, the focus remains on the school. “Running the school uses up most of our psychic energy. The holidays fit into the school year,” said Cole.
And the curriculum is once again evolving with the times. “Many of the new members are from Israel and Russia,” said Cole. “They have a different background and perspective. Yiddish and shtetl history do not resonate at all; it’s not their history. So we are working to modify the curriculum to incorporate their stories.”
The community continues to seek its place within mainstream Jewish organizations, with people like Muraskin eager to point out that secular Judaism as a movement began more than 100 years ago, shortly after Reform Judaism was founded. “It was not invented yesterday,” he said.
Its main hurdle, he said, is to attract members. “We think there are millions of secular Jews out there. Our challenge is to get them to join the secular community rather than sacrifice their principles and join a religious community or throw their hands up and sever ties with the Jewish community.
“The challenge is to find a way to make secular Jews into Secular Jews.”
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