Social Service Problems Agitate Cleveland Community

(News Letter from Cleveland)

Practically every Jew in the city of Cleveland has taken sides on the question as to whether a new Jewish orphan home shall be built. Both sides find ample substantiation for their views and at times feeling has run rather high. There are professional workers on both sides of the question. The present institution was built fifty-nine years ago in what was then the center of the Jewish community in Cleveland and has cared for four thousand Jewish boys and girls. The Jews have, however, long since moved away from this section of the city and it has become one of the most undesirable and congested neighborhoods in the city, where the morals and lives of the children are in constant jeopardy. A new lot has been purchased by the Home in the suburbs of Cleveland, one of the most desirable and beautiful sections in the environs of the city, and here they plan to build in accordance with the newest theories for the institutionalizing of children. Twelve cottages are to be built in dumbell units consisting of two cottages with a connecting kitchen on the thirty-one acre plot. Each cottage will care for twenty-five children under the supervision of a cottage mother. There is also to be a hospital, service building and administration building. Allowance is to be made for future expansion.

THE CAMPAIGN OF THE JEWISH ORPHAN HOME

Before The Jewish Orphan Home began its campaign for funds for the new project, it submitted its plans and program to the Jewish Welfare Federation for endorsement and approval, the Federation serving the community as an advisory body with regard to expenditures for philanthropic service, and asked in particular the approval of a local campaign for $350,000 representing 28 per cent of the net amount of $1,226,000 required to be raised, the total cost of the institution being $1,800,000 and the capacity of the institution to be three hundred and fifty. The Federation refused to endorse the program of the Orphan Home on the ground that it was planning its capacity on the basis of their old figures of intake and discharge and that these figures were not an adequate indication of the future needs of the home both because of a decrease in the birthrate and because of the great decrease in immigration. In addition the Federation felt that in line with the newer theories for the care of orphaned or dependent children, where it was not possible to place the child with its own surviving parent or other relatives, another family home was preferable to an institution except for problem children where specialized care was needed, and that for the small number of such problem children, which a survey of the present Home disclosed, there are already adequate facilities in the community. The two factions have apparently come to no agreement and the campaign for funds is now on.

JEWISH SOCIAL SERVICE INSTITUTE

A Social Service Institute, under the auspices of the Jewish Welfare Federation, being held for the purpose of furnishing to the Jewish Community of Cleveland a factual basis for social service efforts, opened with the Annual Dinner of the Federation at the Excelsior Club, Sunday night, February 19th. From February 20th to 24th the Jewish Social Service Institute will be held at the Hotel Statler with separate luncheon sessions devoted to each of the major social work fields. Leading authorities of national prominence have been invited to discuss problems of social welfare activity with our community. One hundred and forty prominent Jews and Jewesses have volunteered their services as hosts and hostesses for this occasion. Acting as chairmen for the various sessions are Max Myers, Rabbi Barnett Brickner, Judge Maurice Bernon, Eugene L. Geismar, Eugene Wolf. Among the speakers are: in the Health Division, Dr. Frank E. Chapman, William C. Treuhaft, and Dr. H. L. Rockwood; in the Recreation Division, Frank L. Seman, Charles Nemser of the Council Educational Alliance, and Rabbi Solomon Goldman of the Jewish Center; in the Child Care Division, Samuel Gold-hamer and Dr. Leon W. Goldrich; in the Jewish Education Division, Dr. John Slawson, Dr. Alexander Bushkin, of Chicago, and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of the Temple; in the Family Welfare section, Marc J. Grossman, Dr. I. M. Rubinow, and Miss Violet Kittner of the Jewish Social Service Bureau of Cleveland.

THE BUREAU OF JEWISH EDUCATION

The Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education was organized in 1924 to act as a financial agency for the purpose of stabilizing the sources of income for recognized Jewish schools under communal direction; to study continuously the problem of Jewish Education in Cleveland, to make propaganda, to enlist the support of Jewish parents in the interest of the unschooled children and youth, and to induce the Jewish children to attend Jewish schools; and to develop and increase the Jewish educational facilities of this city and to coordinate the work done by the various Jewish educational institutions. Rabbi A. H Silver is president of the Bureau, Mr. Alfred H. Sacks, Executive Director, and Mr. A. H. Friedland, Educational Director.

With the assistance of the temple and synagogue boards, the Federation, and other interested groups, the Bureau conducted three financial campaigns–the first in January 1925, netting cash collections during the year of $39,000, the second in January 1926. netting cash collections of $56,000, and the third in April 1927, netting cash collections of $62,500. There are now three thousand contributors on the subscription list of the Bureau, most of whom have subscribed on an annual basis. Though there are still many thousands of Jewish children in Cleveland not receiving any Jewish education whatever, and though the sums now raised by the Bureau are still inadequate to cope fully with the entire problem on a communal basis, it is nevertheless a source of gratification to those in charge of the Bureau’s affairs to know that during three years of activities, the community has already been educated to contribute $62,000 a year, while in 1924, when the Talmud Torah system was the only agency getting money for Jewish education directly from the community, the total income through that source was only $10,000.

SUBSIDIZING JEWISH SCHOOLS

The Bureau of Jewish Education is organized in the form of a federation of Jewish schools, subsidizing existing school systems that are affiliated with it, and doing directly the work of promoting Jewish education and educating the community; also conducting a department of extension education through which are reached the many thousands of children unaffiliated with any Jewish school. During the last year the Bureau subsidized the following schools and educational activities:

Seven Sunday Schools of the Council of Jewish Women, with an average enrollment of 1,250; eleven weekday afternoon Hebrew Schools of the Cleveland Hebrew School and Institute with an average enrollment of 2,100; the Jewish Teachers Institute for the training of teachers for the Sunday and Hebrew Schools, with an average enrollment of 135. Twelve hundred children unaffiliated with Temple Schools have been enrolled in schools affiliated with the Bureau.