Dr. Mordecai M. Kaplan will be guest of honor at a dinner to be given by the Alumni Association of the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary Sunday evening at the Hotel Victoria in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the institute. Dr. Kaplan, who is dean of the institute and professor of homiletics at the seminary, has been with the institute since its inception. He is one of the foremost thinkers in American Jewry.
The Teachers Institute is one of the oldest teacher-training institutions in the country. It was opened in 1909 when the late Jacob H. Schiff created a fund of $100,000, known as the Jewish Teachers College Fund, one-half of the income of which was to be devoted to the maintenance of a training school to be conducted under the auspices of the seminary. This fund was later augmented by the late Louis Marshall, Felix M. Warburg and others.
USED TALMUD TORAH
During the early years the institute held its sessions in the Uptown Talmud Torah, and later in the Loeb Memorial Building of the Hebrew Technical Institute. In 1925 Mr. and Mrs. Israel Unterberg presented to the seminary a gift of $200,000 as a memorial to the parents of Israel Unterberg.
This gift was used to build the Unterberg Memorial Building of the Teachers Institute at Broadway and 122nd street. The institute has been housed in its present quarters since the fall of 1930, when the Unterberg Memorial Building and other buildings of the seminary were completed.
Although at first a training school for teachers, the institute has during the years extended the scope of its work.
The Teachers Institute is a day school only. There are at present 50 students attending.
100 IN EDUCATION
Of the 319 graduates of the institute, 100 are at present in Jewish education. Of these twelve hold high administrative positions, twelve are principals of schools and the rest teachers.
The achievements of the Teachers Institute of its existence are notable in that almost all the important leaders in Jewish education in this country received their training there.
The Teachers Institute has ###ped raise the professional requirements for Jewish teaching as well as the professional standards of the Jewish teachers, and has helped extend the limits of advanced Jewish education in this country. It has trained a generation of laymen, with a comprehensive Jewish training, who are playing a vital part in Jewish communal activities.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
