J.D.B. News Letter

(By Our Rochester Correspondent)

After contemplating the step for a number of years, the Jewish Orphan Asylum Association of Western New York has decided to close its eleven year old cottage-plan orphanage known as the Genesee Home. The Association is composed of three societies: The Buffalo Jewish Orphan Asylum Society, the Rochester Jewish Orphan Asylum Society and the Syracuse Jewish Orphan Asylum Society with their common plant in Rochester.

The decision to close the place is not due to lack of funds but to a belief that the care of normal dependent children in institutions is obsolete in method and that such children can be better cared for in properly slected and properly supervised boarding homes, under the supervised boarding homes, under the supervision of workers specially to do this work.

When sixty or seventy years ago, it was deemed necessary to remove orphan children from alms houses, institutions for them were most desirable; but in the course of years the treatment of families in their homes has become scientific in its methods and the need for the separation of children from their families for reasons of poverty alone was no longer necessary and many who in the old days would be candidates for asylums because of the death of one or both parents are now permitted through subsidies from the family welfare agency or through county boards of child welfare or mother’s assistance funds to keep the family unit complete. Where parental responsibility is weak, placing agencies are called into service for the purpose of finding homes which will adequately fit the individual temperament of the child. This in itself is a task that demands a special technique not always found in the usual case worker.

The present superintendent in 1921 made a report on the presence of problem children in orphanages and for a time the project of changing the policy of the institution to that of caring for re-educating and training such children was under consideration. Last summer a survey was conducted under the direction of the New York Bureau of Jewish Social Research, which recommended that there was no longer any need for the continuance of this institution for any type of child in Western New York and the Board of Directors decided to continue only as long as it was necessary to find proper homes for the children under its care and to sell its property. That this organization had exercised much care in its reception of children is indicated in the small number of children it has accepted during the past ten years. At no time during the past fourteen years were there more than forty-four children from the three cities, whose aggregate population consists of about 50,000 Jews; the minimum has been twenty-three, with an average of thirty-two children. At the end of the present fiscal year, July 1, there were twenty-six children under care. The present plant which cost $100,000 when built in 1916, has increased considerably in value and there is an endowment fund of $175,000. No decision has been made as to the disposition of the fund. It has been suggested that it be kept intact as a Foundation for the promotion of child-welfare in the three cities, which will be possible if each city will not desire its proportionate share for communal purposes.

The Association was organized in 1879 and is therefore in its fiftieth year of activity; it was incorporated in 1881 and will close its doors on September 1. Mr. Isaac Adler the acting president, explaining that the abandonment of the Home is in line with the conviction of its trustees said that, “there is no longer justification or excuse for institutions for normal, healthy orphans other than temporarily, since they can be better cared for in private homes”. The superintendent, Arman Wyle, added that, “it costs one-third as much to maintain children in private homes as it does for institutional care and in addition a better semblance of normal home life can be obtained for the child and this accounts largely for the policy of many years in maintaining the institution for such children for whom home-life has been found undesirable. The time has now arrived when agencies in the three cities can care for their own children without recourse to the obsolete policy of herding them in institutions.”

The Jewish Young Men’s Association, affiliated with the National Association of Jewish Community Centers, will start a drive for a $1,000,000 building fund early in December. This is to be the last word in Community Centers, embodying all the best features of such enterprises throughout the country and will have several floors for dormitories. One of these will be reserved for the women of the Jewish Young Women’s Association. Haskell Marks is president, and Tobias Roth, executive secretary.

The experiment of amalgamating the two Jewish family welfare agencies, the United Jewish Charities, formerly conducted by the Reform Jews of this city and the Associated Hebrew Charities, at one time directed by the Orthodox group, has been eminently successful. As the Jewish Welfare Council, with a directorate composed of members from each society, the work of caring for the poor Jews of Rochester has been better done than under the old competitive and overlapping methods.

There seems to be little sentiment in favor of a Federation in Rochester, the principal agencies, receiving their main support from the city-wide Community Chest. All are members of the Council of Social Agencies. The only reason that a Federation in this city is desired by some is the difficulty in responding to all the requests of national European and Palestinian charities. A group of men under the leadership of Rabbi Philip L. Bernstein of Temple Berith Kodesh, is giving this matter serious consideration.