The Enduring Legacy of the Hebrew Educational Alliance

The Hebrew Educational Alliance (HEA) stands as a testament to the enduring strength and adaptability of Jewish life in Denver and New York. From its origins as a provider of Jewish education to its current role as a multifaceted community resource, the HEA has consistently evolved to meet the changing needs of its constituents.

Formation and Early Years in Denver

The Congregation Hebrew Educational Alliance was formed in 1928 through the merger of the Denver Hebrew Institute and the Beth David Sisterhood. These two groups were established to provide Jewish education for children on Denver's West Side, whose families worshiped in various small immigrant synagogues in the neighborhood. For almost one hundred years, HEA has represented Jewish life in Denver, dedicated to creating relationships with Judaism, Torah, and community.

In the four years following the merger, funds were raised to construct a building at the corner of Meade Street and West Colfax Avenue. A pivotal moment arrived on October 25, 1932, when HEA welcomed Rabbi Manuel Laderman. Rabbi Laderman was determined to transform the HEA into a synagogue, not merely a religious school. His personality and athletic abilities proved to be a magnet for the youth of the West Side. Over the years, the Alliance flourished, and Rabbi Laderman became a major force in the Jewish community, serving HEA until his retirement in 1979.

Leadership Transitions and Modernization

Following Rabbi Laderman's retirement, Rabbi Daniel Goldberger assumed leadership of the Alliance. His reputation attracted many Jewish community members, and a renewed dynamism came to the Alliance. He served the congregation for fifteen years.

In August 1984, HEA appointed Rabbi Bruce Dollin as its new leader and embraced modernity by implementing women’s active participation in worship services. When Rabbi Dollin arrived in Denver in 1994, Hebrew Educational Alliance was a declining Orthodox congregation of 300 families located on the west side of Denver. The Jewish community had long since moved across town. They quickly set out to move to southeast Denver, build a new building, and revitalize the shul, succeeding in building their membership over the next ten years to almost a thousand households. For nearly twenty years, their traditional service did not change, but as the clergy aged, so did those who attended services on Saturday morning.

Adapting to Changing Needs: Shir Hadash

Facing declining attendance and an aging congregation, the leadership of the shul became alarmed and approached Rabbi Dollin, asking that something be done to stem the decline and to get them back up to where they were. Rabbi Dollin embarked on a sabbatical, traveling the country to explore new models for Saturday morning services. Inspired by cutting-edge spiritual communities, he returned with a vision for innovation.

This led to the creation of Shir Hadash, a second Shabbat morning service characterized by spirited congregational singing, drums, and a less formal atmosphere. Shir Hadash was designed to be a full service that would meet every Shabbat. To make it work, both Rabbi Dollin and Associate Rabbi, Salomon Gruenwald, had to be completely invested in its success. A “Leadership Team,” comprised of Rabbi Dollin's wife Tammy and several recent Wexner Heritage graduates who were members of the congregation, was developed. This group was identified as people who had, through Wexner, experienced exciting Jewish learning and worship. They were asked a simple open-ended question: “If you could create the ideal synagogue, what would it look like?” This empowered the team to become lay leaders of the shul.

The service is two hours in duration, meeting from 10am to noon. In crafting the order of the service, they sought to create a prayer experience that felt authentic, while also having lively participatory singing, and manageable in length. They abbreviate pesukai d’zimrah and sing a lively, engaging melody for each of the psalms they select, which they rotate from week to week. They continue to shacharit with a “hechi Kedusha” for the amidah. They daven mostly in Hebrew with some English. They read about 30 pesukim from Torah and chant the translation using traditional trope. They recite an abbreviated Haftorah only if the text is particularly engaging. The rabbi, or occasionally a lay person, gives a brief d’var torah or leads a short discussion. They’ve also experimented with other modes of engaging Torah like bibliodrama. They end the Torah service, recite a traditional full kaddish and sing ein kelohenu with a Ladino melody. They recite alenu with a call and response melody for “v’hashevota,” Mourner’s Kaddish, announcements, and a rousing niggun called “tzfat niggun,” or “The Sanctuary Song,” adapted from a gospel melody of the same name.

The music comes from CD’s they purchased from IKAR (Los Angeles), Romemu (New York), Shira Hadasha (Israel) B’nai Jeshurun (New York), Hadar (New York) and several other sources they found easily for free on the Internet. They have a volunteer “Davenning Team” (a term they borrowed from IKAR) of about 15 singers. On any given week, 8-12 of them participate in the service. Rabbi Gruenwald and Rabbi Dollin alternate weekly between Shir Hadash and the Traditional Service. The rabbi at Shir Hadash sits with the Davenning Team, like all the other singers. They occasionally give very brief kavvanot and sometimes other Davenning Team members also speak about the prayers.

The crowd at Shir Hadash is surprisingly diverse. As they expected, it has attracted a large number of NexGen Jews including several young people who work for Camp Ramah in the Rockies. But the service has also drawn young couples with children, baby-boomers and seniors. While Shir Hadash has brought in a lot of newcomers, they have also seen that it has become a spiritual home for their own members who never used to come to shul outside the High Holy Days.

The introduction of Shir Hadash was not without its challenges. Some members of the traditional service expressed concerns about declining numbers and felt neglected. Some questioned whether the synagogue was still Conservative, while others worried about a potential split in the congregation. However, Rabbi Gruenwald and Rabbi Dollin worked to reassure those most concerned that they were not taking away from the traditional service, only adding options for a diverse membership with varying religious sensibilities.

Ultimately, Shir Hadash resulted in a net gain in attendance. Where they used to have about 200 people attending synagogue on average, they now typically have over 300 people at the shul on Shabbat.

Educational Alliance in New York City: A Legacy of Service to Immigrants

While the HEA in Denver focused on synagogue life and adapting to changing demographics, a parallel institution, the Educational Alliance (EA) in New York City, carved its own unique path. Founded in 1889, the Educational Alliance emerged as a vital resource for Jewish immigrants arriving on the Lower East Side. It offered a range of educational, social, and cultural services designed to help newcomers integrate into American society while maintaining their Jewish identity.

The Educational Alliance was founded as a partnership between the Aguilar Free Library, the Young Men's Hebrew Association (now the 92nd Street Y), and the Hebrew Institute. Jewish philanthropists Isidor Straus, Samuel Greenbaum, Myer S. Isaacs, Jacob H. Schiff, Morris Loeb, and Edwin R. A. Seligman played key roles in its establishment.

Addressing the Needs of a Growing Community

Between 1881 and 1924, a massive wave of Jewish immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe arrived in New York City, settling primarily on the Lower East Side. This area, already densely populated with Irish and German immigrants, became known as the Great New York Ghetto. The Educational Alliance played a crucial role in supporting these newcomers, providing them with the tools and resources they needed to navigate their new lives.

Read also: Affording Hebrew Academy

The Educational Alliance adjusted sufficiently so as to learn how to weather and address changes in its core neighborhood and larger social context. It balanced the growing professionalization of settlement house work by becoming community-based, and kept its emphasis on encouraging public civic culture even as in other ways it aligned with a social service “agency” model. And it kept it eyes on its Jewish origins not only in its neighborhood work, but in negotiating its internal ethos. This flexibility and neighborhood focus allowed it to later move into fields such as working with the elderly even as it inherited other local settlement houses (most notably Stuyvesant Settlement House and much later, the Emanu-El Settlement House which had by then evolved into the 14th Street Y).

Enormous numbers of immigrants and migrants were once squeezed into the neighborhood’s less than two square miles then deemed the world’s densest urban area. “Thousands of immigrants passed through Alliance programs. In 1902 alone, thirty five thousand attended lectures, one hundred thousand went both to religious services and indoor entertainments, and three hundred thousand used the reading room and roof garden.” (Perry.) Its ability to provide services to vast numbers of constituents when taken in combination with its unusual longevity effectively created an organization with an enormous institutional impact.

Programs and Services

The Educational Alliance offered a wide array of programs and services, including:

Educational Programs: Vocational training, English classes, and citizenship courses helped immigrants acquire the skills necessary to succeed in the American workforce and participate in civic life.
Social and Cultural Activities: Clubs, gyms, camps, art schools, concerts, and lectures provided opportunities for recreation, cultural enrichment, and social interaction.
Health and Wellness Initiatives: Baths, hygiene classes, and pasteurized milk stations promoted public health and addressed the health concerns of immigrant communities.
Children's Programs: Groups and activities provided children with a safe and supportive environment, offering educational and vocational skills to mitigate the risks associated with poverty and cultural displacement.

The Educational Alliance greatly preferred immigrants learn about the appropriate exercise of public civic life through their participation in activities which took place in the strictly supervised areas that comprised its buildings and camps. Given the endemic overcrowding of the Lower East Side, its constituents learned how to be American citizens in part by learning how to participate in the large-scale public activities which took place in its urban spaces and summer camps including but not limited to roof gardens, gymnasiums, meeting rooms, conference and concert halls, theaters, assemblies, pools, kitchens, reading rooms and classrooms. It should be noted for both children and adults, gender separate activities were often the rule; propriety and supervision were very much taken into account wherever both genders mixed.

Americanization vs. Cultural Preservation

Like many settlement houses of the time, the Educational Alliance aimed to Americanize immigrants, helping them assimilate into American culture and adopt American values. However, this emphasis on Americanization sometimes clashed with the desire of immigrants to maintain their cultural and religious traditions.

To its everlasting credit, and in part as a response to its quite vocal constituents who often published their critiques, Edgies transitioned from a top-down cultural model to one which started reflecting more of the Eastern European Yiddish culture of the neighborhood. At the beginning of the twentieth century it started providing topical lectures and sermons in Yiddish by Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Masliansky.

Notable Figures and Lasting Impact

The Educational Alliance attracted prominent figures who contributed to its success. Mark Twain joined the Board of Advisors after attending a performance at the Children's Educational Theater, which was founded in 1903. Isidor Straus, president of the Educational Alliance, is remembered for his dedication to educating future citizens. The Educational Alliance also boasted a renowned art school, whose alumni and staff included Chaim Gross, Sir Jacob Epstein, the Soyer brothers (Raphael, Moses and Isaac), Ben Shawn, and Louise Nevelson. Its music programming was done partly by Belle Linder (Mrs. Henry Moskowitz) who went on to become Al Smith’s campaign manager as well as the grandmother of historian Elizabeth Israels Perry. Alliance’s early entertainment and theater personalities include Edie Cantor who became Edgies’ poster child for success and a future board member. It also included actor and comedian Zero Mostel, who played Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway.

The Educational Alliance's impact is unusually large given the sheer number of people who have gone through its doors. Its ability to provide services to vast numbers of constituents when taken in combination with its unusual longevity effectively created an organization with an enormous institutional impact, encompassing the lives of founders, staff, social workers, interns, volunteers, and current constituents as well as those of alumni and their descendants.

Educational Alliance Today

Today, Educational Alliance continues to serve communities in New York City's Lower Manhattan, providing multi-generational programs and services in education, health and wellness, arts and culture, and civic engagement across 15 sites and a network of five community centers: the 14th Street Y, Center for Recovery and Wellness, Manny Cantor Center, Sirovich Center for Balanced Living, and Educational Alliance Community Schools.

The 14th Street Y uses contemporary Jewish sensibilities as a source of inspiration, connection, and learning.
The Center for Recovery and Wellness (CRW) is a community center dedicated to community-based addiction support and overall wellness.
The Manny Cantor Center is Educational Alliance's original flagship settlement house.
The Sirovich Center for Balanced Living provides older adults services and programs that acknowledge the interconnectedness of physical, mental/emotional, and social health.
Educational Alliance Community Schools partners with local public schools to create extended learning time opportunities for students.

New York City's Jewish History: A Broader Context

To fully appreciate the significance of the Educational Alliance, it is essential to understand the broader context of Jewish history in New York City. The first Jewish settlers arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654, during the Dutch period. These early settlers were primarily Sephardic Jews who had fled from Brazil and the West Indies, along with a smaller number of Ashkenazi Jews from Holland and England.

Early Jewish Life in New York

The Dutch West Indies Company played a significant role in shaping the early history of Jewish settlement in New York. When the Dutch were finally expelled from Brazil, in 1654, several thousand Jews resident there felt compelled to take to flight, and a party of twenty-three of these fugitives arrived at New Amsterdam on the ship "Saint Catarina" in Sept., 1654, and formed the first considerable avowedly Jewish settlement within the present limits of the United States.

Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of New Netherlands, initially sought to restrict Jewish settlement, but his orders were superseded by the directors of the Dutch West Indies Company, who recognized the economic contributions of Jewish merchants and investors. The directors instructed Stuyvesant that the prohibition of Jewish settlement recommended by him "would be unreasonable and unfair, especially because of the considerable losses sustained by the Jews in the taking of Brazil, and also because of the large amount of capital which they have invested in shares of this company. . . . They shall have permission to sail to and trade in New Netherlands and to live and remain there, provided the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or the community, but be supported by their own nation."

The English Period and Continued Growth

In 1664, the English seized New York, but the articles of capitulation guaranteed the rights of free denizens and liberty of conscience to all residents, including Jews. Despite some limitations and restrictions, the Jewish community continued to grow and thrive.

By 1700, the site of the synagogue was so well known that in a conveyance of certain premises the latter were described as adjoining a place "now commonly known by the name of the Jews' Synagogue." Moreover, the public authorities even extended exemption from civil and military service to the ministers of the Jewish congregation.

Waves of Immigration and the Growth of New York Jewry

The Jewish population of New York City experienced significant growth in the 19th and 20th centuries due to successive waves of immigration. The first major influx occurred in the early 19th century with the arrival of German Jews, followed by Polish Jews. A much larger wave of immigration began in 1881, driven by persecution in Russia and Romania. By 1904, the Jewish population of New York City was estimated at 672,776, making it the largest Jewish community in the world.

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