The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965

9. Hava N'halela: Tzipora Jochsberger and Her Vision for the Hebrew Arts School

฀ 1920–
MsbihkZ
Ch\al[^k`^k%
\bk\Z
*2/)'
Iahmh`kZia
[r
>]bmmZ
La^kfZg4
\hnkm^lr
h_
MsbihkZ
Ch\al[^k`^k 189 carol k. ingall T here has been a veritable explosion of interest in the arts and their place in American Jewish educational life. Jewish educational reformers are embracing the arts, once dismissed as a frill in an alreadytoo -full-curriculum, as a tool to motivate, inform, and make meaning for students. It is not only that Jewish education is following, as it usually does, in the wake of general education, which is finally heeding the insistent voices of advocates like Maxine Greene and Elliot Eisner for aesthetic education. Jewish educators, like their counterparts in general education, are concerned about the ephemeral nature of “fragile learning.” They are beginning to seek solutions in the work of Howard Gardner (1983) and his theory of multiple intelligences, or that of Eric Jensen (1998, 2001), who champions the findings of brain researchers to fuel curricular and instructional reform. Both of these theorists maintain that the arts promote learning that lasts. They are only two voices in the chorus encouraging the arts in schools, secular and Jewish, as an alternative to rote learning. The arts provide a catalyst for creativity, an opportunity for discovery rather than coverage and for rewarding process as well as product. This interest in the arts is not confined to liberal Jewish circles; Rabbi Chaim Brovender, rosh yeshivah (dean) of Yeshivat HaMivtar in Efrat, has recently endorsed the serious study of fine arts in Orthodox schools. He contends that the arts are surely not a bitul Torah (a waste of time that might be better spent in the study of Torah); the arts can serve as a gateway to ahavat Hashem (love of God) (Handelman and Saks, 2003). The power of the arts in evoking a religious or cultural imagination is not a phenomenon only for schoolchildren. It forms the premise of Avoda, a program bringing Jewish college students to the arts, and has inspired what the National Foundation for Jewish Culture calls a Jewish cultural renaissance for adults as well (Siegel, 2002). The last time the arts appeared so prominently in discussions of Jewish educational reform was during the golden age of Jewish education, in the profusion of programs and projects inspired by Samson Benderly and Mordecai Kaplan. Jochsberger’s school, which she founded in 1952 and directed until 1986, was the embodiment of the synthesis of the Hebraist-Zionist ideal and progressive education, the vision of the women captured in this album of pioneers. Like them, Jochsberger saw herself as offering an alternative to the vapid lives of American Jews, appealing to their imaginations through music. Jochsberger’s view of Jewish cultural literacy was a broad one, extending well beyond classic texts and ritual competence to all aspects of Jewish civilization, modeling the worldview of Mordecai Kaplan. In this chapter I analyze the original vision of the school, built upon inter- 190 ingall views with Jochsberger, her supporters and former students; Jochsberger’s accounts both published and unpublished; her publications; and archival documents from the early years of the school housed in the library of the Kaufman Center. I explore how a European-born Israeli, one whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust, understood the value of the Hebraist-Zionist ideal for American Jews and how she came to be a progressive educator. A Biography Hilde Jochsberger was born in 1920 in southern Germany, in the small town of Leutershausen.1 Leutershausen, with a population of 2,000, was home to ten Jewish families. She became aware of antisemitism as early as the age of six, when she was excluded from a communal May festival in her town. The children with whom she grew up threw stones at her and referred to Jews as “the lowest of the low” (Jochsberger, 2003). Against this cacophony, there was always the music. Jochsberger (2003a) recalls these early sounds: “There was a dance hall in the village with dances held every Sunday night, and a brass band played. It was the first music I ever heard. I would stand by [my] window and listen to the music before going off to sleep. There was also a church in the town with an organ. I would stand behind the church to listen to the music. These were the first musical sounds I heard.” Jochsberger’s piano was the...