GREENBERG, Ira, ed. (with R. G. Safran & S. G. Arcus), THE HEBREW NATIONAL ORPHAN HOME; Memories of Orphanage Life

GREENBERG, Ira, ed. (with R. G. Safran & S. G.Arcus), THE HEBREW NATIONAL ORPHAN HOME; Memories of Orphanage Life. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001,328pp., $74.95 hardcover. This collection of essays weaves personal reminiscence, factual history and photographs, into a mosaic of the experiences of the 1300 to 1800 hundred boys who spent their formative years in The Hebrew National Orphan Home (HNOH) in Yonkers, New York, between 1914 and the Home's closing in 1958. While falling initially into the broad category of Jewish social history, the book has a broader appeal in a comparative context. McClelland' s (1989) study of orphans brought to Canada through the Canadian Catholic Emigration Society, comes to mind as does Hamelin's (1997) more recent work on British orphans brought to Canada and hired out to work through the Orphan Homes of Scotland Resettlement village. Maunders (1994), in comparing the upbringings of children in Protestant Orphanages in Canada, Australia and the United States, found orphanage life characterized by the same strict discipline, corporal punishment and chores described in this volume. Thus there may well be, at least in the past history of orphanages, a universal character despite the particularities of specific institutions. This volume has significance in the ongoing debate in North America as to whether orphanages might not be a better alternative to shoddy and poorly supervised foster care. While the individuals writing here do not claim to be spokesmen for all their mates, they provide a detailed and even-handed picture of life at "the home". The wrenching circumstances of parental deaths, family poverty, abandonment and families split by immigration, brought boys to the home initially. Those with families were lucky to receive intermittent visits, since a two-mile walk waiting visitors beyond the end of the street-car line. Recollections of physical and sexual abuse and bullying, often visited upon weak, friendless or new boys, are chilling and the indignation and anger of these aging orphans comes through to readers. But many memories are fond ones; recollections of staff members and administrators of exceptional character and caring, as well as the conscientious "in-house" teachers of the New York Public schools, who prepared their boys for the larger world of Yonkers' Roosevelt High School. Some recollections are quite humorous suggesting that the HNOH was hardly a bleak place - far from it. The well-rounded curriculum, sports, art, music and hobby activities, and concern for individual development, suggest that administrators were attuned to the (then) modern currents of Progressive Education. In the earlier years, many children came from immigrant families but later many were native born. The popular perception of the affluence of Jewish communities in North America is misleading. For example, in Canada Jews are less than 1% of the population in poverty, but the rate is 17% within the Jewish population (Torczyner, 1994). Thus while numbers are small, there are significant numbers of individuals fitting the profile of poverty. …