Talmud Torah Hero: Rebecca Gratz Foster Home and Orphan Asylum in 1855 and the Fuel Society and the Sewing Society. At the same time she did all of the charitable work, she also managed to raise the nine children of her sister, Rachel, who died in 1823. The Hebrew Sunday School After her sister Sarah’s death in 1817 Gratz became concerned about Jewish education. Gratz saw a need for Jewish education among women and children. In 1818 she began a small religious school for her siblings and their children. At this point in history bar mitzvah preparation and private tutorials were the only path of formal Jewish education available for boys. There was nothing for girls. In 1835 she urged the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society to create a Jewish educational program modeled on Christian Sunday schools that were successfully teaching thousands of children all over the United States. In 1838 the Society decided that “a Sunday school be established under the direction of the board, and teachers appointed among young ladies of the congregation.” The school opened three weeks later, on Gratz’s fifty-seventh birthday, with sixty students enrolled.
If you are reading this book in Sunday school, it is Rebecca Gratz’s fault. Rebecca Gratz is the one who invented the Jewish Sunday school. Her parents were observant Jews and active members of Philadelphia’s first synagogue, Mikveh Israel. She was the first female Jewish college student in the United States. Rebecca Gratz was an observant Jew who devoted her life to the service of the less fortunate.
Gratz led the school for more than twenty-five years. She worked hard for the school, grading each student’s homework and creating materials for the classrooms. Rebecca Gratz’s grandniece, Miriam Mordecai, later remembered how family members had “helped ‘Aunt Becky’ paste little slips of paper over objectionable words or sentences” in books published by the Christian American Sunday School Union. The school was radically different from traditional Jewish schools; it was coeducational, and was taught in English. In addition, the school was run entirely by women. This was the first Jewish institution to give women a public role in the education of Jewish children. The model spread quickly. Women in Charleston, Savannah and Baltimore started their own Sunday schools.
creating Organizations At twenty she organized the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children of Reduced Circumstances in Philadelphia. She was its first secretary and the power house behind raising money. Gratz was also one of the founders of the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum and served as its secretary for more than forty years.
Rebecca Gratz’s work shows us the value of Talmud Torah by reminding us that every Jew deserves a Jewish education.
Sensing that there was also a need to service the needy and the unfortunate in the Jewish community she created a series of institutions: the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society in 1819, the Jewish 97
