Agudah B’nai Zion contributed $1,500 toward the school project. Joseph Meretsky personally donated $500. During the 1918 Yom Kippur services, held at the I.O.O.F. Hall on Wyandotte Street in Walkerville, another $500 was raised, with an additional $300 donated for the relief of Jewish war sufferers.119 Louis Kaplan’s contribution of $800 earned him the honour of laying the cornerstone for the Talmud Torah building. The dedication ceremonies held on a Sunday afternoon in August 1919 were attended by Mayor Winter and other local dignitaries.120 On December 1, 1919, a $15,000-mortgage was contracted between Agudah B’nai Zion and the mortgagee, Robert C. Struthers; Max Cheifetz, the society’s president, signed the deed.121 Present at the official opening, which took place on December 20, 1919, were members of Parliament; the mayors of the Border Cities, F. W. Jacobs, W. C. Kennedy, and J. C. Tolme; and Rev. Dr. Abramowitz of Montreal, as well as other prominent Windsor citizens.122
Photo courtesy of the Windsor Star
Talmud Torah at Aylmer and Tuscarora Avenue.
The Talmud Torah had been established in part to satisfy the needs of those members of the community who had become fervent Zionists and in part for those Jewish immigrants who, feeling rejected by the elite pioneer families, wanted to have a gathering place where they could express their own, distinctive identities. Although the religious services were Orthodox, the teachers at the school, while following a curriculum that included Hebrew as well as other Jewish subjects, tried to incorporate newer ideas and use more modern methods of instruction than those espoused by the older synagogues.123
Once the building had been completed, Talmud Torah got involved in numerous Zionist activities. In May 1920, it sponsored a thanksgiving service to celebrate the taking over of the Palestine Mandate by Great Britain.124 Apart from hearing an address by a speaker from New York, invited guests witnessed a grand parade of one thousand participants, including Talmud Torah students, members of the Young Judea Social Group, the Junior Judean Club, Hadassah, the Jewish Ladies Aid Society, and various other Zionist organizations.125
Indicative of the numerous monetary contributions Talmud Torah received are the many entries recorded in its Golden Book. One of the first to commemorate a special occasion with a donation was Jerry Glanz who, on his son Albert’s third birthday, gave $50 — half to go to Talmud Torah and the other half to be paid into the Jewish National Fund.126 In November 1922, $1,400 was collected at the Glanz’s home to celebrate the birth of another son.127 In fact, there was an opportunity to give money to the Talmud Torah at every social or religious function, such as at ritual circumcisions (Mandlebaums, Mossmans, David Kovins, Harold Taub), and bar mitzvah ceremonies, and many other occasions. Some school funds were raised at a banquet for the Defenders of the Blue and White, and at a Junior Hadassah meeting. It is likely that certain sums went toward the support of sports activities for Talmud Torah students, since their Defenders Baseball Club was regularly able to compete against other schools in the city, as well as hold annual awards banquets.128
Photo courtesy of Sara Kirzner
Talmud Torah students.
The Zionist movement brought many prominent people to Talmud Torah. Guest speakers during the 1925 Passover services were Dr. Schwartz and Harry Brevis, both of Toronto, as well as Milton Sumner, a senior seminary student at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Seminary, whose topic was “Jewish Ideals.”129 Philip Slomovitz, editor of the Jewish Herald, and H. Isaac, superintendent of the United Jewish Hebrew Schools of Detroit, spoke at a library night in November 1927.130 A year later, Rabbi Leon Fram, assistant to Rabbi Leo Franklin of Temple Beth El in Detroit, spoke on the subject of “Jewish Education.”131 In 1929, when Tel Aviv’s mayor David Bloch came to Detroit, he also was invited to visit Windsor. Greeted by Alderman Joshua Gitlin, on behalf of Mayor Jackson,132 he addressed a Talmud Torah gathering to plead for support of the Histadrut; in response, the community raised over $500.133
In addition to supporting these and other worthy causes, Talmud Torah had to cover its own operating expenses. To raise funds it held a banquet in 1928 and, after advising the guests that the school needed $6,000 to meet its financial obligations, its president, Dr. I. M. Cherniak, introduced as the speaker of the evening Rabbi Israel Schulman, who proceeded to address them in Hebrew.134 Concerts, festivals, and picnics were occasions for similar campaigns, such as the $8,000 drive organized in 1930 by S. K. Baum and D. D. Caplan.135
Although Talmud Torah records are incomplete, we do know that H. Zeitlin served as treasurer between 1922 and 1924, that Moss Mossman acted as secretary in 1924, and that Abraham Center became treasurer, with H. Subelsky as secretary, in 1925.136 Jerry Glanz must have served on the 1933 Talmud Torah executive, since his name appeared as the recipient of moneys collected at various celebrations, held during that year.137 Records about the Talmud Torah’s teaching staff are equally inadequate. However, those that do exist reveal that William Barnett had become the school’s principal by the mid-1920s. Former students Edsel Benstein, Harry and Oscar Schwartz, and Michael Sumner also remembered Rabbi Joseph Cross as their instructor during early morning classes.138 Others teachers were S. M. Smullin, D. Lerman, and I. Singerman in 1930–31,139 while B. Isaacs, who simultaneously, served as superintendent of the United Hebrew Schools of Detroit and Windsor, was principal of Talmud Torah during that term.
After Tifereth Israel on Mercer Street had closed its doors in 1925, some of its members returned to Shaarey Zedek, while others joined the Talmud Torah which, by then, had become known as Agudah B’nai Zion. The two-hundred-member congregation and its executive, composed of S. Mossman, M. Soble, O. Lehrman, P. Meretsky, and I. M. Cherniak, now decided it ought to have its own spiritual leader.140 In 1928, therefore, the organization appointed Rabbi Israel Schulman, who had recently arrived from Palestine. However, since they were unable to pay him a large enough salary, he had to supplement his income by operating a small soap factory on Brant Street. Although Rabbi Schulman had initially only been hired for a two-year period, he continued to serve Agudah B’nai Zion for ten more years — until his death in 1940.141
Jewish Public Library and Peretz Shule
Between 1922 and 1923, the Windsor Arbeitering (Workmen’s Circle), in conjunction with Politzeon, an organization considered ultra-left wing, founded another new school. Named the Jewish Public Library, it was housed in a frame building at the northeast corner of University and Parent avenues. Since most of the parents of the children who made up its student body had come to Canada after the Russian Revolution, their political leanings were largely left wing — some even considered them anarchists.142 And, since these so-called “Yiddishists” were also non-religious, they were primarily interested in having only secular subjects taught at the school.143 In 1930, a split occurred in their ranks, with the members of the one faction expressing a desire to separate.144 They made an agreement with the other faction to receive payment for their share in the Parent Avenue property. Signed by Jewish Public Library president, Charles Rogin, as well as by M. Rappaport, H. Wayne, I. Alexis, W. Bekenstuz, and H. Beren,145 it relieved them of all their financial responsibilities, allowing the Jewish Public Library to continue on its own, which it did until 1937.146
In 1934, after excluding from its ranks the left-wing element, on whom it looked with disdain, the dissenting group founded the I. L. Peretz Shule. The school was named for Isaac Leib Peretz, a modernist Yiddish-language author and playwright who stood at the cultural centre of pre-World War I Yiddish Warsaw. An early devotee of Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, Peretz tempered his secular views of education with