Presenter: Sylvia Abrams
Format: Download MP4 video file of Slides with synchronized audio

The structures of American Jewish Education are products of the second and third decades of the 20th Century. In Cleveland the story begins in the 1920?s with the arrival of Abraham Hayyim Friedland who was invited to serve as Superintendent of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools in 1921; three years later he became the founding director of the Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education. Widely known as Chet Aleph, he was a transformational leader whose personal vision often conflicted with those of the leaders of the organizations he led. A creative poet and essayist he became known as the father of Hebrew children?s literature in America through original books used in Jewish schools throughout the United States. Despite Friedland?s premature death, the structures he created for Jewish education in Cleveland lasted into the twenty-first century. Cleveland Hebrew Schools and Bureau records exemplify how graduation photos, student yearbooks and newspapers may identify ancestors.