'Cradled in Judea' remembers the orphans

NEW YORK -- Renee Fineberg grew up in a family with more than 300 kids.

Fineberg, 66, is one of thousands who grew up in a Jewish orphanage in New York -- an institution chronicled for the first time by the American Jewish Historical Society exhibit Cradled in Judea: Jewish Orphanages in New York, 1860-1960. She and others like her share a story of loss and discovery in an often-forgotten chapter of New York history.

The exhibit, on display in New York until June, records the experience through the lives of the Jewish orphans who lived it. Curators amassed paraphernalia, including photos, documents, basketball jerseys and testimonies from orphan-home alumni. Most of the artifacts come from the orphans themselves and mark the first time that the Jewish orphan experience has been featured in a museum exhibit.

"Families were in disarray," says Fineberg, a retired schoolteacher. "There was poverty, illness, terrible things. I had a terrible sense of loss, and some of those feelings you have as a child never go away."

The Jewish population, like many other booming immigrant groups in the USA, suffered hardships such as disease, poverty, mental illness, inadequate housing and discrimination. Although 96% of the orphans had either one or both parents alive, many families, such as Fineberg's, struggled to support their children financially.

Fineberg and her brother lived in Brooklyn's Pride of Judea Children's Home from 1946 to 1953. Her single mother worked tirelessly to attain housing.

"My mother was Rosie the Riveter," Fineberg says. Her father abandoned her family (she later reconciled with him as an adult), leading her mother to voluntarily place her children in the Pride of Judea home.

"The only family I knew was the Pride of Judea," Fineberg says. "I was very lucky." She says she felt isolation and fear when she left the home at age 13. "It's like coming out of the military after a war. How do you go back to society?"

Many orphans went on to the army, higher education and successful careers, but they never forgot their unique upbringing.

"We were always the kids from the home," Rick Safran, 71, says. "Our lack of self-confidence was only exceeded by our drive to be successful."

Safran lived in two orphanages from his seventh birthday till his high school graduation at 18. In his second orphanage, the Hebrew National Orphan Home in the East Village, Safran recalls the tremendous impact of sports in the orphanage.

"Athletics became like a religion," Safran says. "The coaches were our priests, and we were the acolytes."

Safran describes his life there as fulfilling, largely because of Reuben Koftoff, the home's director, who brought more of a social and progressive element to the orphanage.

"(Koftoff) said that just because you're in an orphanage doesn't mean that you're a second-class citizen," Safran says. "There doesn't need to be a sense of shame."

Safran, a retired school principal, attributes his personal success to a deep-rooted sense of determination and the help of social workers like Koftoff, who supported him through college and his adult life.

Progressive minds like Koftoff's weren't the only thing that distinguished Jewish orphanages from others of the time. According to Lyn Slome, the exhibit's curator, Jewish orphanages tended to be better funded and staffed, and they viewed education as a priority.

"Once the children got a voice," Slome says, "they were able to make a life for themselves. That's where they got their strength, through education."

Most Jewish orphanages peaked in attendance between the turn of the century and the 1940s, with the parallel growth in Jewish immigration. In 1870, there were 80,000 Jews in New York City. By 1907, 80,000 Jews would arrive in a single year, according to the exhibit. Many orphanages swelled in size because of poverty, illness and unemployment and to accommodate an influx of Eastern European immigrants and war refugees.

"It's a story of theories of child care in their own time and how they were implemented," Slome says.

In a departure from the practice of a strict upbringing, which dominated child welfare during the 19th century, Jewish orphanages offered playtime, Hebrew school and sports. By the 1960s, according to Slome, most were replaced by family services organizations and foster care, based on the belief that the family is the best unit for rearing children. Yet a whole generation of orphans will never forget their unique childhood.

"A lot of who I am today came from that," Fineberg says. "Being in those homes affected us to the soles of our feet, and it's a piece of history that runs the risk of being forgotten."

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