Educating BC's Jewish Children

Generally, early Jewish pioneers to Victoria and Vancouver were glad to have their children attend secular public schools. Many Jewish children attended Lord Strathcona School which was in the heart of Vancouver’s Jewish neighbourhood. However, there was also a strong desire to pass on the Jewish traditions, religion, and language they had been raised with.

Prior to the establishment of formal Jewish schools, one way of doing this was to hire a private Hebrew instructor called a melamed, to teach classes in the home. Another solution was to establish afternoon and evening Hebrew schools held in homes and in synagogues. Vancouver’s earliest afterschool religious classes were taught on Heatley Street by the Rosengard sisters. Eventually, these classes would solidify into Vancouver’s first formal Jewish school.

Before 1948, formal Jewish youth education in Vancouver was confined to afternoon and evening Hebrew schools run by the community as well as various synagogues. In 1918, afterschool classes that were being taught from a home on Heatley Street in Vancouver’s East End were formalized into the Vancouver Hebrew School. This school would later be known as the Vancouver Talmud Torah.

In 1921, the school moved into two upstairs rooms in the newly built Orthodox Schara Tzedeck synagogue at 700 East Pender Street. The Talmud Torah became officially independent in 1934, allowing it to expand its reach beyond the Orthodox community to the wider Jewish community. Some early teachers in the school included Jacob H. Narod, Kiva Katznelson and Joseph Youngson.

In 1943, the school moved to an eleven-room house on West 14th Avenue, and became a full day school. It opened with kindergarten and Grade 1 classes and by 1953 offered kindergarten through Grade 6. The school’s present location opposite the Beth Israel synagogue on Oak Street was built in 1948.

As the main institution for Jewish education in Vancouver the Vancouver Talmud Torah worked hard to satisfy the needs of everyone wanting a Jewish day school education for their children. It expanded in the second half of the twentieth century, but by the 1990s, other day schools had been established in response to demographics or religious needs, e.g., the Orthodox Vancouver Hebrew Academy and the traditional Richmond Jewish Day School.

The Vancouver Hebrew Academy was established in the 1980s under the leadership of Mrs. Shayndel Feuerstein. Mrs. Feuerstein saw a place for a school that addressed the needs of the Orthodox Jewish community in Vancouver. Under the leadership of a volunteer Board of Directors since 1998, the school continues to promote a high level of scholarship in both Judaic and secular programs.

The Richmond Jewish Day School began with two portable classrooms on land leased from the Conservative Beth Tikvah synagogue in 1992. By 1998, the school had expanded to another location with facilities that included a computer lab, gymnasium, and a kosher kitchen. The school continues to be an important community institution in Richmond; in addition to Jewish and general studies programs, it runs adult education programs and hosts community-wide events.

Two Jewish high schools were also established in the last decades of the twentieth century.

King David High School was originally known as Maimonides Secondary School when it opened in three rooms of the Schara Tzedeck synagogue in 1988. Between 1998 and 2005 the school was briefly known as the Vancouver Talmud Torah High School. In 2005, the high school had grown significantly and it was moved to a new facility across the street from the Jewish Community Centre. It was at this location at 41st and Willow Street that it took its current name.

More recently, the Pacific Torah Institute opened as a yeshiva high school for boys in 2003. The school began with only 16 students coming from cities such as Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Calgary, and Winnipeg. Since that time, the school has grown but continues to focus on the study of the central, traditional texts of Judaism.

In addition, many of the synagogues have long had after-school Judaic programs. Over the last thirty years, regular classes have also been instituted in the suburbs, e.g., in Richmond, on the North Shore and in Burquest (Burnaby, New Westminster, Coquitlam and the Valley). In addition, adult classes are held in all areas with identified Jewish community groups.

A school of Jewish secular, humanistic culture and thought was founded in 1945, when Jewish culture and the Yiddish language seemed to be threatened by assimilation in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. Taking its name from I.L. Peretz, an author and custodian of Yiddish culture, the Vancouver Peretz Institute or Peretz Schule first opened in a large house on West 13th Avenue and Birch Street. Based on the twin ideals of socialist values and loyalty to the Jewish people, it sought to establish an educational institution less bound to old-world traditionalism. It provided a Sunday school for the young and Yiddish classes for all.

Known as the Vancouver Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture since 2001, its approach continues to encourage Jewish identity without being doctrinaire. It is now located in a modern facility in the Oakridge neighbourhood of Vancouver.