The Luckiest Orphans

Founded in 1860, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York was the oldest, largest, and best-known Jewish orphanage in the United States until its closing in 1941. This book, the first history of an orphanage ever published, tells the story of the HOA's development from a nineteenth-century institution into a model twentieth-century child-care facility. Because of the humane and benevolent attitude of the New York Jewish community toward its orphans, the harsh authoritarianism and Dickensian conditions typical of contemporary orphanages were gradually replaced there by a nurturing approach that looked after the religious, social, and personal needs of the children. Though primarily an instrument of social control, the HOA was also an expression of Jewish ethnicity. Its history is set in a larger context that includes the life and character of the New York Jewish community, the city's immigrant population, the social and economic conditions of the time, the child-saving efforts of other groups, and the debate over institutional versus foster care. Drawing from HOA archives, published sources, and his personal experience as a resident from 1932 to 1941, Hyman Bogen brings a unique perspective to child-saving efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His compelling tale portrays daily life for those who lived and worked in such institutions. He illustrates how an enlightened orphanage, rather than crushing the spirit of its young residents, can help children to gain self-esteem and become secure adults. Bogen's tale will be of particular interest to urban and social historians, to city and government officials, and to social workers, as well as to anyone concerned with thegrowing crisis in child-care options.

This work interweaves Indian history, educational history, family history, and child welfare policy to tell the story of Indian orphanages within the larger context of the orphan asylum in America. It relates the history of these orphanages and the cultural factors that produced and sustained them.

The lives of six African children, ages nine to sixteen, were forever altered by the revolt aboard the Cuban schooner La Amistad in 1839. Like their adult companions, all were captured in Africa and illegally sold as slaves. In this fascinating revisionist history, Benjamin N. Lawrance reconstructs six entwined stories and brings them to the forefront of the Amistad conflict. Through eyewitness testimonies, court records, and the children’s own letters, Lawrance recounts how their lives were inextricably interwoven by the historic drama, and casts new light on illegal nineteenth-century transatlantic slave smuggling.

The Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band of New York City, 1874–1941 is at the same time the story of a boys’ band and a story of New York City. The band was not only an important educational component of one of the largest Jewish charitable organizations of its time, but also a significant source of music-making and performance in New York. What made the band especially noteworthy was the reputation it developed performing outside of New York’s many concert halls and major musical institutions. The band was ever-present, participating in events ranging from conventional parades to building ground-breakings to celebrations of major figures in New York history. The band was always ready to perform and to be part of New York cultural life. In doing so, they typified the Jewish-American experience of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and illustrated the substantial effort of those that engage in community music-making and the critical role school music played in the lives of its participants and local community. These are the unknown musicians without whom New York’s musical life would have certainly been diminished. As this history explores their numerous performances, successes, and activities, historical events in New York, some lesser known than others, some humorous, some dark, are described in rich detail as well. The legacy of the band – the careers the boys had as they matured and the contributions they and their band directors made during their lives – is also explored in this fascinating history.

An Orphan Has Many Parents is a memoir of their childhoods by two graduates of the Pride of Judea Home in Brooklyn, paying tribute to the caring parental figures they encountered, and the administrators who made it work. Readers will be touched by the profound impact of this home on the lives of its residents. It also breaks new ground in the study of orphans and orphanages.

Exploring the only option for a growing army of children who cannot be placed for adoption or fostering, this text demonstrates from a large-scale survey of orphan alumni that they outpace the general population in most areas of life.

To quote from E.M. Nathanson (author of THE DIRTY DOZEN and numerous other works and fellow alumnus of the HNOH) who wrote the FOREWORD to the book: The title of the book - DEJA VIEWS... - is itself a meaningful play on the French phrase deja vu - meaning, roughly, the startling feeling that strikes you that what you have just experienced you have experienced before. To anyone who shared those times, DEJA VIEWS OF AN AGING ORPHAN will be an exciting time travel adventure, comprehensive, varied, textured and evocative. To those who lived in those times but had no knowledge then of the milieu of the books real life characters and stories - and to those in the generations that followed, such as the children and grandchildren of the Home boys - the book will be a voyage of discovery. Many of the anecdotes and people profiles in the book, though not all of them, were written as columns that appeared over the years in THE ALUMNUS, the monthly publication of the Alumni Association of the Hebrew National Orphan Home and its successor institutions, Homecrest and Hartman-Homecrest. They are word pictures that have ripened and matured and been revised over the years by more acute memory and input from others. Some of these stories and brief biographies have even achieved the status of myths and legends. In addition, sowed amidst these pages of real persons and event, as a sort of literary seasoning and entertainment, are some short stories, identified as fiction, but which illuminate with their own truths. The index alone is a cornucopia of memories. The variety of people and themes that are remembered and summoned into the book is impressive. Some evoke nostalgia for a time that we didnt know was that good when we were living it; some bring a laugh - or a tear. And the focus is always on the boys - and the adults they became. In addition to the foregoing, I believe the best description of my book is contained in my INTRODUCTION, which is therefore reproduced here in its entirety. My older brother Al, myself and my younger sister Henny all became half-orphans upon the death of our mother in February 1929. Our father had to place us in orphanages when he found himself unable to provide the care required by a 9 year old boy, his 7year old brother and 2 year old sister. A1 and I were placed in the Hebrew National Orphan Home on Tuckahoe Road in the outskirts of Yonkers, NY while Henrietta was put into the Israel Orphan Asylum on East Second Street NYC. This separation was necessary because the HNOH accepted only boys, ages 6 to 16 (later HS graduation) whereas the IOA accepted boys and girls, ages 2 to 5. It was while I was in the HNOH that I became a "full-fledged" orphan, when my father died in 1938. And Ive been a "full-fledged orphan" ever since--although I didnt start "aging" until just a few months ago when I turned 78. But some years before that, my then new daughter-in-law, Susan was describing my wife and myself to her mother, including the fact that we were orphans (my wife having been raised in the Pride of Judea Childrens Home on Dumont Ave in Brooklyn where I worked after I had left the HNOH). To which Susans mother replied, matter-of-factly: "Well, so am I. And so is your father!" Momentarily surprised, Susan then elaborated: "No mom. I mean they were orphaned as children and raised in orphanages." Her mother hesitated and then said: "Oh". This anecdote illustrates the fact that ultimately we all become "orphans". But that is not the focus of this work. Its focus is the child who lost one or both parents at a young, tender age and subsequently was placed in an institution--the orphanage. So when I titled this work "...OF AN AGING ORPHAN. I wasnt focusing on an older person who had been orphaned as an adult, but on an orphaned child who, fortunately, has been aging nicely. I say "fortunately" because I

An Orphan in New York City is about survival. During the Great Depression families who suffered loss of income, loss of health, and loss of life sought frantically for ways to survive. Social Security, Housing and Urban Development, Public Assistance, and Public Health programs available today were limited or non-existent back then. All extended family members helped out as much as they could. When this was not enough, the only choice was to break up the family. Benevolent Jews had established orphanages to care for children left homeless or in poverty. The largest of these orphanages was the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, better known as the HOA or The Home, located between 136th to 138th Streets on Amsterdam Avenue across from the Lewisohn Stadium of the City College of New York City. From 1929 to 1939 the HOA housed more than one thousand boys and girls at a time. The Hebrew Orphan Asylum was referred to as a city within a city as it was basically self-contained. Not only where there the essentials of residential life-- dormitories, a kitchen, a dining room, an infirmary, a dental clinic, and a laundry--but also a public school 192, a synagogue, and a religious school. Then too there were a bakery, a shoe shop, a tailor shop, a barber shop, a clothing store, a candy store, a woodworking room, a sewing room, a photography studio and darkroom, a boys scout room, a band room, a choir room, athletic fields and playgrounds. There was a Reception House, the Main Building, the Warner Brothers Gymnasium (state of the art at that time), and buildings for boilers for heating. It had its own transportation system and a fire engine. There were military bands and drill squads, fraternities and sororities, as well as baseball, basketball, and football teams that competed with other orphanages and the junior varsity at City College. Orphans, half orphans, and children from broken families began their shared institutional lives at the Reception House where they were isolated for two weeks to assure they did not bring any contagious disease or illness into the institution. The author was one of those with a family destroyed by alcoholism and poverty who had to leave his family at the age of nine and begin an orphan's life. He writes: "Having seen, from my top-floor perch in the Reception House, children who were playing on the huge field below, and having listened to the marching band and watched the military drills, I was looking forward to moving to the Main Building. But when I finally got there I felt lost in the labyrinth of hallways and doorways, and among the masses of children who were coming and going. Outside, in the courtyard, were more than 100 children talking, shouting and playing together. One of my first memories there is of hearing a short rotund man suddenly shout above that babble of voices: "All Steeeeeeeeeel!" All Still. What that meant only became clear when, as I watched, most of the children froze in their places and stopped talking. One child did not freeze. The man with the powerful voice strode over to him and slapped him so hard across the face that the child fell down.In the years that I would be in the orphanage, that and similar examples made me obey the "All Still!" and always appear to be following commands, rules, and regulations, even when I wasn't obeying. What I witnessed there, day after day, also reinforced my hopeless and helpless feeling that there were immense forces beyond my control: my father's rage, my separation, my placement in an institutional environment, and the subsequent abuse in that environment. I wept within myself, and there was no adult at the institution to comfort me, not the first day nor the last." For his own healing, Dr. Siegel has written a book about his decade during the depression years in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum