T
he Jewish Foundation for Education of Women has its roots in the wave of Russian Jewish immigration that started in the 1880s.
One of these was the Louis Down-Town Sabbath School, started in 1880 by Minnie Louis, a member of Temple Emanu-El. The school, staffed by Emanu-El volunteers, offered three hours of "Bible work, hygiene, behavior and singing" every Saturday. Its goal was to turn recent Jewish immigrant girls into upstanding American citizens. Soon there were 300 girls enrolled.
A program of daily vocational education was added for girls aged 14 to 16. This was the beginning of the Hebrew Technical School for Girls. Students learned fitting and sewing, millinery, bookkeeping, "type-writing," etc. and the school maintained a full-time employment bureau.
As applications to the school increased, a large donation allowed construction of a new, five-story facility on Fifteenth Street and Second Avenue.
By the 1930s, the Board of Education had put an extensive vocational training network in place and HTS was no longer necessary. The Board of Ed took over HTS and funds received from that transaction became the financial basis of the Educational Foundation for Jewish Girls, established in 1939 to provide scholarships for "women of unusual merit."
In 1964, the scholarship program became nonsectarian, and the Foundation was once again renamed, becoming the Jewish Foundation for Education of Girls. In 1976, once more responding to a changing environment, it became the Jewish Foundation for Education of Women.
The Foundation's gift as an organization has been its ability to adapt to changing conditions while continuing to give women educational opportunities they might not otherwise have been afforded. Pilot programs explore new approaches, with successful ones evolving into new programs.
The Foundation is helped in this by a Board of Directors with an increasingly rare form of continuity: it has counted among its members over the years a number of children and grandchildren of the original members. In addition, several former recipients now serve on the Board. Their commitment and those of all the Board members gives JFEW the flexibility and strength to move effectively into the future.
