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Talmud Torah, Minneapolis

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Black and white photograph of the exterior of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah at 1616 Queen Avenue North in Minneapolis, 1951. Photograph by the Minneapolis Star Journal Tribune.

Exterior of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah at 1616 Queen Avenue North in Minneapolis, 1951. Photograph by the Minneapolis Star Journal Tribune.

For the first half of the twentieth century, the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis had two functions. First, it was a religious school for Jewish youth. Second, it was a community hub. When Minneapolis Jews moved to the suburbs after World War II, the Talmud Torah returned to its original educational purpose.

The Minneapolis Talmud Torah evolved from the Hebrew Free School, founded in 1894 with twelve students. It first met in a vacant butcher shop at 613 Fifth Street North. A few years later, the school moved into the vestry rooms at Kenesseth Israel synagogue.

The Free School was a cheder, an Old-World-style school for boys. In 1911, it moved to its own building at 808 Basset Place. George Gordon, a twenty-year-old immigrant teacher who later became a physician, instigated the move. He could see that the chaotic cheder system, with its ungraded classes and untrained teachers, was not meeting the needs of American Jewish youth.

With community support, Gordon transformed the school. He created a modern, coeducational curriculum using trained teachers. Yiddish was abandoned as the teaching language in favor of Hebrew. Students learned about Jewish heritage and customs as well as religious foundations.

The school was renamed Talmud Torah of Minneapolis in 1913, and a fund drive for a new building began the following year. The new site on the corner of Eighth Street and Fremont Avenue North was dedicated in 1915. In 1920, the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis took over the South Side Talmud Torah.

The Fremont Avenue Talmud Torah was located between the older Sumner Field neighborhood and the newer (and more prosperous) Homewood neighborhood. Like the public schools in the area, the Talmud Torah served as a meeting ground for children from all strata of the North Side's Jewish community. Besides classrooms and a library, the building eventually included a swimming pool, an auditorium, and meeting rooms.

Two important Jewish institutions grew out of the Talmud Torah in the 1920s. The first was the Emmanuel Cohen Center, successor to the Talmud Torah Social Service department. The second was Beth El Synagogue, an outgrowth of the Talmud Torah’s Young People’s Congregation. Children’s services continued to be held at Talmud Torah even after the founding of Beth El in 1921.

Talmud Torah enrollment averaged between seven and eight hundred in the 1930s. By this time there was a small Orthodox alternative to the Talmud Torah located on Twelfth Street and Logan Avenue North. In the 1940s, this school evolved into the Torah Academy, an Orthodox parochial school. It was still in existence as of 2015.

In 1948, 60 percent of Minneapolis’s roughly twenty-three thousand Jews lived on the North Side. The percentage soon began to decline. Still, in 1951, the Talmud Torah built a new building in the Homewood neighborhood to replace the Fremont Avenue branch. It was named in memory of George Gordon, who had died in 1949. Gordon had given up his medical practice to serve full time as Talmud Torah director from 1928 until 1939. The South Side branch continued its operations in Adath Jeshurun Congregation’s education wing.

In 1959, only 38 percent of the Minneapolis Jewish population remained on the North Side. About 28 percent lived in South Minneapolis with an equal number in St. Louis Park. That year, the Talmud Torah opened a St. Louis Park branch at 8200 West Thirty-Third Street. A fleet of buses was purchased in 1961 to transport children of the dispersed community among the three branches.

In 1967, the Talmud Torah sold 1616 Queen to the Minneapolis School Board. The building retained the name of George J. Gordon, who had also been a champion of public school education. In 1969, the Talmud Torah combined all its operations at the St. Louis Park location. By 1971, only 2 percent (424 persons) of Minneapolis’s 21,600 Jews lived in North Minneapolis.

Talmud Torah enrollment during the baby boom era peaked at 1,200. Between 1993 and 1995, 831 students were enrolled. Coming full circle, in 2003 the school moved into a new addition of the Sabes Jewish Community Center, which had originated as a department of the Talmud Torah. In 2014, most of its students come from families affiliated the three Minneapolis-area Conservative synagogues, Adath Jeshurun, Beth El, and Sharei Chesed.

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© Minnesota Historical Society
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Lieberman, Thomas F. We Knew Who We Were: Memories of the Minneapolis Jewish North Side. St. Paul: Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest, 2000.

Plaut, Gunther. The Jews in Minnesota: The First Seventy-Five Years. New York: American Jewish Historical Society, 1959.

Talmud Torah Centennial 1895–1995. Minneapolis: Talmud Torah of Minneapolis, 1995.

Talmud Torah of Minneapolis Collection, 1915–1980s
Nathan and Theresa Berman Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Description: See in particular the pamphlets entitled, "Dedication, November 16, 1967, George J. Gordon Educational Center" and "Jewish Institutional Growth."

The Talmud Torah of Minneapolis: Twentieth Anniversary Celebration. N.p: 1931.

The Talmud Torah of Minneapolis.
http://www.talmudtorahmpls.org/

Related Images

Black and white photograph of the exterior of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah at 1616 Queen Avenue North in Minneapolis, 1951. Photograph by the Minneapolis Star Journal Tribune.
Black and white photograph of the exterior of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah at 1616 Queen Avenue North in Minneapolis, 1951. Photograph by the Minneapolis Star Journal Tribune.
Black and white photograph of the interior of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah at 1616 Queen Avenue North in Minneapolis, 1951. Photograph by the Minneapolis Star Journal Tribune.
Black and white photograph of the interior of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah at 1616 Queen Avenue North in Minneapolis, 1951. Photograph by the Minneapolis Star Journal Tribune.
Black and white photograph of Dr. George Jacob Gordon, founder of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah and instructor in therapeutics and obstetrics at Hamlin University, c.1935.
Black and white photograph of Dr. George Jacob Gordon, founder of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah and instructor in therapeutics and obstetrics at Hamlin University, c.1935.

Turning Point

In 1915, the Minneapolis Talmud Torah builds a facility at Eighth Street and Fremont Avenue North that anchors the North Side community for the next forty years.

Chronology

1894

Hebrew Free School classes are organized and held at 613 Fifth Street North.

1898

Classes move to Kenesseth Israel Synagogue on Fourth Street at Sixth Avenue North.

1911

The Hebrew Free School moves to 808 Basset Place.

1913

The school’s name is changed to Talmud Torah of Minneapolis.

1915

Talmud Torah moves to a new building on Eighth and Fremont Avenue North, which remains its home for almost forty years.

1917

Talmud Torah’s Social Service Department opens.

1921

Alumni and students of Talmud Torah form the Young People’s Synagogue. This soon evolves into Beth El Synagogue.

1923

The Social Service Department becomes Emmanuel Cohen Center (precursor to the Minneapolis Jewish Community Center) and moves into a house at 809 Elwood.

1951

The Dr. George Gordon Memorial Building at 1616 Queen Avenue North is dedicated.

1967

The Queen Avenue building is sold to Minneapolis Public Schools but retains the name George J. Gordon Educational Center.

1970

All classes are consolidated in an expanded St. Louis Park branch building.

2003

Talmud Torah moves into the expanded Sabes Jewish Community Center complex.