A Note on Folder Headings
Individual folders are identified in the following way: record group# -- box# -- folder#, as in R.G.1-10-32. Please use this format in citations and when referring to files for any other reason.

Teachers Institute student Tziporah Heckelman (class of 1950) at the Institute's school for observation and practice at the Inwood Hebrew Congregation in northern Manhattan, late forties. Photographer: Virginia F. Stern.

Historical Note
The Teachers Institute was the teacher training department of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Courses for teachers were first offered at the Seminary in 1904, but the Teachers Institute did not formally open until1909. Funding was originally provided by Jacob Schiff and Louis Marshall. Mordecai Kaplan was the principal, 1909-1931, and dean, 1931-1946; Samuel Dinin was the registrar.

During its first years the Teachers Institute met at the Uptown Talmud Torah on East 111th Street, the Downtown Talmud Torah on East Houston Street, and the Hebrew Technical Institute, downtown on Stuyvesant Street. In 1930 the Teachers Institute joined the rest of the Seminary, moving into the Unterberg Building, part of the Seminary's new group of buildings at 3080 Broadway in Morningside Heights.

The Teachers Institute offered both undergraduate and graduate degrees, and participated in a joint degree program with Columbia University's Teachers College. In 1931 the Teachers Institute became the Seminary College of Jewish Studies, the Seminary's undergraduate division, now the Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies.

In 1919 the Teachers Institute opened an extension department, which in 1922 was named the Israel Friedlaender Classes after the Seminary professor who was killed while doing relief work in Russia. The Classes met at the Seminary, and at branches in Yorkville and Harlem in Manhattan; Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Brownsville, and Flatbush, in Brooklyn; at University Heights in the Bronx; and in Newark, New Jersey.

The purpose of the Classes was to train Sunday school teachers and Jewish club leaders, and to provide classes in Hebrew and Jewish history and literature for adults. Both men and women were admitted to the Israel Friedlaender Classes and, as was the case with the Teachers Institute, most of the students were women. Between 1942 and 1944 the school became the Seminary School of Jewish Studies.

Dr. Israel S. Chipkin was the registrar of the Israel Friedlaender Classes (beginning in 1921) and an instructor. He was also director of the Seminary's Women's Institute of Jewish Studies, which was affiliated with the Israel Friedlaender Classes.

Chipkin was born in Vilna in 1893 and came to this country as a child. In addition to his Seminary responsibilities Chipkin was active in the Jewish Education Association of New York and in Zionist organizations, including the Zionist Organization of America and Young Judaea.

For more information about the Teachers Institute see: David Kaufman, "Jewish Education as a Civilization" in Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: JTS, 1997).

Collection Description
The Teachers Institute and its extension division, the Israel Friedlaender Classes are only sparsely documented. So far, records of the Israel Friedlaender Classes, mainly correspondence of its registrar, Israel Chipkin, and a few files of correspondence belonging to Teachers Institute registrar Samuel Dinin, are available for research. Some additional material about the Teachers Institute can be found in the files of Mordecai Kaplan in the Seminary's General Files, designated as Record Group 1. See also the diaries of Mordecai Kaplan, held by the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Series List
A. Israel Friedlaender Classes/Seminary School of Jewish Studies, 1919-ca.1944
B. Registrar, Samuel Dinin Files, 1941-1942

Series Descriptions
A. Israel Friedlaender Classes/Seminary School of Jewish Studies Records, 1919-ca.1944; (1920s-1930s, bulk) Boxes 1-3

Records of the Israel Friedlaender Classes date principally from the 1920s and 1930s and consist mainly of correspondence of the registrar, Israel Chipkin. Also included are: minutes, lists, publications, questionnaires, statistics, songs and poems, bills, examples of forms and form letters, class attendance sheets, lists of library books, clippings of newspaper advertisements for the Classes, posters, brochures, programs, scholarship applications and letters of recommendation for scholarship applicants, and application forms completed by students.

The largest group of material is Chipkin's correspondence with prospective and current students, alumni, faculty members, and administrators. Included among the correspondents are: Cyrus Adler, Samuel Dinin, Louis Finkelstein (in his roles as assistant to the president and provost), Mordecai Kaplan (dean of the Teachers Institute), Israel Levinthal, Arthur Oppenheimer, student organization president Rose Rosenberg, and others. The correspondence concerns such matters as scholarships, graduation, choice of prize books, publicity, absences and departures of students, student payments, scheduling of classes, and other administrative matters. Some of the correspondence concerns Chipkin's activities at the Jewish Education Association where he was involved in an effort to have Hebrew taught in the public high schools during the 1930s. Typescripts of some of his articles on this and other topics are included with his correspondence.

Student life is documented by songs and poems from the twenties and thirties, and by issues of student publications, including Extension '22 a journal published by members of the class of 1922 (the first class), and one issue of the Alumni News, February 13, 1926.

Of particular interest are some notes, and compilations and lists of information from a survey done of Teachers Institute alumni who entered the school between 1916-1921. This material was found among these records, but it is unclear whether or not the alumni surveyed include graduates of the Israel Friedlaender Classes.

B. Registrar, Samuel Dinin Files, 1941-1942: Box 4

Included are two folders of material, 1941-1942, of Samuel Dinin, registrar of the Teachers Institute and the Seminary College of Jewish Studies. The bulk of the material is correspondence - mainly in English, with some in Hebrew - between Dinin and students and faculty of the Teachers Institute/Seminary College; with Mordecai Kaplan, its principal; and with representatives of various Jewish educational organizations and schools. Also included are a scattering of documents, including: a newsheet about Teachers Institute alumni, 1942; a list of prize money available, 1942; examination schedules; lists of students; notices to students; bibliographies; and a report on student activities, 1940-1941.