The Master and the Scrolls

Abstract

Baltimore was and is a wonderful place to be a Hebraist or Jewish educator. Besides the presence of Albright and the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins (then known as the Oriental Seminary), there were also two prominent schools of higher Jewish learning: the Baltimore Hebrew College (now the Baltimore Hebrew University) and the Ner Israel Rabbinical School. Baltimore has a great tradition of Jewish education, as the first Hebrew school in Baltimore opened in 1842, and over 90 percent of Jewish children attend Jewish schools. Samson Benderly, considered the father of modern Jewish education in America, began his innovative work in Baltimore and his successor as director of the Board of Jewish Education was the man who hired Sam Iwry to teach, Louis L. Kaplan.