From the Archives: Heinz Warschauer and a Passion for Education

By Ruth Ellen Greenwood

With the focus on education for our 170^th anniversary year and the announcement of the Cotler School, the Archives Committee is using this space to highlight noteworthy education moments in our congregation’s history.

Our synagogue has always valued education. In the nineteenth century, Edmund Scheuer took charge of the synagogue’s school and organized a Confirmation class for girls, aged 13, which culminated in 1899. He then organized and financed the Zionist Free School for Girls run by 16 volunteer teachers from Holy Blossom. When Heinz Warschauer came to Holy Blossom, the synagogue’s role in education was well established. Heinz – he was always known as Heinz – raised the standard of education at Holy Blossom even higher.

Born in Berlin, Heinz studied under Rabbi Leo Baeck. In 1938, following Kristallnacht, he was interned in Buchenwald. In 1939, he managed to get to England and from there to Canada in 1940. Ironically, he was interned here as a German enemy alien.

Upon his release, Heinz studied at the University of Toronto and received a Master’s in Modern History as well as a Bachelor of Social Work. Education was his life’s work as evidenced in his innovations to the education programs at Holy Blossom. Heinz always saw the individual, and he believed in group work as the best method for achieving good results.

Starting as a part-time teacher at Holy Blossom, he became full-time Director of Education in 1947 until his retirement in 1976. He was the first Canadian to be President of the National Association of Temple Educators. He was also a member of the Commission on Jewish Education of the Reform Movement, a faculty member of National Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY), and the author of a comprehensive history of Holy Blossom Temple.

The Student Teacher Training program Heinz established at Holy Blossom was well known in the Reform Movement. After Confirmation and completing grade 10 at Holy Blossom Religious School, I and many of my friends enrolled in that program. During this three-year program, we attended a weekly seminar where Heinz and other teachers from the school taught us how to prepare lesson plans, how to motivate students, how to incorporate the AV materials available, and the importance of group work. Each year, we were given a different Religious School teacher as a mentor. We attended the class every weekend morning to observe and participate in teaching parts of lessons, work with students on projects and share in class supervision.

During the six years I taught at Holy Blossom Religious School, as a student teacher and then as a teacher, I finished high school, completed my university courses and enrolled in the Faculty of Education. I quickly realized that Heinz had already taught us the skills covered in that program. I, like so many others, enjoyed a long and fulfilling career as a teacher based on the principles he instilled in all of us.

Heinz had no children and no family; the students of Holy Blossom Religious School were his children and the congregants were his family. Rabbi Plaut described him as “irascible, inspirational and a master teacher”. He also added, “thousands considered him their spiritual mentor.” Heinz was a unique and unforgettable individual who had a profound and lasting impact on all of us who studied and worked with him.

From the Archives Committee

HBT @ 170 Our Religious School: The Early Years

By Michael Cole

With the focus on education for our anniversary year and the announcement of the Cotler School, the Archives committee will use this space to highlight noteworthy educational moments from our past 170 years.

Our religious school actually dates from 1859, just three years after the establishment of the congregation, according to a History of Holy Blossom Temple written by Heinz Warschauer, our eminent post-war education director. There were already ten children in the class which met in the home of the teacher. There were, however, some problems. The teacher also held the positions of shochet, chazan, and mohel. It was difficult to find a person who was adept at all these tasks, teaching especially. At the same time, the children spoke only English, were thoroughly Canadian, and more taken with lacrosse or ice skating than Hebrew or Bible. The teachers who came from Poland or Germany spoke poor English and were also unfamiliar with the interests of their students.

Heinz (as he was known to all) notes that “the teacher did not understand what made the children ‘tick’, and the children had no desire to be kind to their teacher. Some of them must have been pretty rough to some of the teachers! For all we know, it might very well have happened that the teacher had to interrupt his lesson from time to time to slaughter a chicken! This would hardly help the teacher appear important.”

Several gentlemen came and went, until, in 1862, Holy Blossom acquired a worthy teacher and chazan. The Reverend (a title used by religious leaders both Jewish and Christian) Mr. Heilbron, responding to an advertisement in The Jewish Messenger, came to Toronto from New York. He came with good credentials and was highly recommended by Rabbi Isaacs, the newspaper’s editor. The Rev. Mr. Heilbronn would have made an excellent choice to teach our children and lead services, and even to slaughter chickens. However, as a mohel, he was less than perfect in a job in which only perfection will really do. In 1864, he was given notice.

Throughout the 1870s, not one of the functionaries of Holy Blossom was a good, or even adequate, teacher. Heinz observes that “The effect of the poor teaching at Holy Blossom during those first twenty years cannot be overestimated. There was reason to doubt that Judaism was as alive, meaningful, and beautiful to those children as it should and could have been.”

During the 1880s the synagogue hired the renowned Cantor Herman Phillips. A student in Berlin of no less than Louis Lewandowski, the distinguished composer of Jewish liturgical music, Cantor Phillips was not required to slaughter chickens or circumcise baby boys, but only lead services, preach sermons, and teach children. Apparently, he was a good teacher, although, as Heinz notes, “he used the stick in class and threw out the children who misbehaved.” Cantor Phillips arrived at Holy Blossom in 1883, but left in 1890, because he objected to the congregation’s desire to use an organ at services.

In 1886, Edmund Scheuer arrived in Toronto, and, with him, Jewish education at Holy Blossom, and in Toronto, was changed forever. That will be the subject of our next instalment.

From the Archives: Nathan Robinson (1840—1899)

Michael Cole and Sheila Smolkin, Holy Blossom Archives Committee

In the early years of Holy Blossom’s existence, we didn’t have a rabbi. Founded in 1856, we didn’t engage a rabbi until 1890. We did, however, need someone who could read from the Torah, slaughter chickens, teach children, and circumcise baby boys. Needless to say, finding one person who could fill the duties of ba’al koreh, shoichet, melamud, and mohel was not easy. Indeed, several candidates were tried and found wanting in at least one of these tasks and dismissed.

Eventually, we did find one man who could fulfill all the required duties. Nathan Robinson had been engaged by a small, short-lived congregation that was absorbed into Holy Blossom shortly after we moved into our first permanent building on Richmond Street in 1876, and he became our first employee who lasted more than a short time. (There was a period when, after an argument with the congregation over whether he would be allowed to provide kosher meat to non-congregants, Mr. Robinson left Holy Blossom. He returned a few years later when the dispute was resolved.)

A learned Jew with a Yeshiva background, Nathan Robinson was an unusual presence among the Holy Blossom crowd in that he was from Eastern Europe. Most of our members, like most Torontonians of the day, were British by birth and/or persuasion. Nevertheless, Mr. Robinson stayed with us until his passing in 1899, and he is buried in our Pape Avenue cemetery.

This past September, we were approached by Mr. Robinson’s great-great-grandson, David Robinson, who asked to visit Nathan’s burial site, and on Monday, September 29, we accompanied David and three of his cousins to Pape Avenue. David told us that Nathan’s son moved to Winnipeg, and David lives there still. David has taken a great interest in his ancestry, and we were happy to provide him with information on Nathan’s part in Holy Blossom’s history and to lead him to his ancestor’s final resting place.

A Psalm in Cloth: The Pulpit Covers of Temma Gentles

By Mikhael Klassen-Kay, HBT Archives Summer Intern

Over the past couple of months, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Holy Blossom’s archives committee as they digitally catalogue all of the files contained in the temple archives, which date from the early 19th century to the present day. On several lunch breaks spent meandering the hallways of the temple, I came across objects discussed in the files I was cataloguing. Many congregants will be familiar with the orange parochet outside the first-floor boardroom, which is believed to have hung in the original Holy Blossom location above Coombes’ Drug Store, when the synagogue was called Sons of Israel. Others might have noticed Sorel Etrog’s “Chasidic Head” statue, originally part of a Holocaust memorial in the courtyard prior to the building renewal, which is now stationed in the grass on the Bathurst side of Holy Blossom. Most of the archival materials on these objects, however, were photographic or textual. So, the discovery of fabric samples and textile blueprints in the archives took me by surprise.

In section HB3 D1b of the Holy Blossom archives, one can find blueprints, letters, and textiles created by the late artist Temma Gentles. The projects of hers that we have archival documentation of include Torah covers, ark textiles, a chuppah, and pulpit covers. Unlike in the chuppah and Torah mantle files in the archives, there are no fabric samples for the pulpit covers. As Gentles explains in a letter to Estelle Latchman, who was chairman of Holy Blossom’s art and acquisitions committee in 1990, the fabric needed for the project was too expensive to justify the creation of a sample textile. Instead, Gentles provided the art and acquisitions committee with a layered art piece as a sample of what the finished product would look like. The drawn sample is for the cover of the Torah pulpit, featuring the first line of Psalm 100:3.

Each of the three finished tapestries depicts four figures rejoicing, with the Hebrew text from a fragment of Psalm 100 overlaid. In a December 1989 letter to Rabbi Dow Marmur, Gentles cites the psalm as the primary inspiration for the pulpit covers. She uses the following translation of verse two and the first line of verse three—“Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into His presence with singing! Acknowledge that the Lord is God.” Though the covers now hang in the northwestern stairwell and not upon any pulpits, they remain beautiful examples of a great Toronto textile artist’s work, and they are well worth seeing if you have the opportunity.