Talmud Torah, St. Paul

Three Hebrew schools were founded in St. Paul between 1880 and 1920—the era of peak Jewish immigration to the city. Each had its own constituency and neighborhood. After much negotiation, they joined forces in 1956 and took the name Talmud Torah of St. Paul.

A Talmud Torah is a community-wide, supplemental religious school. Students begin their education at about age eight and continue through bar mitzvah age (thirteen). Some continue through high school. Students study Jewish heritage, customs, the Hebrew language, and religious foundations.

St. Paul’s first Hebrew school was Capitol City Hebrew Free School. It was founded as the Sons of Jacob Hebrew School in 1881 and renamed in 1911. In 1912, Capitol City moved to a building at 137 West College Avenue. Capitol City students came from the Lowertown, West Seventh Street, and Rondo Street neighborhoods. About 125 boys and girls enrolled. The school conducted classes in English.

The second school was Saint Paul Hebrew Institute, founded in 1911. It was located on the West Side Flats, home to many Jewish immigrants from Russia. It was a cheder, an Old World-style Orthodox school for boys only. Cheders had ungraded classrooms and, often, untrained teachers. St. Paul Hebrew Institute shared space with the Sheltering Home for Transients in a new building constructed at Fenton and Kentucky Streets. Yiddish was the language of instruction.

The third St. Paul Hebrew school was founded in 1916 by Temple of Aaron, a new Conservative synagogue located in the Summit Hill district. Like the Minneapolis Talmud Torah, the Temple of Aaron school stressed use of the Hebrew language. In 1926, it became independent of the synagogue. Enrollment reached about 250 students.

In 1930, the former Temple of Aaron school moved into the newly built Jewish Education Center (JEC) building at Grotto Street and Holly Avenue, directly behind the synagogue building. The school took the name Center Hebrew School. The JEC also housed recreational and social programming that was the forerunner of the St. Paul Jewish Community Center.

The financial pressures of the Great Depression led Capitol City and Center Hebrew schools to consider merging as early as 1933, though this did not occur until 1944. An outside study conducted in 1935 recommended that the St. Paul Jewish community coordinate its Hebrew education through a local council. This included the school run by Mount Zion Temple, a Reform congregation.

Finally, in 1948, an umbrella organization formed called the Bureau of Jewish Education. It was hoped that all the Jewish schools in St. Paul, including those attached to synagogues, would affiliate. However, only the now-merged Center-Capitol Hebrew School and the Kaplan Hebrew Seminary (founded in 1944) were part of the Bureau. The St. Paul Hebrew Institute joined in 1949 but left in 1954.

By 1951, the member schools of the Bureau of Jewish Education were informally called “the Talmud Torah.” Enrollment stood at 186 students. Within two years, enrollment rose to five hundred as post-war baby boomers became school-aged. Facilities at the JEC and its Highland House satellite on Juno and Cretin Avenues were strained.

A community conference on Jewish education in St. Paul was held in 1954. Two years later, philanthropist George Kaplan, funder of the Kaplan Hebrew Seminary and the Sholom Residence, underwrote construction costs for a unified, now officially named Talmud Torah of St. Paul. A school building was built adjacent to Temple of Aaron’s new synagogue on the western edge of Highland Park at 616 South Mississippi River Boulevard. The Jewish Education Bureau never successfully oversaw all St. Paul Jewish schools; it dissolved in the mid-1960s.

In 1970, Talmud Torah of St. Paul restructured its program from five days of instruction after school and on Sunday to two days a week. The change was made due to time constraints and the competing interests of contemporary American children. The 1970s brought efforts to professionalize the staff. Two short-lived suburban branches were added.

In 1982, a day (Jewish parochial) school for pre-kindergarten through fifth grade was added. The day school, afternoon school (grades two through twelve), and preschool moved into a refurbished public school building at 768 Hamline Avenue South, where it remained as of 2014. The Talmud Torah of St. Paul is not affiliated with any one Jewish movement or congregation.