Community Magazine May 2003

The headline “Plan for Community Vote on Parochial School Rejected,” was refer- ring to an attempted community wide ref- erendum by the Girls Junior League of Bensonhurst to vote the idea down. “It will affect the future of the commu- nity. If a parochial school is established, all hopes for a community center, which is the answer to the community’s problems, will have to be aban- doned... Our community has no money right now, it’s war time... Total seg- regation of our children... is a step backwards in our efforts to foster better understanding... between all peoples and all groups who live together in this great democracy... The pub- lic school system, provided by the city of New York, is the best of its kind, with experi- enced teachers and educators, and tried and tested ...methods of educating... This project is doomed to failure, for the simple reason that the majority of the people...are opposed to it, and only a minority is... indifferently in favor. Several parents have signed their names to cards by which their children’s right to a public school educa- tion will be taken away, for a highly exper- imental parochial school education. [The few who signed said] they were ”high-pres- sured”... into affixing their signatures and have no intentions of sending their chil- dren to a wholly inadequate school ...as is planned. [Furthermore], a decent community center with a dance hall, ping pong tables, g ymn a s i um… [is what our c o m m u n i t y needs]...P.S. 205 is across the street from the eight room building which will be used for [the] parochial school. Children of both schools cannot avoid disliking each other...Certainly those leaders who have called the public school children ‘strange children,’…and ‘Goyim,’ and have said that ‘strange thoughts’ are taught in public school, can’t be counted on to teach toler- ance…We urge enlightened parents in our community to shun the ‘salesmen’ with the cards who are trying to enlist their chil- dren in a parochial school.” On the front cover of the issue contain- ing this story was a picture of young sol- diers from our community as they’re going off to fight in the war. Ironically enough, one of these soldiers was Private Joe Esses, who along with his sons, went on to found Magen David High School. Today, the Girls Junior League of Bensonhurst has been long forgotten while Magen David Yeshiva is joined by over a dozen other schools in providing a yeshiva education to the overwhelming majority of our community’s children. How could PingPong INSTEAD OF Torah “Magen David Yeshiva does not belong in our community!” That was the preposterous position of the Girls Junior League of Bensonhurst as the plans for our community’s first day school began to develop. In an article published by a local newspaper called the Victory Bulletin in February 1943 during World War II, the Girls Junior League of Bensonhurst made their case to the Community citing reasons that, in hindsight, ranged from ridiculous, nearsighted, and myopic to wholly fictional and self-loathing. B Y : J O E C O H E N