This year marks the centennial of the first “yidish natsyonale shule” — National (ethnic) Jewish School — which opened for weekend instruction on December 10, 1910, on Madison Street in the heart of New York’s Lower East Side. During the decades that followed, hundreds of secular Yiddish shuln sprung up across the United States in areas of heavy Eastern European Jewish migration. A number of these schools still survive including several that are run by the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring.

What were the beliefs taught in these shuln and what was their impact on American Jewish education? Librarian Marti Krow-Lucal, who helped catalog Stanford University’s archive of North American secular Yiddish shuln, will discuss their history: the shuln’s secular, Yiddish socialist roots; their ideological splits; their move toward the more religious, Hebraic beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, and their decline beginning with the political chill of the 1950s. Her presentation will include documents and images from the shuln.