'World Over' and Jewish cultural literacy

Judaism, Spring, 1997 by Brooke Baldwin

From 1940 to 1983 the New York Board of Jewish Education published World Over. A children's magazine, its purpose was to increase the level of cultural literacy among young members of the Jewish community. Not partisan to any particular sect, the magazine provided readers with a range of features on Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox views. Founded on the concept of kelal yisrael, the community of Israel, World Over was in many ways an extension of the principles on which the New York Kehillah had established the Bureau of Jewish Education in 1910.

The leadership of the New York Kehillah saw the Bureau as a way of formalizing the process of Jewish education; according to the Morgen Journal, an Orthodox Yiddish daily, the Bureau represented "the first systematic attempt to bring order out of the chaos of Jewish education in America."(1) Although there had been approximately 200,000 Jewish children in the United States in 1900, it was estimated that only 36,000 had received any kind of organized instruction at a given time.(2) Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, founder of the Kehillah of New York, was one of a group of Jewish organizers who believed that ensuring a proper education for children was "crucial to the survival of the Jewish community."(3) At the same time, the New York Kehillah believed that assimilation and material success required that Jewish education occur not in place of - but rather, in harmony with - public education. In his history of the New York Kehillah movement, Arthur Goren notes that "for the Jewish immigrant and his Americanized mentors, the public school was the great democratic institution, the bridge to the new society."(4) In recognition of the great time demands that school and extracurricular activities placed upon children, the Bureau of Jewish Education emphasized that any Jewish education must take forms sufficiently interesting and stimulating to hold the attention "even of tired children."(5) More than 25 years before the establishment of World Over, the Bureau had considered establishing a magazine for youth.

By the time Morris Epstein, Sigmund Laufer, and Ezekiel Schloss established World Over under the auspices of the Bureau in 1940, it had already been 18 years since the dissolution of the New York Kehillah "experiment," as Goren put it. By the 1940s, it was clear that the Kehillah's vision of widespread, formalized Jewish education had not been realized. Nonetheless, World Over - with its publication schedule tied to the academic year and its emphasis on capturing the imagination of young readers seemed to embody the Kehillah's educational principles. The bimonthly magazine conceived of itself as a learning instrument that challenged its students and that reinforced ideas taught at Hebrew school and in the home, but with a decidedly non-academic feel. "We tried to make it fun" said Laufer, Associate Art Director of the magazine [see interview below]. Laufer, Epstein, and Schloss produced most of the text and artwork for the magazine while incorporating stories and essays submitted from both inside and outside the U.S. The annual subscription rate was $1.25 in 1955 and increased to $7.50 by 1983, the magazine's final year of publication. There were no advertisements, with much of the publication costs offset by contributions from the New York Jewish Board of Education.

The editors of Worm Over struck a gentle balance between keeping young readers' attention and maintaining the educational integrity of the magazine. Each 16-page issue included illustrations that complemented the written text, and the magazine featured vivid cover art that was explained in a feature article or a retold biblical story. On the cover the Hebrew date was printed beginning in 1951 (5712) along with the subtitle "A Magazine for Young People." The magazine's text was in English, and Hebrew words appeared in bold print with accompanying definitions. Serial stories were an integral part of the magazine, as was "Now You Know," a feature that profiled a Jewish personality (boxer Benny Leonard, for example) or explained the origins of certain Jewish traditions (why salt is sprinkled on bread). The magazine typically included a section called "People in the News," which highlighted famous contemporary Jewish figures and their recent achievements and activities. Several cartoons ran in each issue, including "Joey and his Friends," which illustrated the daily life of a Jewish boy. World Over's news coverage included major world events (the assassination of President Kennedy or the creation of the United Nations) in addition to items of particular interest to the Jewish community. The last two pages of each issue featured games that tested the reader's knowledge of Jewish culture and history and a section dedicated to readers' letters. The back page presented "Highlights of History" or "Legendland" in cartoon form.

World Over stands as an example of what a community can do to generate interest in literacy and education. It is also another demonstration of the interconnectedness of religious education and cultural identity. As Edward Hulmes noted in 1989: "In contrast with the tendency of Western education to break up the content of a social heritage into different kinds of subject matter, the traditional type of Jewish education retained the Jewish social heritage in the undifferentiated form in which it was lived. When the youngster studied Torah, he studied simultaneously everything that had to do with making him a worthy member of the Jewish community."(6)