On any given morning, the sounds of boys singing and chanting in Yiddish waft onto California Avenue from the halls of the Vietzner Cheder, one of the only elementary schools in Greater Chicago that teaches in the traditional language of European Jews.
You can also hear Yiddish coming from the basement of a synagogue around the corner, where another grade of the Vietzner Cheder has taken up temporary quarters. And you can hear it a few blocks away, coming from the class studying in the converted garage of Vietzner Cheder founder Rabbi Moshe Unger, and from the class in his basement as well.
In fact, a tour of the overflowing school has become a miniature walking tour of West Rogers Park. It takes you past empty synagogues whose congregations have long since moved to the suburbs. It also takes you past signs and hints that this neighborhood, once the vital heart of Chicago Judaism, is reclaiming that identity in unexpected ways.
Nowhere is it more evident than at Yeshiva Shearis Yisroel–The Vietzner Cheder.
Before the 7:45 a.m. prayers, the pupils, all male, begin to gather. They wear yarmulkes and shirts and ties, and some are beginning to grow the long locks of hair in front of the ears that are part of Hasidic tradition. Until 2 p.m. they will sing and study in the Torah in Yiddish, a language that nearly died with the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust.
Then, after a 15-minute break, they will return for three more hours of general instruction–math, English, science, social studies and computers.
The school prides itself on the rigor of its general instruction; however, it is the religious education, and particularly the language, that sets Vietzner Cheder apart.
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“We allow the children not only to absorb the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law, if you will,” said Rabbi Shalom Ziskind, Vietzner Cheder’s principal.
“Yiddish is not the main point, but Yiddish is one of the things we feel is important not to lose,” explained Unger, the founder and dean. “Without Yiddish a big part of the flavor would not be here.”
Yiddish was once spoken by nearly 12 million Jews around the world. Even in Chicago, where the predominantly Reform Jewish community assimilated more thoroughly than in many American cities, there were more than a dozen Yiddish schools in the first part of this century.
But the Holocaust destroyed most of the Yiddish-speaking population in Europe. In the postwar years, American Jews grew further from their cultural past.
So it was that in 1985, a small group of Holocaust survivors in Chicago decided they needed to do something to preserve their language and traditions. Their beloved Rabbi Tsvi Hersh Meisels, another Holocaust survivor, had died; but they prevailed upon his son-in-law, Unger, to found a school that would immerse pupils in the traditional culture of their faith.
Unger started Vietzner Cheder in his basement, with 16 boys aged 4 and 5. Word spread quickly, and soon he found himself scouring New York and Tel Aviv for Yiddish-speaking teachers who would provide the kind of role models he wanted the boys to have.
As classes through 8th grade were added, the school’s enrollment blossomed. It now stands at 180 and counting. To handle the crush, the school has bought a vacant, 18,000-square-foot synagogue on Touhy Avenue. After a summer of fundraising and remodeling, Unger expects to gather all his itinerant classes into the new building next fall, where they should have plenty of space–at least for a little while.
In part, that remarkable demand reflects a growing number of Hasidic Jews who are moving to Chicago, forming a community that has taken root in West Rogers Park over the last decade. In part, it reflects the fact that many of those families are quite large–Unger and his wife have 10 children of their own, for instance, and the older boys are all making their way through the school.
But more telling perhaps are the two-thirds of the pupils who do not come from Hasidic households. Many of their parents are rediscovering their faith, after growing up without observing, and want to impart Orthodox traditions and fervor to their children.
Others, like Barry Blaustein, were part of a generation of American Jews who continued to hold the faith but watched the culture and traditions vanish around them.
Though he went to public school, Blaustein was close to Rabbi Meisels. And when Unger founded Vietzner Cheder, Blaustein put his son in the very first class.
Now his son is finishing up at an exclusive yeshiva in Philadelphia and considering what he wants to do with the rest of his life.
“I think,” said Blaustein, “maybe he’ll want to have a school of his own one day.”
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