In 2004, the National Association of Temple Educators (NATE) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. As long-time NATE officer and historian Alan Bennett describes, in December 1954 a "handful of East Coast educators" met in the boardroom of the Union of American Hebrew Congregation's House of Living Judaism in Manhattan and adopted the following resolution asking the UAHC's Commission on Jewish Education to

Recognize the National Association of Tempe Educators (now in formation) as the professional group of educators in Reform Synagogues. This recognition of the growing body of professional Jewish Educators in our Religious Schools will enable the individual members to strengthen and enhance the religious instruction provided by our schools. It will also encourage experimentation, research and creativity as well as loyalty amongst its membership.

More than one hundred persons attended NATE's founding conference at the Stephen S. Wise Free Synagogue in New York in December1955. Early on, this new group agreed on two things: it would be an affiliate of the UAHC and its name would follow the form of other UAHC affiliates, i.e, "National Association of...."

Beyond this, little was certain about the group's future. Many congregations were then beginning to employ full-time educators, and NATE saw itself as a way to organize these educators and give them a presence and a voice within the Union. As it gained strength, NATE sought to develop a systematic approach to Jewish education in the Reform Movement by sparking local interest and by encouraging higher standards for those who wanting to become religious educators.

As Bennett writes:

NATE was a response to the pressing challenges generated by the emerging educational needs of the new Jewry. It was also an instrument for change whose influence was evident in its programs to set goals and standards for teachers, enhance curriculum development and experimentation, seek accountability in the classroom, promote adult learning, advocate for a profession of Reform Jewish educators, encourage research, and create opportunities for professional growth.

While its formal organization only goes back fifty years, NATE's origins date to the Union's founding more than 125 years ago. From its first efforts distributing Bibles to congregations and individuals, the UAHC has always been involved in education; however, the Union has not always been well organized in its educational methods or approaches. It has had a slew of educational committees, like the Hebrew Sabbath School Union, founded in 1886 to help develop new UAHC congregations and to work with individual Sabbath schools in youth instruction.

In 1923 Emanuel Gamoran (1895-1962) became educational director of the new joint CCAR-UAHC Commission on Jewish Education, itself created in response to concerns about the movement's "chaotic" educational program. Gamoran was neither a rabbi nor a part of the Reform community. He studied at the Teachers Institute of the Conservative Movement's Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and was a disciple of the Bureau of Jewish Education's first director, the legendary Sam Benderly. Gamoran was a Zionist, a traditionalist in religious practices and a reformer in his approach to education. He quickly began to move Reform education away from a Sunday school approach toward a model based on public school instruction. He supported the study of Hebrew and thought that religious schools should stress the "civilization" of Judaism-- its customs, language and ceremonies--in addition to subjects with a traditionally religious focus. As one source has noted, Gamoran's aim "was to move Jewish education from religious to ethnic education."

In the early 1940s the Commission on Jewish Education became a permanent arm of the Union. With Gamoran as its head, the Commission advanced the Union's educational work by publishing textbooks and curricula for all ages, conducting teacher-training programs that professionalized the field, and publishing newsletters like the Jewish Teacher. As Brandeis University historian Jonathan D. Sarna points out, one of Gamoran's major changes in Reform Jewish education was to shift the emphasis from turning "Jewish young people into better human beings" to shaping "them into devoted adherents of the Jewish people as well." Sarna writes that Gamoran "managed to enhance Jewish education at all levels within the Reform movement and to focus new attention on Judaism as a way of life. In so doing, he helped make Reform Judaism both more compatible with Zionism and more inviting to Jews, like himself, with roots in Eastern Europe."

Gamoran's efforts set the stage for the employment of professional educators in synagogues in the mid-twentieth century, which led to the formation of NATE. Following NATE's founding, Bennett notes that NATE quickly partnered with the Commission on Jewish Education "to fashion a Jewish education system that could serve the proliferation of synagogues and an exploding increase in the number of families and children [so as] to respond to the new demands on Jewish education that resulted from these changes." This new approach, established by Gamoran, the Commission, and NATE, gave Reform Jewish education what it had long lacked: "order, purpose and new direction."

Sources: Alan D. Bennett, The Vision and the Will: A History of the National Association of Temple Educators, 1954-2004 (New York: URJ Press, 2005); Reform Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993), pp. 233-246; Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 10, pp. 344-345; Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 250-255.

Kevin Proffitt is the Senior Archivist for Research and Collections at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he has worked since 1981. A frequent lecturer on American Jewish history and consultant on synagogue archives, his publications include Starting from Scratch: Creating the Synagogue Archives.

For more information, visit the American Jewish Archives web site.

Do you know a teen who regularly checks e-mail and is interested in exploring Jewish issues? Then iTorah is for that teen. A weeekly e-mail on topics of Jewish interest written by the leaders of NFTY and Kesher. Visit the iTorah website to sign up.