Yehoash Folk Shule photograph
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
The Yehoash Folk Schule was an after-school Yiddish secular school in Pittsburgh. It offered courses in Jewish history and culture, with classroom instruction in Yiddish.
The Yehoash Folk Schule began meeting at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House in the mid-1920s. By the early 1930s, it was also operating a second school at 1909 Murray Ave. (The Squirrel Hill branch also met for a time at 5805 Forbes Ave.) Both branches offered classes in “Yiddish, Hebrew, Jewish history, and literature, social problems of Jewish life and a general knowledge of Jewish life—past and present.” The Squirrel Hill branch also had a mittle shule (high school) with advanced courses for older children. The school also had a children’s choir led by pianist Abraham Litow and a newspaper.
The Yehoash Folk Schule was the largest of at least eight Yiddish secular schools known to have operated in Pittsburgh in the decades before World War II. These schools were part of a movement existing throughout the United States and Canada that emerged largely from Jewish socialist and labor groups. The Yiddish secular school movement continued in some places into the 1960s and faded in Pittsburgh during the late 1930s.
