Samson Benderly

Born in Safed, Shimshon Benderly grew up in a religious home. In 1898, Samson Benderly (his Americanized name) left the American University in Beirut for Baltimore to study medicine, later graduating from Johns Hopkins University. He abandoned medicine for Jewish education; in 1910, he became the founding director of the New York Bureau of Jewish Education. Benderly spearheaded American ‘Ivrit be-‘ivrit (Hebrew in Hebrew) programs; promoted educational leadership training programs for teachers, administrators, and clergy; and developed new Jewish educational spaces: Hebrew schools for girls, secondary school and extension programs, and summer camps. With the support of Jewish philanthropists and communal leaders eager to develop a modern system of supplemental Jewish education suited to an integrating American Jewry, Benderly trained a generation of Jewish educators who collectively shaped an American Jewish educational system from the 1920s on; they came to known as the “Benderly Boys.”