Hebrew Orphan Asylum of the City of New York

On the night of September 20, 1941, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of the City of New York (HOA) held its annual dinner party, organized by its graduates. Usually, the dinner drew a few hundred of the Asylum alumni. On this night however; more than a thousand former residents attended the event - a rare scene. The most poignant moment occurred as everybody in the party sang the HOA alma mater and "Auld Lang Syne," knowing that HOA officially closed its doors earlier that day. 1 The closing of HOA not only marked the end of a great child-care institution, but the entire institutional child care system in America.

Originally named the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum (HOA) was created out of a merger of two New York Jewish benevolent societies in 1860: the Hebrew Benevolent Society (HBS) and the German Hebrew Benevolent Society (GHBS). After resisting a merger due to friction between German Reform leaders and Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditional leaders, the two groups finally joined after the threat of missionaries and conversion was made public by the Mortara Affair, in which an Italian Jewish boy, Edward Mortara, was kidnapped and converted by a servant girl. The possibilities of Jewish orphans being cared for by non-Jewish asylums with missionary goals was a major factor that led the two societies to pool resources and open the first Jewish orphan asylum in New York City. 2

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