The precursor to the Chelsea-Revere Hebrew School, a Talmud Torah school, was established in 1896 on Medford Street in Chelsea by Monas Berlin and his wife Gootie. At the time of its founding, Chelsea had a small Jewish community consisting of twenty-five families. The community continued to grow rapidly into the next century, reaching nearly a third of the city’s total population by 1910. The substantial population prompted the need for a dedicated building, and the ground was broken for the Chelsea Hebrew School in 1922.
Officially open for classes in 1925, the mission of the school was to generate the “tremendous progress that has been made toward the enrichment of Jewish culture” for the children of the community. In the early 1930s, Chelsea’s Jewish population reached 20,000 out of 46,000 total residents. However, this marked the beginning of the Jewish population’s steady migration to other suburban neighborhoods, such as Newton and Brookline. By the 1950s, the Jewish population in Chelsea had decreased in numbers to 8,000, and the school closed in 1979.
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1896:
Monas Berlin establishes Talmud Torah school in Chelsea.
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1922:
Construction commences for the Chelsea-Revere Hebrew School building on Washington Avenue.
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1925:
The newly constructed building officially opens for classes.
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1955:
60th Anniversary banquet celebration.
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1979:
School closes.
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Footnotes
- 1 Information used in this finding aid is from the following sources:
Material from the collection
Mystic River Jewish Communities Project "About Chelsea, MA". 30 January, 2013. <http://mysticriverjews.jcam.org/Pages/Chelsea/index.htm>.
From the guide to the Chelsea-Revere Hebrew School Records, undated, 1939 - 1981, (American Jewish Historical Society)
