By the 1830s Gratz had become increasingly concerned
about the future of Philadelphia’s 750 Jews. In 1835, she
urged the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society to address,
“that most pressing need—
the mental impoverishment of those who are rising to take
their places among the thousands of Israel scattered
throughout the families of the earth.”
Her solution was a Jewish educational program modeled on
the Christian Sunday Schools which had successfully taught
thousands of children all over the United States the
fundamentals of reading and Christianity. In 1838, the
Society resolved that
“a Sunday school be established under the direction of
the board, and teachers appointed among young ladies of
the congregation.” The school opened three
weeks later, on Gratz' fifty-seventh birthday, with sixty
students enrolled. Gratz became the school’s superintendent
and served for more than twenty-five years. She worked
tirelessly for the school, personally grading each
student's homework assignments and creating materials for
the students’ use. Rebecca Gratz's grandniece, Miriam
Mordecai, later remembered how family members had
“helped ‘Aunt Becky’
paste little slips of paper over objectionable words or
sentences” in books published by the
Christian American Sunday School Union that the Hebrew
Sunday School used. The school was radically different
from traditional Jewish education programs; it was
coeducational, met only once a week, and lessons were
taught in English instead of Hebrew. In addition, the
school was run entirely by women and was the first Jewish
institution to give women a public role in the education
of Jewish children. The model spread quickly and Gratz
advised women in Charleston, Savannah, and Baltimore on
establishing similar schools in their own communities.
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