by Elizabeth T. Rahaim
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Photos Courtesy Kenneth Price
Ken Price (second row, third from left ) spent the 1965-66 academic year in Israel at Hebrew University with other Hebrew College students. There he had the opportunity to study with poet Yehuda Amichai z'l, ( last row, second from right ) and writer Aharon Appelfeld ( standing, first row, far right ). |
Nearly three years ago,
Miriam Port Price Dpl'59 lay on her deathbed with a final request-to have her name engraved on Hebrew College's Alumni Wall of Honor.
Not only a College alumna but also a former Camp Yavneh employee, wife of a Yavneh instructor, mother of two Prozdor/College alumni and relative of several more, Miriam yearned to forge an indelible connection to Hebrew College. Rising to the challenge, her son
Dr. Kenneth Price P'63, Dpl'67, BJEd'69-who spent more than 10 years of his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood studying at Yavneh, Prozdor and the College-raced to make it happen in her lifetime.
Although the Prices' donation came too late for the Wall's first engraving, their gift was honored with a plaque sent home to Miriam and a promise that her name would be engraved with the second installment of alumni donors. She died a few weeks later, knowing that her wish would be fulfilled.
For Ken Price, the delay created another opportunity. In his mother's memory, and in recognition of their family's high regard for Jewish education, he had his own name engraved alongside his mother's last spring.
"Hebrew College was a family tradition," Price says, summarizing his commitment. "It never entered my mind that I wouldn't attend. Even if I didn't plan to make Hebrew or Jewish studies my career, I knew I would be an educated Jew."
Miriam's part in the family tradition began when she enrolled at Hebrew College at the suggestion of Dr. Moses Steiner
z'l, a Hebrew College professor she met through a Boston
Chug Ivri her husband organized in the 1940s. Her goal was to earn her teacher's diploma and help fund her sons' college educations. A young boy then, Price remembers her as a dedicated student, working at the kitchen table late into the night, and, later, as a dedicated Hebrew teacher, trekking by train through rain and snow from their home in Brookline to her classes in Chelsea and Revere.
For Ken Price, who has spent the past 30 years in Dallas as a clinical psychologist, Hebrew College remains a formative life influence. "My connection to the Jewish people came not only from growing up in a Jewish home, but also from going to the Prozdor, to Hebrew College, to Camp Yavneh, where I actually studied texts and learned how to learn about Judaism," he says. "Things I learned 40 or 45 years ago- passages from the Talmud or
Tanakh-I'll recite them now, at appropriate times, either in a counseling session or in a social conversation." Fluent in Hebrew from his College education and his year's study in Israel, he keeps abreast of worldwide events by reading Hebrew newspapers and watching Israeli television daily.
Price's association with Hebrew College began at the age of seven, when he spent his first of seven summers at Camp Yavneh with his family. His father, Hillel Price, principal of Temple Beth Zion Hebrew School in Brookline, Mass., taught there, while mother Miriam worked in the canteen and brother
Myron P'59 also attended camp. At the time, the prominent Jewish educator
Dr. Walter Ackerman z'l, P'43, BJEd'50, MHL'54, HD'87, was camp director, before he went on to build Ben-Gurion University into one of Israel's leading academic institutions.
Price graduated from Prozdor in 1963 and spent his 1965-66 academic year in Israel with a group of Hebrew College students at Hebrew University. There he had the opportunity to study literature with Yehudah Amichai, Israel's national poet, as well as noted Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld, and took courses in archaeology, Jewish history and Yiddish. He also enrolled in his first college-level psychology course, with the eminent Israeli psychologist Shlomi Breznitz, which crystallized his decision to major in psychology at Brandeis University that fall. Overall, the year was a critical period of growth, offering him the chance to travel and develop a deeper love of Zion.
"It was unusual in those days to have a secular Jewish institution of higher learning," Price reflects. "But Hebrew College catered to kids across the spectrum with the highest level of scholarship and intellectual rigor. If you look at the alumni roster and the number of rabbis, attorneys and doctors who have graduated from here, you see how this rigorous education affected all of us."
Menachem Milson teaching
a class at Camp Yavneh, 1961.
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Hebrew valedictorian of his class, Price earned his BJEd from Hebrew College in 1969 and graduated from Brandeis University in 1970, where he met his wife, Gloria Huberman. They both enrolled in PhD programs at the
SUNY - Stony Brook, graduated in 1975 and moved to Dallas. There, Price taught at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center for three years before starting an independent practice as a clinical psychologist and consultant. He has also authored or edited two college textbooks in abnormal psychology and one on biofeedback.
Although Price has lived in Texas for the past three decades, he still remembers Hebrew College-his professors, friends and classes-in great detail, calling his time there and at Camp Yavneh "among the happiest years of my life, and very formative years in making me an educated and knowledgeable Jew." Like his mother before him, he finds that his memories of the College have as much to do with family as they have to do with Jewish education.
Other members of the Prices' extended family who attended Hebrew College include Miriam's sister's husband,
Jack Rotman z'l, HC'24, a member of the first graduating class at Hebrew Teachers College, and Price's cousins
Libby Rotman Monias P'52, BJEd'56, Paul Singer P'48, BJEd'52 and
Leon Singer P'44.
Price's father, Hillel, resting before
teaching a class at Camp Yavneh.
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Price regrets that in moving so far from Boston, he was unable to provide his own children, Sarah Price Brown and David Price, with "the incredible Jewish education I had growing up." Indeed, that's why he, following his mother's example, committed to giving back as an alumnus.
"It's important to keep Hebrew College alive for the generations who come after us-for the Jewish community, the Jewish people, even if they are not directly related to you," says Price. He reaches for a passage to express the sentiment and remembers a phrase that he learned from
Pirkei Avot during his first year of Prozdor: "If you teach someone when he is young, it is as if writing on clean parchment. If you teach someone when he is old, it is as if writing on smeared parchment."
For information on the remaining spaces on the Alumni Wall of Honor, please contact Kelly Winograd at 617-559- 8722 or kwinograd@hebrewcollege.edu.
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