AMERICAN JEWISH ORPHANAGES

The 1623 children who were raised in New Orleans’s Jewish Orphans’ Home, renamed in 1924 as the Jewish Children’s Home, represent a fraction of the tens of thousands of children who lived in Jewish orphanages across the nation. Listed below are 49 American Jewish congregate residential institutions in which orphans and dependent children were housed. This list does not include non-residential benevolent societies and social service organizations. Additions and corrections are welcomed. 

Note: Although no longer actively maintained, a comprehensive database about American Jewish orphanages and orphan benevolent societies was compiled in 2004 by alumni of the Hebrew National Orphans Home, Yonkers, NY. Click here to access the archived website.

*The Philadelphia Foster Home opened in rented quarters. New Orleans’s Jewish Orphans’ Home was the first purpose-built Jewish orphanage in the United States.

** Although Charleston’s Hebrew Orphan Society was founded in 1801, and purchased a building in 1833, the building housed orphans only for a few years before the Civil War.