For Jews and blacks, a connection remains

Governor Patrick has announced a $1 million state challenge grant to help Freedom House replace its worn-out building on Crawford Street. Finding matching funds falls on Gail Snowden, CEO of Freedom House and daughter of deceased founders Otto and Muriel Snowden, two major figures in the black history of Boston. Hebrew College has bigger problems. It is swamped by $32 million of debt, the result of a half-baked plan to build a grandiose campus in Newton Centre nine years ago. It falls to a new president, Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, to restore the institution at the same time that its building must be sold to satisfy a creditor.

What is the historical connection between these institutions? And what can they teach other nonprofits struggling through the current economic downturn?

Tomorrow marks 58 years to the day since Otto Snowden fashioned a makeshift Hanukkah menorah and placed it in the window of Freedom House as a symbol of co-existence with Roxbury’s neighboring Jewish community. The gesture was especially poignant because some Jews in the neighborhood had opposed the sale of the building, which housed Hebrew Teachers College. It was more an internecine battle, however, than a racial dispute. The early 1950s efforts by the Hebrew College board to sell the Roxbury building and move the institution to Brookline marked, for many, the beginning of the abandonment of Boston’s inner city Jews by their better-off brethren.

Otto and his wife, Muriel, preached stability. They planned programs for both black and Jewish youngsters at Freedom House. Their efforts, however, couldn’t withstand the weight of neighborhood change. People and institutions were uprooted. By the 1960s, redlining by banks and blockbusting by real estate brokers would help to drive out the remaining Jews.

The Snowdens weren’t shy or embarrassed about urging blacks in Boston to adopt Jewish attitudes about the value of education. It was excellent advice. But today, Freedom House has something to teach the Jewish community. Instead of getting wrapped up in appearances and taking on crippling debt, Gail Snowden says she is determined to raise the entire $2.5 million construction costs before she breaks ground for a new Freedom House.

“I don’t want indebtedness,’’ said Snowden, a former bank executive. “I intend to be as fiscally conservative as possible.’’

That lesson certainly won’t be lost on Rabbi Lehmann. When he arrived two years ago to take the top post at Hebrew College, he confronted an institution that had placed greater value on architectural distinctiveness than it did on sufficient classroom space to accommodate the needs of hundreds of students, a rabbinical school, and a school of Jewish music. Lehmann went about the painful task of cutting the college’s $18 million operating budget almost in half. His staff made sacrifices. And he discovered something important along the way.

“The building,’’ Lehmann said, “is not the essence of the institution.’’ Lehmann believes that the college can maintain all of its current programs and even add a few in leased space next door at Andover Newton Theological School.

The recession has caused soul searching within some educational, nonprofit, and religious organizations. But the urge will always surface to build grandiose structures that reflect an institution’s wealth, power, or status. Hebrew College serves as an important reminder that the resulting debts can’t be wiped out with impressive degrees or pedigrees.

Snowden, meanwhile, needs upgraded classroom space for the computer training courses, counseling, and after-school programs now offered at Freedom House. But the new building, she said, should be no bigger than the current one — a modest 9,500 square feet. Snowden does hope, however, to devote a small room or “memory wall’’ to Freedom House’s historic ties to the city’s ethnic and religious groups.

“No one talks about the linkages between the black and Jewish communities anymore,’’ she said. “But I lived it.’’

It’s not an especially friendly climate for philanthropy. But it might be fitting for Freedom House and Hebrew College to host a joint fund-raising event that recognizes just how important each institution remains to its respective communities. And how lasting are the ties — though frayed by time and distance — that connect the two institutions.

Lawrence Harmon can be reached at harmon@globe.com.