 In 1947, the Jewish Childcare Association sent Garfein to study at the Dramatic Workshop of which he had won a scholarship and who was part of the New School of Social Research at that time and became an independent school in 1949.Garfein took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator.Among his classmates were Walter Matthau, Tony Curtis and Rod Steiger.