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Students who switch between day school and public schools find their Jewish identities tested
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with teens across the world to report on issues that impact their lives.
(JTA) — In 9th grade, Jonathan Korinman transferred to a specialized public high school in the Bronx after spending the previous nine years in private Jewish day schools.
After leaving The Leffell School, a pluralistic Jewish day school in Hartsdale, New York, Korinman notices that he feels less connected to his classmates at High School of American Studies at Lehman College, his public school in the Bronx, than he did to his Jewish day school peers.
“When I was in a Jewish school, everyone felt connected with each other because of their connection to God or even just to Judaism,” said Korinman, a junior. “Without a God, or any form of Judaism in this public school that I’m in, there’s nothing tying each one of me and my classmates to each other.”
The differences that Korinman notices don’t end after last period. His home life is different, too. His family used to practice Jewish rituals on a regular basis thanks to his school, but now a family Shabbat is less frequent.
“Through Leffell, we used to get challah every Friday, and that was an incentive to have a family Shabbat ritual, with the candles, kiddush and everything,” Korinman said. “Ever since I left the school for 9th grade, we don’t do that as much anymore.”
Switching school systems like this is common for many Jewish families in many communities, where there are significantly fewer options for Jewish high schools than for elementary and middle schools. While this transition can impact the way students choose to practice their Judaism individually, it also has an influence on the practices that their families choose to partake in at home.
Enrollment in Jewish middle school — excluding haredi or Hasidic yeshivas — ranged from 19,000 to 21,000 students in the 2018-2019 school year, while in high school the numbers dropped more than 20%, according to a study by the Avi Chai Foundation of all day schools. Enrollment dropped by over 3,000 students from 8th to 9th grade.
For some teens, the switch can be unsettling, although they often learn new skills and perspectives that they hadn’t needed to draw upon in their parochial schools.
Like Korinman, junior Shayna Garner attended the Modern Othodox Robert M. Beren Academy in Houston, Texas until high school, when she switched to Xavier Academy, a non-religious private school.
Lexi Hecht lights Shabbat candles in her home. (Jamie Hecht)
Since second grade, Garner has participated in the Bnei Akiva program, a Zionist youth movement, and even though she does not got to a Jewish day school anymore, she is still an active member and counselor of her group in Houston.
Garner also participates in the Jewish Student Union at her non-religious high school.
“Every other Thursday, a rabbi comes to our school and brings us food,” Garner said. “We talk about upcoming holidays and Jewish other topics in general. The rabbi makes it really fun with questions for us and activities for us to do.”
Garner enjoys answering her non-Jewish peers’ questions about Judaism.
“My friends are very curious about my religion so I love teaching them about Judaism,” Garner said.
Some Jewish day schools are committed to helping their students transition to a public middle or high school. Columbus Jewish Day School in Columbus, Ohio offers fifth graders a unit with advice on moving on to public middle school, making new friends and maintaining a Jewish identity in their new schools.
“Our kids are academically and emotionally prepared,” Jenny Glick, director of enrollment management at the elementary school, told the Columbus Jewish News in 2021. “That is not to say that transitions aren’t a challenge. The kids know that change can be hard and that is OK. They have the skills and support built in for success.”
Similarly, students at the Lippman School, a Jewish elementary school in Cleveland, are “coached in skills to help prepare them academically for middle school, as well as building general self-confidence and preparing them for a new and diverse learning environment,” according to the Cleveland Jewish News.
For students who make the opposite switch, from non-Jewish to Jewish day schools, a new school can strengthen their Jewish identity.
Lexi Hecht came from public school to the The Leffell School halfway through 9th grade, owing to the appeal of in-person learning during the pandemic. Although Judaism was not what originally drew Hecht to the school, it has become a significant part of her life.
Before coming to the school, she celebrated Jewish holidays at home, but never learned the full meaning behind them. Hecht incorporates a lot of what she learns at school into discussion at home and feels confident that she will be able to help her brother when he has the same transition in the coming year.
“I feel a lot more connected to Judaism now because I’ve learned about where we come from and why we celebrate the way we do,” Hecht said. “I teach my family a lot of what I learn at school about the meaning behind the holidays and other traditions. When my brother comes to the school next year I’ll be able to help him and be a resource that I wish I had had.”
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The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
The post The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration appeared first on The Forward.
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A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall
(JTA) — When David Freedman discovered a long-forgotten photo album in his parents’ Montreal basement last year, he found nearly 100 pages of century-old photographs from his grandfather’s year in British Mandate Palestine, capturing Jerusalem street scenes, market stalls and holy sites.
The photographs were not only century-old and in near-perfect condition, but included figures who would later become central to Jewish medical and political history, among them Israel’s future first president Chaim Weizmann, Jerusalem ophthalmologist Abraham Ticho, malaria researcher Israel Kligler, future British prime minister Winston Churchill and Herbert Samuel, Britain’s first high commissioner for Palestine.
David Freedman said he knew he had “struck gold” when he found the album, which had been untouched for decades. “I realized in disbelief I was looking at extraordinary images of Jerusalem,” he said.
Though Freedman said the album showed his grandfather’s “passion for skillful, impromptu photography,” it was images of a site that epitomizes endurance that are having the broadest impact.
Freedman’s pictures of the Western Wall has inspired a public appeal by the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum, which is asking people to look through old albums and attics for photographs, postcards and other visual material that could help expand the historical record of Judaism’s holiest site.
The request comes ahead of a major exhibition opening in 2027 marking 60 years since the 1967 Six-Day War brought the wall, known in Hebrew as the Kotel, under Jewish control for the first time in nearly two millennia.
Although the Western Wall is now one of the most photographed sites in the world, museum curators say the visual record of earlier decades remains surprisingly fragmented, with many of the most intimate images likely still tucked away in private collections and family albums.
“The Western Wall, the Kotel, in its simplest form, is a structure of ancient stones. Yet its true meaning has never resided in the stones alone — it has been shaped and elevated by the countless individuals who have stood before it over the centuries,” Eilat Lieber, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in a statement.
Next year’s exhibition, titled “Eyes on the Wall” and curated by Shimon Lev and Yael Brandt, will be the first large-scale exhibition dedicated entirely to the Western Wall, the museum said, and will trace its transformation over nearly 2,000 years. It will be one of the major exhibitions staged by the Tower of David Museum since it reopened in 2023 after a $50 million renovation of its ancient citadel complex.
The wall, the exposed section of an ancient retaining wall around the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical Jewish temples, has long been Judaism’s most sacred places of prayer and pilgrimage. From 1948 until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Old City and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Jews were barred from going there.
Among its most iconic images was David Rubinger’s photograph of three Israeli paratroopers standing at the wall shortly after its capture, looking upward in a mixture of awe and disbelief. The picture was taken 59 years ago this week.
Abraham Orkin Freedman, a Canadian physician and Zionist activist, took his photographs before the site was so contested. He arrived in Palestine in July 1920, just as Britain was replacing military rule with a civil administration, and stayed until 1922, serving during that period as managing director of Hadassah Hospital. His grandson David, also a doctor, said the album’s timing gives it much of its historical value, with photographs that capture people in the streets, as well as the terrain and buildings of Jerusalem during the nascent years of the British Mandate.
Among the images Freedman uncovered, the one that struck him most was a photograph of women praying side by side with men at the oldest part of the Western Wall, a scene far removed from the gender-separated prayer sections at the site today. The question of mixed-gender prayer at the Wall remains politically charged, with a recent High Court order to advance the egalitarian section followed by Knesset moves to strengthen Chief Rabbinate control over prayer at the site.
After recognizing the album’s significance, Freedman met with his family who decided collectively to give it to the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum for safekeeping, research and public access. Freedman said the family was proud the album had found “a new home, not many meters from where my grandfather once stood.”
Lev said he hoped the appeal would bring more discoveries like Freedman’s into public view, expanding the visual record of the Western Wall beyond official archives.
“There is something profoundly moving in the moment when an intimate private photograph transcends its original purpose and becomes an important historical testimony,” Lev said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall appeared first on The Forward.
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5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances
(JTA) — Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service announced Tuesday that an 18-year-old man has been charged in connection with the March arson attack that destroyed four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service.
Subhan Ahmed, a British national, was charged on Monday with “assisting an offender” in connection with the arson.
The ambulances were set ablaze in the early morning of March 23 in Golders Green, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in London. The incident spurred increased patrols in Jewish communities.
The charge is the latest development in an investigation being led by the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit.
Four others have already been charged in connection with the attack.
Three British nationals — 20-year-old Hamza Iqbal, 19-year-old Rehan Khan and 18-year-old Judex Atshatshi — along with a 17-year-old dual British and Pakistani national were all charged in April with “committing arson, destroying or damaging property, and being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.”
The four have remained in custody ahead of a trial planned for January. Ahmed, meanwhile, was released ahead of a June 16 court date.
The ambulance arsons came at the early edge of a wave of incidents that have put London Jews on edge and induced the city’s police force to step up their presence in Jewish communities. The incidents have included multiple incendiary devices placed near synagogues as well as the stabbing in April of two Jewish men in Golders Green. The Metropolitan Police reported last week that antisemitic hate crimes in the capital rose 72% in May.
Following the announcement of Ahmed’s charge, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organization, thanked the police and the Crown Prosecution Service “for their ongoing work investigating this attack and other arson incidents targeting the Jewish community.”
It added in a statement, “These are very serious allegations, and it is right that those responsible are being held accountable.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances appeared first on The Forward.
