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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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Jewish real estate magnate Steven Roth likens Mamdani’s ‘tax the rich’ rhetoric to ‘from the river to the sea’
(New York Jewish Week) — Jewish real estate mogul Steven Roth compared New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “tax the rich” rhetoric this week to racial slurs and pro-Palestinian rhetoric on an earnings call for his company, Vornado Realty Trust.
“I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’ when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase, ‘from the river to the sea,’” Roth said, referring to the phrase commonly used at pro-Palestinian protests that many Jewish groups consider antisemitic.
The remark by Roth, who has long been a notable philanthropist to Jewish causes, adds to mounting tensions between New York business leaders and Mamdani over his recently announced “pied-à-terre” tax on second homes valued at more than $5 million.
During the call Tuesday, Roth also expressed support for Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel, whose $238 million dollar penthouse was featured in a video by Mamdani announcing plans for the tax last month.
“We are all shocked that our young mayor would pull this stunt in front of Ken’s home and single him out for ridicule,” Roth said. “The ugly, unnecessary video stunt is personal for Ken and sort of personal for me.”
Roth’s comments touched on a longstanding source of friction between Mamdani and some New York Jewish leaders, who have criticized the mayor over his views on Israel and his previous defense of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” another common pro-Palestinian slogan viewed by some as a call to violence against Jews.
In the wake of Mamdani’s election, some Jewish business leaders, including Dave Portnoy, the Jewish founder of Barstool Sports, said that they planned to leave the city altogether, citing the mayor’s fiscal policies and concerns about antisemitism under his leadership.
In a statement responding to Roth’s comments, Mamdani’s office said that he wanted all New Yorkers to succeed, including “business owners and entrepreneurs who create good-paying jobs and make this city the economic engine of America.”
“That does not negate the fact, however, that our tax system is fundamentally broken. It rewards extreme wealth while working people are pushed to the brink,” the statement continued. “The status quo is unsustainable and unjust. If we want this city to become a place that working people can afford, we need meaningful tax reform that includes the wealthiest New Yorkers contributing their fair share.”
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Man who firebombed Boulder Israeli hostage march sentenced to life in prison
(JTA) — The man charged with carrying out a deadly firebombing attack on a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, last year was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Thursday after pleading guilty to muder and dozens of other charges.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national who was arrested at the scene of the attack on the demonstrators last June, pleaded guilty to 101 charges, including 52 counts of attempted murder and one count of murder for the death of Karen Diamond, an 82-year-old victim of the attack who later died of her wounds.
During the June attack, Soliman shouted “free Palestine” and threw two molotov cocktails at the group, Run for Their Lives, injuring over a dozen people. According to an earlier court filing, Soliman said that he had staged the attack, which prosecutors said he planned for a year, because he “wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead.”
Soliman has separately pleaded not guilty to federal hate crime charges, for which prosecutors could potentially seek the death penalty.
“If I went back, I would not have done this as this is not according to the teaching of Islam,” Soliman said during the sentencing hearing, adding that he wanted federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty. “What I did came out of myself and only myself.”
During his remarks, Soliman argued that he had not been driven by anti-Jewish animus. He later said that Zionism was “the enemy” and that it was his “right” to be against Israel.
Chief District Judge Nancy W. Salomone rejected Mr. Soliman’s arguments, telling him that his “choices were acts of terror, and they victimized an entire community,” according to the New York Times.
“You chose to victimize these people because they were members of the Jewish community,” she said.
In a statement read earlier in court by a prosecutor, Diamond’s sons, Andrew and Ethan Diamond, asked that Soliman not be allowed to see his family again “since he is responsible for our mother never seeing her family again,” according to the Associated Press.
They said that Diamond had suffered “indescribable pain” for over three weeks before her death, adding that “in those weeks, we learned the full meaning of the expressions ‘living hell’ and ‘fate worse than death.’”
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LA Orthodox school’s former guidance counselor will avoid jail time in sex abuse case
An Orthodox Jewish high school’s former director of academic support will avoid jail after pleading no contest Thursday to sexual abuse charges involving a student in her charge at the school’s boys’ division.
Julie Tichon, 38, was working at YULA Boys High School in May 2024 when two students reported having separate sexual relationships with her. The LA-based school fired Tichon and referred the matter to the police department. Tichon was charged four months later in connection with one of the students, who was 16 at the time of their alleged encounters.
Tichon will face two years of probation and will be registered as a sex offender for a minimum of 10 years.
In exchange for Tichon’s no contest pleas to one count of felony sexual intercourse with a minor and one count of felony oral copulation with a minor, the court dismissed the two other counts against her, also felony sexual intercourse with a minor. Tichon will also be required to pay restitution to the victim, an amount that will be determined at a sentencing hearing May 28, and to undergo 52 weeks of counseling.
She had faced up to five years in prison.
Speaking outside the Los Angeles Airport Courthouse after the hearing, Tichon said she was sorry for the pain caused to her victim in the case.
She said her mistake came at a time in her life when she was experiencing immense personal trauma, and that that context had informed the district attorney’s decision not to pursue state custody. She declined to elaborate on what the trauma was, but said it was not connected to the case. Since then, she had been receiving therapy, she said.
“The way I was feeling when this happened, like the dark place I was in, I don’t think I’m ever gonna feel that way again,” Tichon said.
She said forced registration felt personally “shameful and embarrassing,” and purely punitive in nature. But she said she accepted the district attorney’s terms “as a sacrifice I have to make for a better life.”
“She is taking responsibility for this,” said Tariq Khero, Tichon’s attorney. “She’s made some terrible mistakes, and she’s not making those mistakes again.”
The family of the victim, which was in court as the plea was presented to the judge, declined to comment.
Tichon’s no contest plea means that any victims won’t be able to use her plea as a form of proof in civil suits against her, though no such cases have been filed. But her agreement does not close the affair for the school where she once worked.
A second student, now aged 20, has separately filed a lawsuit against YULA that alleges years of sexual abuse by Tichon that the school should have taken action to stop.
It claims the school kept Tichon on staff despite knowing of Tichon’s inappropriate sexual conduct with a student’s parent, and that rumors were circulating in the student body of Tichon’s sexual abuse of students as early as the 2021-22 school year.
In the lawsuit, filed in September 2025, the student alleges that Tichon’s sexual harassment and abuse began in 2020, when he was a freshman assigned to her for academic support, and continued through 2024.
The lawsuit claimed Tichon abused the plaintiff by showing him nude and pornographic videos of herself, describing previous sexual encounters to him and performing oral sex on him despite his refusal. (Tichon, who is not named as a defendant in the suit, declined to comment on it Thursday.)
Tichon also harassed the student, he alleged in the lawsuit, by driving to his family’s home and insisting on seeing him; telling other people they were in a relationship; and telling him that if he ever reported her abuse, she would get him in trouble with the school.
The plaintiff also alleged that the school administration knew of an alleged affair Tichon had in 2023 with the married father of a YULA student.
“YULA knew of this sexual relationship, but did nothing to investigate Tichon’s conduct or take any action to inform the students’ parents of Tichon’s conduct,” the lawsuit alleges.
It claims the school made Tichon’s behavior possible by allowing her to give students rides in her car and have additional unsupervised time with students. YULA also did not have any trainings of students or teachers or protocols to prevent child sexual abuse and to prevent educator sexual misconduct, the suit alleges.
It was unclear why the second student’s allegations did not lead to additional charges from the district attorney. The D.A.’s office did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
YULA’s head of school, Rabbi Arye Sufrin, did not respond to an inquiry.
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