By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
For members of Seattle’s Orthodox community looking to send their children to an Orthodox day school, the choice used to be an easy one. That’s because for many years there was only one option: the Seattle Hebrew Academy.
Today, however, SHA is joined in its mission to educate Orthodox youth by both the Menachem Mendel Seattle Cheder, an affiliate of Chabad Lubavitch of Seattle, which has been operating in the University District since 1973, and the Torah Day School, which opened in the fall of 2006 in Seward Park.
As a rule, Seattle’s Orthodox community takes the education of its children very seriously. The way parents choose to educate their children can have implications beyond the choice of school itself, and circumstances that surrounded the opening of the Torah Day School have roiled this community, causing tensions and heated recriminations.
Few community members have been willing to speak on the record about these tensions, but, off the record, several people involved with any of the Orthodox day schools have acknowledged the rift.
Additionally, with three options available to Orthodox families, new problems have emerged: Can the relatively small Orthodox community support all three day schools, and what does it mean for the community that one is no longer enough?
Rabbi Rob Toren, grants director for the Samis Foundation, which provides annual grants to five Jewish day schools in Washington State as well as projects in Israel, acknowledged that, numbers-wise, Seattle’s supply of Orthodox day schools now outstrips its demand. He was quick to point out, however, that schools do not follow the conventional rules of economics.
“Some people have been critical of the number of schools we have relative to size of our community,” Toren said. “But that’s common. As communities grow, parents want an education that reflects their beliefs, so they start new schools. A certain degree of inefficiency is to be expected.”
Samis currently does not support the Torah Day School due to rules that a school must be in operation for two years before receiving any grants, but Toren said discussions are taking place about providing funds in the future.
What exactly accounts for the need for multiple day schools seems to be a bit of a sticking point, both for supporters of existing institutions and the founders of the new Torah Day School, as well as the short-lived Sha’arei Binah Girls High School, which also opened in the fall of 2006 and then closed the following spring.
A desire for single-gender classes as well as “blended,” Montessori-style classrooms are the reasons most parents interviewed gave for switching their kids from SHA (or, in one case, from Menachem Mendel) to Torah Day School. However, children attending Torah Day School are, by and large, those of families who identify with what they call Torah Judaism, which adheres to the 613 mitzvot of the Torah, rather than the more centrist Modern Orthodox movement, followers of which have supported SHA for 60 years.
Mike Eisenstein, board president of Torah Day School, said that the enthusiasm for TDS, which has a current enrollment of just over 70 students, is not indicative of the community shifting away from its dominantly centrist philosophy, but, rather, that as the community as a whole grows, so too does the more traditional segment.
“It’s just growth,” Eisenstein said. “In great part, I would credit SHA for maintaining and building a center of Orthodoxy here in Seattle. You have to move in a direction, and what that has resulted in is a wider variety of opinions than one school can cater to.”
Rivy Poupko Kletenik, SHA’s head of school, said that her school continues to serve students from “the entire spectrum of Orthodoxy.”
SHA lost 19 students to TDS for the 2006-2007 school year, the same number it lost due to family relocation. The current enrollment is 215 from pre-K through the 8th grade.
“Whenever any students leave, there’s a concern,” said Kletenik. “SHA feels they have consistently served the Orthodox community with meaningful Jewish education. We’ve had consistent approval and involvement of the local rabbis.”
The founding of TDS occurred around the same time the SHA board completed a process to change the school’s bylaws — previously, only rabbis could serve as head of school — and allowed for Kletenik to be hired in her position, which fueled speculation that the new school was started in protest of that decision. TDS’ founding president, Arthur Levin, said at the time that that was not the case.
Regardless of why the split has occurred, some SHA parents, both of current students and alumni, worry that TDS will drain much-needed enrollment numbers and resources from SHA. Toren noted that when the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle first opened in 1980, the community had similar concerns that there were simply not enough students to fill two Jewish day schools, regardless of their level of observance. Tensions also arose following the founding of the Menachem Mendel Cheder for the same reasons.
“Obviously, every situation is different, but it’s sort of a common dynamic of when new schools open. Existing schools are going to lose kids and that’s upsetting. They’ll want to know what’s wrong,” Toren said.
For Eisensein, it’s not a matter of anything being wrong with SHA, but simply wanting something different for his own young children.
“The big thing that people keep having trouble with is, there’s a perception that SHA isn’t an Orthodox school,” Eisenstein said. “But I don’t think that at all. When you say ‘I want to do things from a religious philosophy,’ people immediately say ‘Mine’s not good enough?’ But it’s not about a right or wrong philosophy, just a different one.”
Indeed, it is a different philosophy in halachic education that led David Greene, with the help of several other Seward Park families, to open the Sha’arei Binah High School for Girls in the fall of 2006.
“For all the time I’ve been here, there has always been a small percentage of girls who have left Seattle for high school because it has been the priority of both the girls and their parents that they attend school in a single-gender environment,” said Greene, a Seward Park resident of 17 years.
Keeping this small number of girls in Seattle for their high school years was the impetus behind the school’s founding, Greene said. Although he acknowledged the school would never have the numbers of Mercer Island’s Northwest Yeshiva High School, Greene had imagined there would be enough interest and support to keep the school afloat. Initially, the school had hopes of recruiting a freshman class of between six and eight girls for the first year and then adding one grade each of the following years. However, when the school year began, only four girls had enrolled, one of whom was Greene’s daughter.
“The bottom line is, we were wrong. We could not maintain numbers we had hoped for in [the] immediate future,” Greene said.
As a result, the school did not reopen this fall, and all four of Sha’arei’s students now attend all-girl schools out of state. Greene maintains that neither his daughter, nor any of the other Sha’arei Binah girls, would have been comfortable at Northwest Yeshiva High School, even though going there would have allowed them to continue living at home.
“It’s hard for us, not having her at home,” Greene said. “But none of the girls would have been happy at Northwest Yeshiva. Not because it isn’t a good school, but because it just isn’t the right environment for them.”
Greene asserted that neither the opening of Sha’arei Binah nor TDS (which one of his sons currently attends) was motivated by any sort of political agenda. Rather, he considers the birth of these new schools as reflective of a segment of the population that has always existed, but was not previously represented in Seattle’s educational spectrum.
Like it or not, however, community politics have crept in, making the creation of the new schools a divisive issue among Seattle’s Orthodox families.
In the fall of 2007, a number of Seward Park families whose children are currently attending SHA received anonymous letters encouraging them to consider sending their kids to TDS instead. The implication of the letter was that TDS provides a more religiously correct environment than other day schools, saying that, at TDS, [sic] “Torah is dominant and that can’t be said about any ‘orthodox’ schools in Seattle.”
The letter asks parents: “Don’t you want your children to be surrounded by others who are as uncompromising as you are? Don’t you want your children’s friends to be truly frum?”
The individual or group that sent the letter notes at the end of the document that they are not affiliated with TDS, and TDS principal Rabbi Sheftel Skaist is quick to point out that, like SHA, students needn’t be Orthodox to attend TDS, only Jewish.
Still, implications like those stressed in the anonymous letter have made the issue of Seward Park’s new schools a sensitive one.
As for the impact these competing schools will ultimately have on the state of Orthodox education in Seattle, Toren is optimistic, saying that competition will, ultimately, be beneficial for all institutions involved.
To illustrate this sentiment, he offered the example of a Jewish law related to business. In most instances, he said, it is against Jewish law to set up similar enterprises that are too close in proximity, so as not to create excessive competition. No such rule, however, applies to schools.
“Jewish law reflects a belief that competition among educational institutions is of the greater good in advancing Torah,” Toren said. “In the long run, I feel that’s true. SHA has become more energetic and more focused in its mission as a result of having families leave to go to TDS. In the short run, it’s difficult and it’s painful, but, long-term, I think the community will be better served.”