The History

We’re an EC-8th grade community day school with about 350 students. We held a traditional golf tournament for 10 years and used the proceeds to endow a $250,000 scholarship fund. Over time, the expenses of the tournament escalated and the number of golfers dropped. We discontinued the tournament five years ago. Two years ago we went to a 100 hole format. Here’s how to set one up.

If Rip Van Winkle were to wake up in a number of our schools today, he would recognize everything.  This is how we felt four years ago. We knew that we had to “catch up.” And along came a new head of school, who wanted Rip Van Winkle to wake up in our school and not know where he was! She began to transform our learning community. Along with strengthening our secular and Jewish education, our goal was to ensure that our students will graduate with all the tools and skills needed for their future success at their fingertips.

Since its first graduating class in 1974, the Gottesman RTW Academy, formerly the Hebrew Academy of Morris County, located in Randolph, New Jersey, has had almost 500 eighth graders move up to high school and beyond. The impact that this school has had on those students’ lives and perhaps, just as importantly, on their families, is immeasurable.

This time of year is annual giving season. By now, schools have sent out their annual appeal letters and are starting telethons, social networking campaigns, email campaigns, and even videos campaigns asking parents, grandparents, alumni, and community members to give. Pitches may be different: Give to the Scholarship Fund, Help Buy iPads for Each Student, or Support Advancement and Excellence. But in the end, annual fundraising is an effort to help schools fill the annual budgetary gap between tuition and the cost of running the school. 

My husband is an obstetrician/gynecologist and one of the things he says he has learned is that the most intimate topic of conversation between doctor and patient is not that three letter word you would expect, but in fact money…

Every morning I wake up and bound off to school excited for a new day, ready to greet my students with a smile and meet the challenges the day holds in store. I love my job because of the students. I don't think any person would be crazy enough to be a head of school were it not for the amazing things children do. On a daily basis, we get to witness our students growing into empowered, engaged, and responsible members of Am Yisrael and the world.

Since the end of the summer, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in two day-long meetings dealing with Hebrew in day schools and other parts of our Jewish educational system. Both meetings, though forward-looking in their focus, reflected what seemed to be a shared sense among participants that Hebrew language learning and teaching—despite some notable bright spots—generally faces an uphill struggle in our schools.

Since the Pew Research Center issued the results of its survey of U.S. Jews last year, most of the commentary has been downbeat, with many people worried about the rise of Jews of no religion and no denominational identity, the continued increase in intermarriage (especially among the non-Orthodox), and lackluster levels of Jewish identity, communal affiliation, and raising children as Jews. To keep a long study short, in this interpretation, things are not looking so good for the Jews in America.

It seems in the world of philanthropy every five years or so a new buzzword or phrase overtakes charitable foundations and other institutional and private funders. During the span of my career we’ve been through efficiency, effectiveness, strategic philanthropy, venture philanthropy, and impact, to name a few. As these concepts build on each other they travel in turn through the nonprofit and philanthropic sector as magic bullet of the day. As in many fields, trends in philanthropy tend to follow a similar trajectory from insightful and powerful to hackneyed and meaningless.

A decade ago, the Jewish community debated whether vouchers violated the church-state wall and whether this “slippery slope” was worth the potential boon of millions in government aid to Jewish day schools. Since then, numerous judicial rulings have answered the church-state question and created an environment in which more than $1 billion dollars in 19 states, both blue and red, is now being spent on various school choice programs. The question of “possible” is moot. Every Jewish day school is eligible for some form of government funding.