About 12 years ago, Gilah Abelson got a call from Margie Ungar. Both women lived on the Peninsula and had children in local Jewish preschools.
“I can’t fathom the idea of my child leaving nursery school and going to a secular school and losing everything she’s gotten at school and at home,'” Abelson remembers Ungar saying to her.
Abelson, who lives in San Mateo, estimates that North Peninsula-area public schools have a Jewish population of between 5 percent and 10 percent. So the women began dreaming about starting a Jewish day school where their children could stay together, establish the roots of a Jewish community and continue their Jewish education.
With a lot of planning, work and community support, that dream became a reality and, by the time Abelson and Ungar’s children were ready for kindergarten, the Jewish Day School of the North Peninsula was ready for them.
Ungar, who lives in Burlingame, was its first president; her two children attended the day school. The first classes met at Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo with Rabbi Peter Rubinstein officiating over the hanging of the mezuzah.
When the day school opened its doors in 1986, 21 students entered. It started with only three grade levels: kindergarten and a combination first- and second-grade class. As the oldest children moved up, the school kept adding a grade each year until the Jewish Day School of the North Peninsula was a complete elementary school with kindergarten through fifth grade.
This June, the first group of children who attended the Jewish Day School of the North Peninsula graduated from high school.
Judging by the students from this class, the day school is achieving the goals envisioned almost a dozen years ago.
“That Jewish foundation, I know it stayed with me. I would be very different without it,” said Rebecca Brown, who just graduated from Crystal Springs Uplands High School in Hillsborough and will enter U.C. Santa Barbara in the fall.
The day school “was such a family school. I stayed in touch with a couple of the kids and I am very close to them.”
Family get-togethers don’t end when children graduate from the day school, according to parents and graduates. They continue to meet as alumni groups and many of the friendships, for both parents and children, continue for years.
The school has also succeeded in creating a strong sense of community and Judaism in its students, said Ungar, who reports that an alumni group meets monthly.
“[We wanted to create] a foundation of strength from which [students] can go out into their secular middle schools and feel good about who they are and confident,” said Abelson, whose three children attended the North Peninsula school.
It worked.
All six of the graduating seniors have strong connections to Judaism and the Jewish community. Some still have close friendships with their day school classmates. They have attended Jewish summer camps and are active in a variety of Jewish organizations from United Synagogue Youth and the Peninsula Jewish Community Center, to B’nai B’rith Girls and Young Judea.
“I always had a positive identity of being a Jew even when most of my friends have been Christian,” said Danny Barre, who graduated from Aragon High School in San Mateo last month.
Barre, who consistently has been in the top 10 percent of his class, said the education he received at the Jewish Day School of the North Peninsula prepared him well academically. He will be attending Occidental College in the fall on a full four-year presidential merit-based scholarship.
The other graduates — Galia Agam, Palo Alto High School; Natalie Davidowitz, Castilleja High School; Andrew Heller, San Mateo High School; and Adam Koss, Menlo School — will attend college in the fall. All have received academic recognition for their achievements in high school.
Next year could be a big year for the Jewish Day School of the North Peninsula. It will start off with a new director, Mervyn Danker, who headed Jewish day schools in Australia, South Africa and Connecticut.
The school’s parents have their own dreams for the future. Abelson, an active parent alumni, said parents are seeking a new site for the school by the start of the next academic year.
Having outgrown the classrooms at Peninsula Temple Beth El, the day school has been renting a site from the San Mateo school district for several years.
“Our real dream is to be part of the [new] campus in Foster City with the Peninsula Jewish Community Center.”
According to Abelson, plans are in the works to bring that about. Now, even more ambitious plans are in the works: Parents want to establish a middle school.