Beit Rabban Day School Moves To New Building to House Full School and Launches Groundbreaking Jewish Camp Fund

An exciting new development for Beit Rabban Day School, a Jewish community school on the Upper West Side of New York City has been announced as the school plans to move to its permanent home in the B'nai Jeshurun Community House on 89th Street between Broadway and West End in time for the 2023-2024 school year. This move from the 15 W 86th location will allow the faculty to provide a home for grades preschool through eighth grade.

The new school building provides exciting spaces to help foster a deepened sense of belonging for each child, as well as their teachers, parents, grandparents, alumni, and the broader Beit Rabban community. New additions include a gym, a roof deck, an art workshop, a science and exploration room, and a library/“Beit Midrash.”

The new year will also bring the launch of a unique program to ensure that every Beit Rabban child can enjoy the magic of a Jewish summer camp experience. The Professor Getzel M. Cohen (z"l) Jewish Camp Fund will provide significant financial support for families who cannot afford Jewish summer camp, in addition to the amount the family is awarded in scholarship support from their camp of choice. The Jewish Camp Fund is designed to prevent parents from having to make a choice between Jewish day school and Jewish summer camp.

“The experiential education of Jewish summer camp has the ability to change children's lives forever. The intersection of Jewish day school and Jewish summer camp is our best bet for Jewish continuity. When thinking about a whole child, we need to consider their parents, including the financial stress families endure in trying to give their children the Jewish experiences they dream of,” says Stephanie Ives, Head of School at Beit Rabban. Professor Cohen felt his Jewish summer camp experience changed the overall trajectory of his life and now hundreds of children will be able to enjoy the same transformative Jewish summer camp experience.

Beit Rabban was designed to serve as a home for diverse Jewish families on the Upper West Side and all over the five boroughs. The entire spectrum of Jewish affiliations, practices, and beliefs, including intra- and inter-faith families, is welcome, accepted and reflected in the faculty. Ives explains, “As a non-denominational Jewish school, we believe that every Jewish child deserves full access to the depth and breadth of our tradition. We educate toward fluency in Jewish text and practice and cultivate a passionate and joyful community.”

At the heart of a Beit Rabban education is a belief that every child must have a profound sense of belonging in order to learn. The educational approach emphasizes the importance of questions, and a belief that the purpose of knowledge is understanding. The school invests in relationships: teacher-student relationships, classroom communities, and cross-grade connections, recognizing that when a child has a sense of safety and belonging, they can ask questions and take risks, which is what active learning looks like. They learn to ask their way into deeper relationships. And also,
learning sticks when it is relevant. Students take time to understand a concept, to make personal meaning, and to consider real world implications of all they learn.

All of New York City is the campus of a Beit Rabban student, with excursions into surrounding parks and, in the middle school, nature retreats, a key feature of the Beit Rabban experience. Students also explicitly learn soft skills like grit and self-regulation alongside hard skills like phonics and math. Head of School Stephanie Ives emphasizes how the school uniquely blends Judaism, progressive education and rigorous standards to provide a comprehensive experience that equips each student to grapple with the particular realities of our world. Each concept is always discussed in the context of optimism, and each lesson promotes the students’ collective ability to change the world for the better. “Beit Rabban combines the magic of things that are often at odds: the old and the new, optimism and obligation to repair, diversity and Jewish affiliation, the big city and the small town,” says Ives.

Beit Rabban is educating a generation of Jewish children to lead lives of intentionality, commitment and love. To learn more about the school’s mission and enrollment, please visit www.beitrabban.org.

About Beit Rabban Day School:

Beit Rabban Day School is a Jewish community school in the Upper West Side with a preschool through eighth-grade program that is home to deep and joyful learning. The school’s education fuses rigor and wonder to foster active learners who are adept critical thinkers and problem solvers; empowered Jews who possess the fluency, skills, and passion for living fulfilling Jewish lives; curious human beings who approach learning as a lifelong endeavor; and kind community members who care for themselves, their immediate communities, and their world. The school will soon move to a new home on 89th Street between Broadway and West End.