Forward.com

Jewish Schools Feel the PinchBy all accounts, Isaac Bitton had a pretty good summer in 2007. As owner of the commercial company Apex Suspended Ceilings, he was making enough money to live a comfortable life with his wife and three kids in suburban Los Angeles, and had just opened a new business installing swimming pools in residential properties. As he did every year, Bitton shelled out $36,000 in tuition for his two sons to continue their education at Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School, a nearby community Jewish day school; and on top of tuition and bills, Bitton and his wife, Limor, were able to save money and use some extra cash to splurge on travel.
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Language Educators Rethink Their Hebrew LessonsRachel Jackson doesn’t remember learning Hebrew at the Jewish Community Day School, where she spent kindergarten through eighth grade, but something must have stuck: She’s now among the top Hebrew-language students at her Jewish high school.
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New Egalitarian Yeshiva Prepares To Go Full TimeOn a recent weekday summer morning on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the second floor of West End Synagogue was buzzing. Thirty-six students, divided into pairs, clustered around tables, poring over open Talmuds. Some of the beginners flipped through lexicons, trying to puzzle out obscure words, while more advanced students debated that day’s text and compared it with other commentaries. Amid the murmured discussions, students occasionally broke out into snatches of Jewish songs, and one student, in an apparent effort to rouse her weary brain, hopped up to do a few jumping jacks.
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