School Seeks to Educate and Instill Jewish Heritage

Leah Mleynek jumped from one elementary school to another. Bright, but not competitive, she wound up pressured by gifted classes, yet not challenged by regular classes.

Then last year, her parents put her brother, Benjamin, 6, into the small Jewish day school opening in Mission Viejo, which promised small class sizes and lots of individual attention. Six weeks later, the Mleyneks persuaded Leah, who was tired of changing schools, to visit the Morasha School.

Leah, now 10, wants to stay at Morasha for the rest of her school years.

Rabbi Allen Krause of Temple Beth El in Mission Viejo came up with the idea to form the Morasha School because the Jewish community has been growing along with the rest of burgeoning south Orange County, but there was no Jewish school to accommodate and nurture the community. Krause said the day school, formed last year as the newest of Orange County’s three Jewish private schools, adds depth and commitment to the knowledge of Judaism in the community. In many respects, some supporters say, the school is becoming a focal point for the growing Jewish community.

When Morasha opened in the fall of 1986, director Ruth Gavish said she hoped to attract seven students. Instead, the enrollment began at 22 and now has nearly reached the facility’s capacity of 65.

Gavish, who is from Israel and has 30 years of experience in education, said she already has had to turn away students this fall, adding that with the increased demand, a new location is being sought for the school. (Morasha, which is not affiliated with any one congregation, now operates out of rented facilities at Temple Eilat in Mission Viejo.)

In order to move, however, Gavish said the school will need to find “an angel” for financial support. So far, Morasha has received 60% of its funding from tuition, which runs $3,500 a year per student--and the remainder from community supporters.

The school recently changed its name from the South Orange County Jewish Day School to Morasha, which means heritage in Hebrew.

“The primary purpose of the school is to have quality education and to give kids the opportunity to learn about their heritage, and be comfortable with it,” said Paul Vann, president of the board and co-founder of the school.

“For us, (the Morasha School) represents the integration of the best academic and the best moral education we can provide our children,” said Leah’s mother, Sherryll Mleynek, 44, of El Toro. “Leah has fulfilled her potential to be a bright student who is really involved and not afraid to risk something in the process of learning.”

In Morasha’s five classes, the student-to-teacher ratio varies from 11 to 14 students per teacher. There are 13 students in the combined second/third and fourth/fifth grades, 11 in early kindergarten, and 14 in both the kindergarten and first-grade classes. Next year, a sixth grade will be added for continuing students. Gavish hopes to add a grade each year as the students get older.

By comparison, Orange County public schools average about 28 pupils per teacher for kindergarten through third-grade classes, and about 27 students for fourth through eighth grades. At two of the county’s larger private schools, class sizes averaged 26 students per teacher at the Fairmont School in Anaheim and 36 per teacher at St. Catherine’s in Laguna Beach, officials for both schools said. Gavish, however, said that from her experience, most private schools usually average between 15 and 20 students per teacher.

The three Jewish day schools draw students from an estimated population of 80,000 to 100,000 Jews scattered throughout Orange County. They all appear to be supportive of one another, and one rabbi said three schools were just about right for the size of the community.

Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal, Jewish studies director and administrator of the Jewish Studies Institute, a day school located in Anaheim at Temple Beth Emet, said the long distances from one part of the county to another make it imperative to have a Jewish day school such as Morasha in south Orange County.

JSI, which opened eight years ago, has participated in some Jewish holiday celebrations at Morasha.

“It’s important for Jewish institutions to work together,” Rosenthal said. “We work hard to work together and not step on each others’ toes. I think they (Morasha school officials) are doing an excellent job, the community support is there, and the student body is supportive.’

Rabbi Yitzchok Newman, dean of Hebrew Academy of Lubavitch in Westminster, said such schools as Morasha provide a “deeper and richer appreciation of Judaism,” and increase the youth’s pride in being Jewish. “These students become active in the Jewish community, in Jewish life.”

At JSI, which offers kindergarten through fifth grade, there is about one teacher for every 15 students. At the Hebrew Academy, there are between 15 and 20 students per class.

Because of the long distances involved, Paul Sheikewitz did not want to enroll his daughter, Lisa, at JSI or at the Hebrew Academy. A 39-year-old doctor living in Long Beach, he was active in the newly expanding Jewish community in south Orange County and instead helped co-found Morasha.

Sheikewitz’s wife, Linda, is Christian, but they decided to bring up their children as Jews. But on Lisa’s first Hanukkah celebration, Sheikewitz could barely read the Hebrew prayers and realized that he did not know the story of the Jewish holiday. “That lit a flame to at least read up on Judaism,” said Sheikewitz, an emergency medicine physician at St. Joseph Hospital in the city of Orange.

“In many ways, I (helped) start the school so I would learn about Judaism through my child,” he said.

Morasha began when Rabbi Krause, whose own daughter commuted 1 1/2 hours daily to Westminster, set up a meeting to discuss starting a Jewish school in the south county. Sheikewitz attended and began to help form the school.

Sheikewitz said assimilation into the Christian mainstream is “epitomized” in south Orange County, where he said there is a lack of both cultural sharing and Jewish education, which are common to other communities rooted in Judaism.

“Jews here are third generation--young parents,” Sheikewitz said. “We arrived at a point in our generation where we were extremely comfortable being Americans, but we were very uncomfortable being Jews.

“Generally, a religious community builds schools; we feel our school is so important because we are attempting to build a community,” Sheikewitz said.

The school accepts Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Jews, and rabbis from all three divisions sit on the school board.

La Rhea and Zvi Steindler are Orthodox Jews who moved to Irvine from an established Jewish community in Toronto two years ago. They send their sons, 5 and 7, to Morasha because it provides “the kind of immersion in Judaism” they would like for their children, the kind that doesn’t exist in the larger culture in Orange County, Zvi Steindler said.

La Rhea Steindler said the Orthodox Jewish community is “just developing” in Orange County.

“We’ve had to adjust to frontier living,” her husband said.

“You can’t take things for granted; if you want a Jewish organization for your kids, you may have to start it on your own,” said La Rhea Steindler, who is on Morasha’s school board.

One goal of Morasha founders is to expose the children to a full range of Jewish tradition and allow them to decide which they will follow at home, said Sheikewitz, who belongs to Temple Beth El in Laguna Niguel.

Gavish said she sees Judaism as a “way of life”--not a religion--and believes that it should be integrated into the educational process, rather than a “half-and-half” approach, separate from academic subjects common to other schools.

“You cannot divide the day to say, now I’m making a decision as a Jewish person, now as an American,” said Gavish, who most recently directed a Jewish day school in St. Paul, Minn., for six years. “Judaism is a way of life, and that is the message I want to give the children.”

In celebration of Sabbath every Friday, the children, the five teachers, volunteer aides and several parents share a hot lunch.

During a recent Sabbath lunch, Gavish energetically led the children through several Hebrew songs. The children, ages 4 to 10, sang along enthusiastically.

Then Gavish picked a child from each grade to sing the Sabbath prayer and bless the Challah bread while she lit the candles.

The rest of the children sat with their hands over their eyes, but most would sneak a peek to see their peers coming back to the table to share the pieces of Challah pulled off the loaf.

Hamutal Gavish, the director’s daughter, uses a “hands-on” approach in her combination fourth/fifth class. During the afternoon science class, after lunch recess, pairs of students reported on a controlled plant-growing experiment.

Hamutal Gavish said she tries to teach the children to think and encourages them to disagree with her and come up with arguments. “There is no limit to what a child can achieve,” Gavish said. “If you believe in them, they can believe in themselves.”

Leah Mleynek, who is in Gavish’s class, said the school gives her a “special feeling. . . . School just seems like doing things that are fun.”

Leah’s classmate, Liza Goldstein, 9, transferred from a public elementary school in Mission Viejo this year. “I like it better here,” Liza said.

“At my other school, they give you something and teach you how to do it, but here they teach you what it means.”