Kehillah Jewish High School is an independent
college preparatory
A college-preparatory school (usually shortened to preparatory school or prep school) is a type of secondary school. The term refers to public, private independent or parochial schools primarily designed to prepare students for higher education ...
high school located in
Palo Alto
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was estab ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. "Kehillah" is a Hebrew word meaning "community." The school is one of a series of
pluralistic (community)
Jewish day school
A Jewish day school is a modern Jewish educational institution that is designed to provide children of Jewish parents with both a Jewish and a secular education in one school on a full-time basis. The term "day school" is used to differentiate s ...
s in the United States at the high school level.
In the fall of 2005, the school moved from its original location in
San Jose to its new campus at 3900 Fabian Way, Palo Alto, where it also hosted the Keddem Congregation (
Reconstructionist Judaism
Reconstructionist Judaism is a Jewish movement that views Judaism as a progressively evolving civilization rather than a religion, based on concepts developed by Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983). The movement originated as a semi-organized stream wi ...
) for several years.
Kehillah Jewish High School was founded in 1999 and opened in the fall of 2002 on the
Blackford High School campus in San Jose with 32 9th grade students. Rabbi Reuven Greenvald joined Kehillah as its Head of School in the summer of 2004 and left in March 2007. He was replaced by Lillian Howard, who most recently served as the founding Head of School of the Shoshana S. Cardin School in
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
. Upon Lillian Howard's retirement in June 2013, Rabbi Darren Kleinberg, Ph.D. became the Head of School. Rabbi Darren Kleinberg, Ph.D. left in the end of the 2019-2020 school year. During the 2020-2021 school year, Dr. Daisy Pellant became the new Head of the School.
Since 2002, Kehillah Jewish High School has grown from a 9th-grade class of 33 students to a community of approximately 220 students in grades 9-12. The school experienced multiple years of double-digit enrollment growth. In 2016 Kehillah was described as the fastest-growing Jewish community high school in North America by
Marc Kramer
Marc Kramer is an American serial entrepreneur, business book author and journalist. He founded the country's first formally organized investor angel network, the Pennsylvania Private Investors Group, now called the Private Investors Forum, and th ...
, co-executive director of Ravsak, a national Jewish community day school network.
In addition to American students, Kehillah has a large
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
i student population. Students’ first languages include Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, and French as well as English. They live as far south as
Morgan Hill
Morgan Hill is a city in Santa Clara County, California, at the southern tip of Silicon Valley, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Morgan Hill is an affluent residential community, the seat of several high-tech companies, and a dining, entertainmen ...
, as far north as
Burlingame, and as far east as
Castro Valley
Castro Valley is a census-designated place (CDP) in Alameda County, California, United States. At the 2010 census, it was the fifth most populous unincorporated area in California and the twenty-third most populous in the United States. The popula ...
and
Fremont. Approximately half attended public school through 8th grade, and the other half attended private and public middle schools.
Campus
The new campus at 3900 Fabian Way in
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...
was completed for the 2005–2006 academic year. It is situated across the street from the recently opened Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life, a new development for the Palo Alto JCC and the senior home. The facility was originally constructed in 1997, and was extensively remodeled in 2005. The building includes 27 classrooms, four tutorial rooms, high-end physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science laboratories, music and art rooms, a photo lab, a
makerspace
A hackerspace (also referred to as a hacklab, hackspace, or makerspace) is a community-operated, often "not for profit" (501(c)(3) in the United States), workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, sc ...
, a library and assembly space, student and faculty work and meeting spaces, faculty and administrative office clusters, and a Beit Midrash – a room for prayer and study. Each teaching space is equipped with extensive electronic media and
SMARTBoard
Smart Technologies (stylized as SMART Technologies) also known as Smart, is a Canadian company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and wholly owned by Foxconn. Founded in 1987, Smart is best known as the developer of interactive whiteboar ...
technology. The campus was most recently renovated in the summer of 2016, during which the library, theater, and student learning center were redesigned. After the COVID-19 pandemic, in the summer of 2021, the campus was renovated again to remodel all classrooms. The library, student center, and hangout spaces were also redone to look and feel more inclusive.
Notable Alumni
*
Harris Mowbray
Harris Mowbray (/ˈhæ.ɹɪs ˈmoʊ.breɪ/; born 1999) is an amateur linguist and programmer from the United States. He is notable for creating several proposals to encode minority languages around the world in Braille.
Early life
Harris was bor ...
References
External links
Official websiteNorth American Association of Jewish High SchoolsPartnership for Excellence in Jewish EducationPrivate Schools in the Bay Area
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Pluralistic Jewish day schools
Jewish day schools in California
High schools in Santa Clara County, California
Educational institutions established in 1999
Private high schools in California
Schools in Palo Alto, California
1999 establishments in California
Reconstructionist Judaism in the United States