Touring the sites of Riverdale with out-of-town visitors on a recent Shabbat, I noted the scenic campus of the Telshe Yeshiva, an elite academy overlooking the Hudson River educating high school and post-high school budding Talmudic scholars. Virtually all students are out-of-towners, who, together with their prestigious faculty, are creating a haredi community in many ways dissonant yet coexisting with Riverdale’s Modern Orthodox subculture.

In direct contrast to the ethos behind Jewish day schools, the supporters of the Telshe Yeshiva advocate that adolescents leave their homes and immerse themselves in a full-time Torah community far removed from the attractions, as well as the pitfalls, of modern secular culture.

This model has a long history in Jewish life going back to the famed yeshivot of Poland and Lithuania. What is remarkable is how the model currently prospers — in Lakewood, N.J., Baltimore, Cleveland and Riverdale, among other places. Yet only in recent decades has thought been given in non-haredi sectors to a Jewish boarding school. When I first joined the American Jewish Committee in 1982, leaders E. Robert Goodkind and the late Yehuda Rosenman promoted the concept of a Jewish boarding school, similar to Britain’s now-defunct Carmel College, to create a community of students living in a pluralistic and Jewishly rich environment. Rosenman and Goodkind hoped to capture an elite student body, provide them with the best faculty and facilities and create quality high school experiences that would both combat assimilation and train future Jewish leaders. In subsequent years, philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, among others, explored this concept further.

Recently, I visited the primary expression of this vision at the American Hebrew Academy, in Greensboro, N.C. The academy is the brainchild of the late Chico Sabbah, a prominent philanthropist, who, having made his fortune in the re-insurance industry, channeled his resources to Jewish education in the United States and projects in Israel. Sabbah’s nephew, Glen Drew, serves as executive director and general counsel of the academy, preserving his uncle’s vision and legacy.

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