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The Whole Kingdom

When Ahuva Goldstein attended Yeshiva Rav Isacsohn Torath Emeth in 1960, she had five students in her sixth-grade class.
[additional-authors]
February 27, 2003

When Ahuva Goldstein attended Yeshiva Rav Isacsohn Torath
Emeth in 1960, she had five students in her sixth-grade class. The ultra
Orthodox elementary school was in its seventh year, but it did not have its own
building; it was housed in a synagogue on the corner of Third Street and Edinburgh
Avenue. The class was so small that it was combined with the seventh grade,
bringing the total number of girls up to 13.

“I don’t even think there were 50 students in the whole
school,” said Goldstein, 55, who now lives in Hancock Park and works as a
volunteer for Bikur Cholim and Hachnassas Kallah of Los Angeles. “But there was
not much of a choice [in Los Angeles] as far as the kind of in-depth religious
school my parents wanted. The education was very one-on-one, and we knew every
student. The teachers were very motherly, but it was really more like a little
house, with 30 to 40 kids running around, than a proper school.”

These days, two of Goldstein’s grandchildren attend Toras
Emes (as it is more commonly known) and she says the school has become “a whole
kingdom.” Celebrating its 50th anniversary on March 9, that kingdom includes
1,100 students in preschool to eighth grade, 240 staff members, five different
buildings in the Beverly La Brea area and an annual budget of $6 million.

Over the past 50 years, the school’s growth has been
synchronous with the expansion of the ultra-Orthodox community in Los Angeles
as a whole. In the 1950s, there was only a handful of synagogues that served
the ultra-Orthodox community, and even fewer schools. Today, the ultra-Orthodox
community has dozens of synagogues, several kollels and other community
infrastructure.

For many in the ultra-Orthodox community, Toras Emes is the
only educational choice worth considering: It serves as the middle ground
between the Chasidic Cheder Menachem (where secular studies are minimal) and
Ohr Eliyahu (a newer ultra-Orthodox school whose student bidy is more diverse).
What sets Toras Emes apart from other yeshivas in the city are, among other
things, its insistence on a high level of religious observance in the families
it serves. The school will not accept anyone whose parents aren’t Sabbath
observant and will not accept a child whose mother wears pants. Most Toras Emes
parents come from the far-right end of the religious spectrum and, according to
Toras Emes administration, 30 percent of its students are the children of
parents who are religious functionaries in the community, meaning that even
those who work in other places still consider Toras Emes to be the final word
in children’s education.

“Almost the entire [Jewish studies] teaching staff of any
Orthodox school in Los Angeles send their children here,” said Rabbi Yakov
Krause, the school’s principal since 1977. “So in a sense, we view our yeshiva
as a catalyst for Yiddishkayt in the entire community.”

The school takes Yiddishkayt very seriously, in intensity of
the learning and the number of restrictions it places on its students and their
parents to safeguard that learning. Torah is taught the first half of the day
to show its importance: School starts at 7:30 a.m. and Jewish studies continue
until 2:30 p.m. The chinuch (education), at Toras Emes is both old-style and
modern. In one second-grade Chumash (Bible) class, for example, many of the
students stand at their desks, their fingers pointing to the words in the
Chumash, swaying back and forth with their feet planted on the ground in
imitation of Rabbi Shmuel Jacobs, who is doing the same thing. In unison, they
repeat the verses of the text in a lilting cadence, first in Hebrew and then in
English. The effect is reminiscent of old European cheders, but before it
becomes too old-fashioned, Jacobs, a recipient of a Milken educators’ award,
turns off the overhead lights and switches on a moving electric light display,
which he has programmed to give the students information about the clothes worn
by the priests in the Temple.

In other classes, teachers discuss the finer points of
Hebrew grammar, connect the impending war in Iraq to the story of Purim and
find cute acronyms to get the girls to remembers the order of the animals that
lined the steps of the altar in the Temple. In the older boys’ grades, students
sit in a large beit midrash and learn Talmud chavrusa-style, with each boy
learning with a partner.

“We try to make the learning exciting for them,” Krause
said. “This is a time when we have so many distractions — the outside world has
so much glitz and glamour to it — that if the learning is just cut and dried —
and it doesn’t become alive to them — it’s a losing battle.”

The school tries to keep the outside world at bay with its
rules and regulations. Girls are required to adhere to the laws of modesty in
and out of school, and failure to do so is grounds for dismissal. Movie
theaters, regardless of the rating of the film or the accompaniment of an
adult, are off-limits. All television viewing is discouraged, as is patronizing
public libraries, and the school handbook states that the Internet “should be
treated like a loaded firearm.”

“If this is too much a price to pay for the chinuch we
provide,” the handbook continues, “then our school is not for you.”

Over the past half a century, Toras Emes has indeed
established itself as a vital institution for Los Angeles’ ultra-Orthodox
community, and yet, its phenomenal growth has not come without costs. The sheer
size of the school, some say, creates one large culture where individual needs
are not met. And with the generous amount of financial assistance it provides
(only 350 of 1,100 students are full-fee paying), some say the school doesn’t
have the resources to accommodate all the students.

Yet, the school says that while it is inevitable that some
students will get lost in the shuffle despite the school’s best efforts, it has
never sacrificed educational quality for financial reasons.

“I don’t think the education has been affected [by the
financial situation]. Nothing has been stopped because of money,” said Rabbi
Berish Goldenberg, also a principal and a fundraiser for the school.

Goldenberg cites the small classes, and the inclusion of
special needs staff as evidence of the school’s efforts to deal with its
imposing size.

As the school gets larger, different questions arise about
its direction. Should the school move more to the right? Should the school
become a television-free school (meaning that parents will need to get rid of
their sets before enrolling their children in the school)?

As a way of dealing with some of these issues, the school
has a “cheder track” for the younger grades, where Jewish studies are taught in
Yiddish. While some parents don’t particularly care for the Yiddish, they still
want their children in the cheder track, because it’s for children from more
seriously religious homes  — homes that do not have televisions, and where
there is no ambiguity in their commitment to Torah.

Even with these issues, many parents feel that what their
children get out of Toras Emes is priceless.

“Toras Emes is not so much about the education,” said
Jonathan Weiss, who attended the school, and whose two children are students
there. “The students are imbued with traditional Jewish sensitivity and
feelings, and it becomes their essence. I think that is why parents send their
children there.”

“I have yet to meet a mother who doesn’t have something to
complain about when it comes to the education of their children,” said Batya
Brander, mother of three Toras Emes students. “But the love of Judaism that my
kids have from Toras Emes is indescribable, and that far outweighs everything
else.”  

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