Kehillah Jewish High School
Encyclopedia
Kehillah Jewish High School is an independent college preparatory high school located in Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

. "Kehillah" is a Hebrew word meaning "community." The school is one of a series of pluralistic
Cultural pluralism
Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, and their values and practices are accepted by the wider culture. Cultural pluralism is often confused with Multiculturalism...

 (community) Jewish day school
Jewish day school
A Jewish day school is a modern Jewish educational institution that is designed to provide Jewish children with both a Jewish and a secular education in one school on a full time basis, hence its name of "day school" meaning a school that the students attend for an entire day and not on a part time...

s in the United States at the high school level founded within the past 10 years.

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, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

.

Kehillah Jewish High School was founded in 2000 and opened in the fall of 2002 on the Blackford High School
Boynton High School
Boynton High School is a secondary school located in San Jose, California and is a continuation school for the Campbell Union High School District. Between 1991 and 2002 when Boynton High School continuation students attended what was then Blackford High School. Blackford had been a traditional...

 campus in San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...

 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, Maryland.

In ten years, Kehillah Jewish High School has grown from a 9th grade class of 33 students to a vibrant community of 153 students in grades 9-12. The school has experienced multiple years of double-digit enrollment growth and has nearly reached its goal of over 200 in the student body. Kehillah is currently Silicon Valley's only co-ed Jewish High School, and its students emerge as independent, critical thinkers, meaningfully engaged with the issues of our times.

The school is a recipient of grants by the Levine-Lent Family Foundation, Leonard and Vivian Lehmann, The Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, The Peninsula, Marin, and Sonoma Counties, and the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley.

Kehillah welcomes the full diversity of the Silicon Valley’s Jewish community and non-Jewish community. The families of Kehillah students come from not only the U.S., but also from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Canada and the Middle East. Students’ first languages include Russian, Hebrew, Spanish and French as well as English. They live as far south as Morgan Hill, as far north as Burlingame, and as far east as Castro Valley and Fremont. Approximately half attended public school through 8th grade, and the other half attended private middle schools. At Kehillah, students from these many places and backgrounds come together to form an energetic student body eager to learn from their teachers, from Jewish texts and from one another.

Campus

The new 50000 square feet (4,645.2 m²) campus at 3900 Fabian Way in Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

 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 major 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 break-out and tutorial rooms, high-end physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science laboratories, music and art rooms, a photo lab, a library and assembly space, student and faculty work and meeting spaces, faculty and administrative office clusters, and a beit-midrash for tefillah (prayer) and chavrutah study. Also, as of 2007, the weight room has opened and students are allowed outside during their free periods. Each teaching space is equipped with extensive electronic media and SMARTBoard technology.

Student life

Student life at Kehillah is found in athletics, publications, clubs, and committees. Many student activities are organized by the Director of Student Life. The sports program has expanded to include Boys' and Girls Basketball, Girls' Volleyball, Soccer, Coed Tennis, and Coed Dance. As of the 2008–2009 school year, the basketball, soccer, and volleyball teams play in the Private School Athletic League (PSAL).

Annual trips give students in each grade opportunities to socialize, learn outside the classroom, and participate in service projects. During the 2007–2008 school year the 9th graders travelled to the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley, California
Simi Valley, California
-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Simi Valley had a population of 124,237. The population density was 2,940.8 people per square mile...

, the 10th graders went to San Diego, California
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...

 to help with relief from the October 2007 California wildfires
October 2007 California wildfires
The October 2007 California wildfires were a series of wildfires that began burning across Southern California on October 20. At least 1,500 homes were destroyed and over 500,000 acres of land burned from Santa Barbara County to the U.S.–Mexico border...

, the 11th graders went to Waveland, Mississippi
Waveland, Mississippi
Waveland is a city located in Hancock County, Mississippi, on the Gulf of Mexico. It is part of the Gulfport–Biloxi, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area. The City of Waveland was incorporated in 1972. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 6,674...

 to assist in rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

, and the 12th graders spent 3 weeks in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

.

The school produces five theatrical productions annually. During the 2007–2008 school year, the theatrical season included "The Zoo Story
The Zoo Story
Not to be confused with Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives the book about Lowry Park ZooThe Zoo Story is American playwright Edward Albee's first play; written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks...

" by Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...

, "Proof
Proof (play)
Proof is a play by David Auburn originally produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club on 23 May 2000. It then went to Broadway on 24 October 2000 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, and was directed by Daniel J. Sullivan, with Mary-Louise Parker as Catherine, Larry Bryggman as Robert, Ben Shenkman as Hal, and...

" by David Auburn
David Auburn
David Auburn is an American playwright.He was raised in Ohio and Arkansas. He attended the University of Chicago, where he was a member of Off-Off Campus, and received a degree in English literature....

,
the musical "Pippin
Pippin (musical)
Pippin is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Roger O. Hirson. Bob Fosse, who directed the original Broadway production, also contributed to the libretto...

", William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's "The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

", George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

's "Pygmalion
Pygmalion (play)
Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of...

", and "The Laramie Project
The Laramie Project
The Laramie Project is a play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project about the reaction to the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie,...

" by Moisés Kaufman
Moisés Kaufman
Moisés Kaufman is a playwright, director and founder of Tectonic Theater Project. He is the author of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, 33 Variations and is perhaps best known for writing The Laramie Project with other members of Tectonic Theater Project...

. The plays are sometimes directed or co-directed by students.

Other extracurricular activities include Yearbook, Chess Club, Speech & Debate, Kehillah News Magazine Club, Chamber Musicians Club, Student Government, Israel Club, "Mish Mosh" (the school's improvisational comedy troupe), and Students Taking Action Now: Darfur
Students Taking Action Now: Darfur
STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition is an organization which seeks to raise awareness about the ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan, raise relief funds for those affected by the conflict, and advocate for political action....

. Kehillah's Jewish High School Jam Band won the 2007 KFOX
KUFX
KUFX is a classic rock-formatted radio station in San Jose, California. It is owned by Entercom Communications. The station is referred to on-air as K-FOX.On January 24, 2011, KUFX began simulcasting on KUZX 102.1 MHz in San Francisco....

 "School of Rock" radio competition. "Joe", a band that included two students from Kehillah, also won a KFOX
KUFX
KUFX is a classic rock-formatted radio station in San Jose, California. It is owned by Entercom Communications. The station is referred to on-air as K-FOX.On January 24, 2011, KUFX began simulcasting on KUZX 102.1 MHz in San Francisco....

 award; they won the award for best under 18 band. , Kehillah has a Dance Team that meets twice a week at the JCC across the street as well as a environmental club named SOAP which set up composting and recycling throughout the school in 2010. SOAP is currently working on establishing a garden for the school.

In 2007, the school's first-ever homecoming
Homecoming
Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back alumni of a school. It most commonly refers to a tradition in many universities, colleges and high schools in North America...

 event, dance, and spirit week took place in Mid-December.

Academics

Kehillah has a dual curriculum combining Jewish Studies and General Studies, taught by twenty-three faculty members, some of whom are also administrators for the school.

Like its sister independent high schools, Kehillah offers excellent academics, including honors and AP level courses in all disciplines. A full array of elective courses includes rock band, guitar, music theory, theater, photography, digital art, studio art, painting, alternative media, journalism, yoga, fitness, film review, and more. Ancient and modern languages are offered, including Spanish, French, modern Hebrew, Latin and ancient Greek. Students also study Jewish texts and commentaries. In doing so, students not only learn about or deepen their understanding of Judaism, but explore how Jewish values such as kindness, learning for its own sake, and ethical living have guided humanity through the millennia and continue to speak to the issues of our times. Each semester, students choose from engaging courses such as “The Origins of Human Violence,” “The Ethics of Living and Dying” and “Comparative Religions.”

In the classroom, Kehillah students are active learners. In classrooms of six to 18 students, teachers fully engage students, drawing each into the class discussion or activity. Every Kehillah teacher knows every Kehillah student. Teachers both nurture and challenge their students to achieve and excel. Students meet twice a week with their academic advisors in an advisory group of 8 to 10 students. Advisors follow their advisees’ progress and guide their academic path.

At Kehillah, the school works hard to ensure its students enjoy the right balance of study, relaxation and reflection. Students enjoy six weekly “prep periods,” during which they can study and complete homework, socialize in the student lounge, visit the JCC, meet with teachers or simply listen to music and recharge. Twice a week students engage in sessions of prayer, reflection and spiritual expression. Students choose from options such as traditional prayer, ethical discussion, meditation and art. Weekly assemblies afford time for school-wide experiential learning on a variety of subjects as well as presentations by guest speakers.

“Repair of the world,” or social action, is a central Jewish value and an essential part of student life at Kehillah. Each class takes a unique service-oriented trip. These learning experiences have included a civil rights tour of the American South, hurricane relief work in Mississippi, and a national youth conference on homelessness in Washington, D.C. The junior class trip is a 2-3 week experience in Israel, also featuring community service. Kehillah has several lunch time clubs dedicated to raising funds and awareness of global poverty, the health of the planet, animal rights, etc. The student body takes one day off of school each year to work for various service groups throughout the local area, and students are expected to complete 20 hours of individual community service each year.

Physical education and athletics

Although Kehillah does not have a standard P.E. program, it does have many options for students to earn their P.E. credit requirement of two semesters. A Weight Training class in the school year of 2008–2009 replaced the Krav Maga
Krav Maga
Krav Maga is a noncompetitive eclectic self-defense system developed in Europe that involves striking techniques, wrestling and grappling. Krav Maga is known for its focus on real-world situations and extremely efficient, brutal counter-attacks...

 class of previous years, and a Yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...

 class are offered as electives. Students can also participate in the athletic program to get their P.E. requirement. Currently, KJHS offers five varsity sports: boys' basketball, girls' basketball, girls' volleyball, co-ed soccer, and co-ed tennis.

Kehillah treats the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center (JCC) across the street as part of its campus. All students receive memberships to the JCC, and the gymnasium and pools serve as home of the Kehillah Rams volleyball, basketball and swim teams. Kehillah also has soccer, cross-country, ultimate Frisbee, golf and tennis teams. All are welcome to play – there are no “cuts” at Kehillah.

Tuition

Kehillah’s Board of Directors has set tuition
Tuition
Tuition payments, known primarily as tuition in American English and as tuition fees in British English, Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English and Indian English, refers to a fee charged for educational instruction during higher education.Tuition payments are charged by...

 for the 2008–2009 school year. Tuition for 2008–2009 is $27,600. Each entering student receives a $3,000 need-blind subsidy (meaning a net tuition of $24,600) from the Levine-Lent Family Foundation. The $3,000 subsidy, guaranteed for each of the student’s four years at KJHS, is designed to encourage families to join the growing Kehillah community in these initial “pioneering” years. In addition, a student activities fee of $1,600 covers extracurricular activities and most class trips. An additional fee of $50 is payable to the Kehillah Parents' Association.
Kehillah awards about 22% of its total gross tuition back to families in the form of needs-based financial aid.

Post-graduation

Universities recognize that students from Jewish high schools excel in college. Kehillah’s first six graduating classes have been accepted to more than 180 colleges and universities. Kehillah students have been accepted to every University of California campus, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, among others. Students receive one-on-one, personalized college counseling and are encouraged to meet with the some of the 40 or more college representatives that come to campus each year. Kehillah alumni have fared exceedingly well in college. Because they became so comfortable working with their teachers in high school, Kehillah alums seek out professors during office hours. They look for and find smaller communities of students with like interests and find ways to become as engaged and involved as they were at Kehillah. “Kehillah alumni tend to become favorites among their professors,” says Susan Solomon, Director of College Guidance at Kehillah. “They are the students raising their hands, adding to the discussion seminar and visiting with the professors after class.”

Almost all students continue to a 4-year college (over 99%). Some students defer for a year and study or travel in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 for a year.

Technology

The Kehillah campus is bright, welcoming and beautifully equipped. The school’s science labs, art studio, computer lab, and media lab are state-of-the-art. The black box theater and music studio are also hubs of student activity. Kehillah places an emphasis on technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

 in the classroom.
Each classroom is equipped with interactive, touch-sensitive SmartboardsTM. In math classrooms, students write and solve equations directly on classroom desks with dry erase surfaces. The school building is covered in a wireless network
Wireless network
Wireless network refers to any type of computer network that is not connected by cables of any kind. It is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and enterprise installations avoid the costly process of introducing cables into a building, or as a connection between various equipment...

 for student and faculty use.

Jewish Community Center

The Oshman Family Jewish Community Center
Jewish Community Center
A Jewish Community Center or Jewish Community Centre is a general recreational, social and fraternal organization serving the Jewish community in a number of cities...

 (formerly Albert L. Schultz JCC) is across the street from Kehillah Jewish High School as a part of the Taube-Korret Campus for Jewish Life. It boasts both indoor and outdoor swimming pool
Swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...

s, a gym
Gym
The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, that mean a locality for both physical and intellectual education of young men...

nasium, a state-of-the-art fitness center, and many other things to which students from the school now have access.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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