COSTA MESA : School Concentrates on Jewish Identity

Leaders of a new Jewish school in the county hope they will help a growing Jewish population establish an identity here.

In recent years, Jewish families have been migrating to the area in increasing numbers, but the South County lacks a place where they can feel that they belong, said Leora Baron, executive director of Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School.

The school, which opened this month in a building that was donated by members of the Jewish community, moved here to fill that need, she said.

“To know and to feel that you are a part of the community brings a pride and joy into our traditions,” said Laura Pachas, a Costa Mesa resident who has a 7-year-old son enrolled in Tarbut V’Torah. “It’s hard to be a Jew all by yourself, and we want our kids to be in a place where they don’t have to constantly be explaining who they are and why they are.”

For a year before it moved to its new site, the school had been renting space in a cramped building on Harbor Boulevard. For about 10 years before that, Tarbut V’Torah was in Anaheim.

But the school began losing enrollment when many Jewish families started to move to the Costa Mesa, Irvine and Newport Beach areas, Baron said.

She said she wants the school to become the “hub of the Jewish community in Orange County.” There has been a push for a closer-knit Jewish community in the county, she added, “like the ones in Los Angeles and New York.”

Boys and girls studying at Tarbut V’Torah--73 in all--are the first in Orange County to receive Judaic history, physical education and Bible classes in the Hebrew language. Other classes, such as math and English, are taught in English and a little Hebrew.

The school is one of a handful across the country that doesn’t belong to any specific branch of Judaism. “Our kids represent the whole spectrum, from Reform to Orthodox to Conservative Judaism,” Baron said. “We’re trying to make the school a microcosm of the Jewish community at large because the Jewish community is diverse in Orange County. There is no Jewish neighborhood here yet.”

Adam Helfgot, 10, said that “it’s important to learn our history. We should know about it. We’re Jewish.”

Adam, a fourth-grader, is fluent in Hebrew, like many of the school’s students.

“It takes a while to learn Hebrew, but that was what our ancestors spoke and we should also learn it,” Adam said.

Other children in the school for kindergarten through seventh grade said they will visit Israel for their bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. “I’m glad I know Hebrew,” Amanda Levy, 11, said. “Now I’ll be ready for Jewish life and I want to be able to understand what (Judaism) is.”

Hebrew is taught as a second language so that the children will integrate the tongue into their daily lives, Baron said. “We don’t want kids to see the language as just a ritual.”

The school is located next door to the Jewish Community Center on Baker Street. “This will be the hub,” Baron said.