The life and death of a Jewish boarding school

Story by Jessica Snouwaert.

Feature photo courtesy of H. Scott Hoffmann/News & Record.

GREENSBORO – Linda Askenazi dreamed about attending the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro for years. Her older brother attended the school and would leave home every August to study in what seemed to her like a Jewish paradise.

“I remember when I first saw the campus,” Askenazi said. “I fell in love.”

It didn’t take long after Askenazi was enrolled that the school felt like her second home.

The American Hebrew Academy, affectionately known by its community as AHA, was established in 2001 as the only pluralistic Jewish boarding school in the world. It was the vision of Maurice “Chico” Sabbah, a commercial aviation reinsurance tycoon who died in 2006. His dream was to build an elite Jewish school to shape the next generation of Jewish leaders, giving students a Jewish education and a connection to their heritage.

The school, nestled on a 100-acre wooded campus in Greensboro, taught students from around the world, including Mexico, Brazil, Russia and Israel. Throughout the school year students lived in the dorms, took classes, played sports and shared in daily Jewish life together.

“It was just a good place to be, you would feel comfortable and make friends,” Askenazi said. “It was an ideal place to live.”

But the summer after her sophomore year, Askenazi found out she would not be returning to school in the fall. No one would.

In June 2019, the American Hebrew Academy abruptly announced it would close: classes would not resume in the fall and the campus was shut down. Nearly 100 students, 50 faculty members and numerous staff members were without jobs and homes.

And without a school.

“I felt like my life was shattering,” Askenazi said.

AHA started with Chico Sabbah’s vision, and it became a close-knit community.  To understand the loss felt by the AHA community members, one must first understand what the AHA community grew to be.

The American Hebrew Academy announced its closure in June 2019. Photo courtesy of H. Scott Hoffmann/News & Record.

Living the AHA life

The first day Karen Dresser taught at AHA she was appalled.

Dresser was hired to teach art in 2004. But when she stepped foot into the classroom her first day, there were no art supplies.

“It was just unbelievable,” Dresser said. “I looked at Tammy Williams and I said to her, there’s nothing here.”

Williams, the school’s dean of academics, told Dresser to go out that weekend and pick up the supplies she needed.

For the next 14 years Dresser and other teachers built AHA’s art program. And like most programs at the school, its potential to be shaped and expanded was limitless because the school was in its infancy.

“It encouraged creativity among teachers as well as students,” Dresser said. “I had the liberty to create my own curriculum for those classes.”

Dresser taught classes ranging from visual arts and theater to Judaic studies. While she enjoyed creative freedom teaching the type of material she loved, for Dresser, the students she met and relationships she fostered with them, were just as important.

“It was a great feeling to be in that family atmosphere,” Dresser said. “There are several (students) that I keep in touch with frequently.”

Dresser’s experience was not unique.

Ariel Nissan moved to AHA when she was 8 years old.

Her mother was hired as a Hebrew teacher and residential staff member who lived on campus. Nissan not only grew up at AHA, but when it was time for her to go to high school, she became a student there.

“The whole campus felt like my backyard,” Nissan said. “My friends felt like my family because they really were part of my family. They’d come to my house on Shabbat dinners, my mom would cook for us, on snow days, we would go hang out at my house.”

And for students like Phillip Michalowicz, a 2012 graduate, the learning he had at AHA mattered just as much as the relationships.

Michalowicz became heavily involved with theater at the school, and he now leads therapeutic theater groups at a psychiatric hospital.

“Being exposed to a nontraditional Jewish stream or a methodology of approaching and interacting with Judaism that wasn’t inside of the synagogue, and not just a cultural way, but in a way that actually discusses liturgy and texts and the bones of the religion – it shaped my path forever,” he said.

From sports teams and debate teams to Shabbat dinners and class trips, for 18 years, AHA managed to develop students like Nissan and Michalowicz.

“It produced hundreds of graduates who went out into the world to leave their mark,” Leeor Sabbah, Chico Sabbah’s daughter and former chair of AHA’s Board of Trustees said. “Many of whom do work and continue to be connected to the Jewish world.”

But on June 11, Leeor Sabbah and Glenn Drew, the school’s CEO, announced that AHA was shutting down.

The gates close

The day after AHA first opened its doors Sept. 10, 2001, its financial headache began.

Chico Sabbah, the school’s founder, set out to provide the school he built with a hefty endowment. But his commercial aviation reinsurance company, Fortress Re, reinsured every plane involved with the 9/11 attacks through three Japanese insurance companies. In the end, Sabbah had to pay a $400-million settlement, leaving the school on a rocky financial footing with no endowment.

In the years to follow AHA struggled to reach its capacity of 350 students, with an average annual enrollment only ever reaching 150 students, most of whom were paying between $24,000 and $42,000, depending on whether they were day students or boarding students.

But tuition and the school’s fundraising efforts couldn’t carry the weight of the school’s $18 million operating costs. AHA’s leaders attempted to enlist supporters who would financially support the school in a big way, but eventually decided they had no choice but to close.

“It was shock,” Ellen Green, a former administrative staff member, said. “I mean, it was absolute awe and shock.”

Green, who worked at AHA for 13 years in various roles in admissions and institutional advancement, said the closeness of the community is something she’s never seen anywhere else.

“I have never felt more at home at a place,” Green said. “I feel like it was a place for everybody. I really do.”

Some faculty members moved away, and others scrambled to find new teaching positions in the area. Students raced to find new schools to attend in the fall.

After frantically researching and applying, Linda Askenazi found a new boarding school for her junior year – The Williston Northampton School in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

New beginnings

Then, nearly three months after AHA shut its doors, the school announced it would re-open in the fall of 2020. But not quite the same as before.

“Unlike the past, in which the Academy only enrolled students of Jewish heritage, the Academy’s highly acclaimed and rigorous college preparatory program will now be available to students of all nationalities, cultural and religious backgrounds,” read a press release put out by the school in September.

The school’s name, board of trustees and underlying premise would all change, according to the press release.

Drew, who will be the new school’s executive director, declined to comment on the upcoming changes.

The school, built on Chico Sabbah’s dream, is gone.

“It’s sad to me that there won’t be a Jewish school called the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, North Carolina on that campus,” Nissan said. “But I’m happy that there’s going to be something new there. And I’m looking forward to seeing what it looks like.”

Jessica Snouwaert

Jessica Snouwaert is a senior from Palmer Lake, Colorado, majoring in Reporting. She worked for The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs as a Breaking News Intern. Jessica hopes to pursue a career in print journalism or magazine writing.

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