Jewish Schools Shop For Retailer’s Cash

For Charlotte Jewish Day School, $500,000 could mean complete overhaul of school-wide technology, construction of a brand-new playground, or redevelopment of its individualized curriculum for 110 students.

“Jewish day school education, especially in cities where you’re the only Jewish day school, isn’t always on the front burner,” said Mariashi Groner, founder and director of the elementary school. With an extra half a million dollars, “We would be seen as a force to contend with,” she said.

Charlotte Jewish Day School, originally a Chabad-run program now turned community day school, is competing with public and private schools across America to land among the top-20 most popular schools in a Facebook voting contest run by Kohl’s Cares, the philanthropic arm of Kohl’s department stores. Kohl’s will be giving out a total of $10 million — $500,000 to each of the top-20 schools — as part of a “Giveback” promotion in honor of its 10th anniversary. As of Tuesday morning, the North Carolina school was ranked 10 with 13,659 votes, and of the top 50 schools, at least 20 were Jewish programs, with Silverstein Hebrew Academy of Great Neck, L.I., ranking number 2 (22,680 votes) and Cheder Menachem of Los Angeles ranking number 3 (22,340 votes). Of those 20, most are in some way affiliated with Chabad.

“There’s nothing that we’re not trying and no one we’re not reaching out to, but the real beautiful thing is that the community is standing behind us,” said Rabbi Dovid Ezagui from Silverstein Hebrew Academy, the front-running Jewish elementary school. “Our school is going through an expansion period now. We ran out of space in our current location and we’re building another location. The timing couldn’t be better.”

The contest, which began on July 7, runs through Sept. 3, and new schools can still enter. Each Facebook user is allowed to vote 20 times (five times per individual school) using the Kohl’s Cares application. While religious and private schools of all sorts are welcome to participate, the $500,000 prizes cannot be used for religious or politically partisan programs, or scholarships and financial aid, according to official regulations.

“Our whole city is talking about Charlotte Jewish Day School — that’s never happened before,” said Groner, who hosted an alumni vote-a-thon event on Monday night, where over 40 alumni showed up for Facebook voting sessions with their laptops.

“The parents who send their kids to the school should feel good about it,” added her son Bentzion, who is publicity manager for the campaign. “When we learned about the contest it wasn’t just about the money. For us the incentive was really to give the Jewish community a big boost, a sort of confidence.”  Continue reading…

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Also featured on CrownHeights.Info and Chabad.org.

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