Port Washington yeshiva shuts down

By The Jewish Star Staff

The Max and Ruth Schwartz Torah Academy, the Jewish day school of the Chabad of Port Washington, which billed itself as a low cost yeshiva, has closed.

Rabbi Shalom Paltiel, the dean of the school and the rabbi of the Chabad of Port Washington, attributed the closure to financial reasons and the establishment of a similar day school by the Chabad of Great Neck.

"The vast majority of the day school children were coming from Great Neck," Rabbi Paltiel explained. "Chabad in Great Neck opened a yeshiva which essentially caters to the same crowd so it really didn't make sense to operate two schools... [Closing] makes sense even if we were rolling in dough."

At its height the Schwartz Torah Academy had 200 students but enrollment for this year had declined to 135 students and a decision was made to shut down. The Silverstein Hebrew Academy, the school run by the Chabad of Great Neck, opened five years ago and now has a nursery and grades K-5.

Regionally, this is the second yeshiva closing announced this week. Monday was to have been the first day of school for nearly 400 students at Yeshiva Bais Torah, a 12-year-old elementary school in Lakewood, N.J. However, following a board meeting on Sunday it was announced that the financially strapped school would not open, according to Yeshiva World News (theyeshivaworld.com).

The Schwartz Torah Academy, which opened 12 years ago, charged $7,000 per student for a school year, close to $4,000 less than most other yeshivas in the region. Rabbi Paltiel said they managed to keep costs low by limiting the number of extra-curricular activities the school offered.

"Our mission is to keep kids out of public schools... so we priced it accordingly," Rabbi Paltiel told The Jewish Star last year.

Rabbi Paltiel said that the school held a fair for yeshivot at the end of the year. According to Rabbi Paltiel all the students from the Schwartz Torah Academy will be attending yeshiva this year.

"I don't look at it at as a major tragedy," Rabbi Paltiel said. "Nothing was lost.  Boruch Hashem, we have plenty to do."