Ezra Academy To Celebrate Fifty Years!

In 1968 there was a public school strike in New York, which led to the closing of all the public schools for a few months. During that time Rabbi Eliyahu Marcus came up with an idea to open a Jewish day school to cater to all the Jewish children now out of school. He saw this as an opportunity to introduce Jewish education to those children who were deprived of it in the public school system. The idea was born but the right person was needed to run the school, someone who would be able to bring the Torah to the level of the children and be able to relate to them too. This was a difficult feat in the Sixties before the Kiruv movement was an idea. The search didn’t take too long; Rabbi Eli Freilich was the perfect fit. The doors opened with a hand full of students and never looked back.

Ezra Academy, as the school was then named, has been serving the Brooklyn, Queens, Great Neck, Bronx communities and beyond. The goal then was to help educate Jewish children in their roots and traditions and that same goal remains the focus of the Yeshiva to this very day. There is no one demographic that makes up the student body. We have had students of American, Persian, Israeli, Russian and Bukharian
descent.

Students come here for high school and remain with us for the rest of their lives. Being invited to alumni weddings, their children’s Bar and Bat Mitzvah and other simchas is commonplace. Rabbi Freilich has a wall in his office with pictures of his students’ families as many see him as a father/grandfather figure and send him their family pictures the same way they would their biological father. The care and concern for each and every student which goes well beyond the walls of the school and past the school bell, is a founding pillar of the school. This too was established by Rabbi Freilich. Being able to connect to each student as an individual and cater to their needs was not just a nice idea but a prerequisite for the staff he hired. And he led by example, often times staying after school to schmooze with a student, play them in chess or any other way that was necessary. This idea has spread into so much more, Rabbeim and teachers hosting Chanuka mesibas, Simchas Beis Hashoeivas, Lag B’omer outings and so much more on their own time. Not to mention that the school itself organizes three Shabbatons and a school wide retreat every year.

A recent graduate, Yitzchak Aminov, said “I came to Ezra because of his friends who were going there but  stayed because the staff made me feel wanted and the relationship I developed with them was incredible”. This feeling is not his alone but that of any Ezra student, past or present (and future).

The school will be celebrating fifty years of success on February seventeenth at Da Mikele Illagio in Queens. Rabbi Eli Freilich and Mrs. Fran Hirschman, the school’s principal, will be the honorees. All are encouraged to come celebrate the amazing work, dedication and selflessness that these two amazing individuals have given over to countless people in their time at Ezra Academy.