The rabbi, school director, executive director and co-presidents of the congregation let me visit and spoke to me about their dilemma on the condition I not identify the synagogue, for fear that could turn it into a target of the Trump administration.
It’s a Reform synagogue with about 400 families, in a town where about a third of the 20,000 residents are Hispanic, including new immigrants from Colombia and Ecuador. This is the fifth school year it has had a contract with the local district to run a free program for 3- and 4-year-olds under their state’s universal pre-K initiative. The public program has five classrooms totaling 75 students, and shares space with the synagogue’s private preschool, which serves 41 kids, about half of whom are Jewish.
What happens inside the classrooms is different — the synagogue disciples do crafts and sing songs related to Jewish holidays, get challah on Fridays; the public ones follow the district’s “creative curriculum,” which, on the day I visited, was moving from a unit about clothing to a unit about buildings.
But they play on the same playground — which the synagogue was able to upgrade with money from the district contract — and walk the same hallways. Past the mural that celebrates “music, prayer, connection, hope, kindness, love, tradition, culture and charity” as the key elements of tikkun olam, repairing the world. The kids mingle in before- and after-care. Some families have siblings in both programs.
When the idea of opening a public pre-K first came up, the only concern was whether it might draw families away from the private program, which costs up to $1,400 a month and provides the synagogue with important revenue. Instead, the private program has added a class for 18-month-olds, and the synagogue has also started a summer camp, which attracts kids from both preschools. Last year, enrollment was double what the budget projected, a boon to the congregation’s coffers.
“Showing to non-Jewish families what a vibrant Jewish community is like is also a bonus,” the rabbi said, citing the upcoming Purim carnival as an example. “The Jewish kids will know what Purim’s about, the other kids will just have a good time with food trucks and games.”
The executive director recalled how, at the town’s fall festival, the shul had a table with activities related to Sukkot, and had “families stop by who are Black, Hindu, Hispanic, saying ‘That’s where I went to preschool.’
“They want to do the craft, they want to hug,” she said. “They’ve become part of the family. They see us as part of their family.”
Which is why President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order reversing the longstanding policy regarding so-called “sensitive locations” prompted the synagogue to call an emergency board meeting.
“I’ve given sermons over the years about the importance of loving the stranger, we were strangers in the land of Egypt, all the good things rabbis talk about,” the rabbi told me. “If I ever hear a congregant talk about being anti-immigration, I remind them that their ancestors also didn’t speak English — whatever we American Jews have accomplished, it’s because we were allowed to be here.”
But this “is not just a Jewish issue because of Jewish values,” he added. “It’s a Jewish issue for us because this is our actual house, our home.”
