What’s in a name? According to leaders at the school formerly known as Kehillah Jewish High School, not as much as you might think. According to some alums and parents, it’s much more.
The Palo Alto school announced in a Sept. 19 Facebook post that it had changed its name to “The Kehillah School” after more than 20 years, and adopted a new logo and mission statement. In a joint statement, the head of school and board chair said the name change better represents the “exceptional nature” of the school to prospective families and increases its competitiveness in Silicon Valley.
The school emphasized that dropping “Jewish” from the name doesn’t mean the school is shedding its Jewish identity.
“We stand by our commitment to our longstanding Jewish values, our deep academics in Jewish Studies, celebration of Jewish and Israeli holidays, and creating belonging for all members of our community,” head of school Daisy Pellant and board chair Jonathan Manson said in a series of written responses to J.’s request for an interview.
But not everyone is on board.
Daniel Labunsky, a 2013 graduate, is one of more than 700 people — mostly alumni but also parents and current students — who signed a letter sent Wednesday to school leaders that asks them to reverse the decision.
“I think that it is a mistake that Kehillah is stepping away from its Jewishness in general,” Labunsky told J. “I also think that it’s shameful that it’s doing it now,” near the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel and after a spike in antisemitism worldwide.
New name, same school?
According to Kehillah, the change followed a research process that began in summer 2023 and involved interviews with current students, parents and faculty, as well as an analysis of the private school market locally.
Among the findings, laid out in a March 2024 report from an outside consultant, was that the “school is often misunderstood and undervalued in the secondary school market,” according to a Kehillah press release.
Pellant and Manson told J. there is an assumption that “schools rooted in religious values cannot also have excellent academic offerings.”
“We know that’s not true, not only of Kehillah but of all of the Jewish-aligned schools in this area, and we want people to evaluate our school in its entirety — with Jewish values being a fundamental part of our identity — and not simply by our name,” they told J.
Besides the name change, the school unveiled a new mission statement about academic excellence and student empowerment. It also states: “We embody the Jewish values of critical thinking, respectful dialogue, and the pursuit of justice.”
Kehillah’s new logo is a highly stylized ram’s horn. According to Kehillah, it is inspired by the shofar and plays off the school’s ram mascot.
Pellant and Manson told J. that there has been a range of responses to the changes, including from current students and parents.
“Some of the positive feedback we’ve received is that this change has been a long time coming and is even overdue,” they said, adding that most people have long referred to the school simply as “Kehillah.”
Others are concerned about the school losing what made it special, Pellant and Manson acknowledged.
“A small number of students have shared fears about the school potentially losing its Jewish identity, and we have assured them that the values and programming that have been core to the school will remain core to the school,” they said.
Rabbi Dennis Eisner, the school’s dean of Jewish life, noted that the school kept its Hebrew name, which means “community.”
“We’re distinctly Jewish, and we use Jewish traditions,” he said. “We live by the Jewish calendar. We live by Jewish time. Here, we celebrate the Jewish holidays. We fly the Israeli flag.”
Pushback from grads
But many alumni of the school are not having it. “People are really upset about this,” said Sam Feldman, who graduated from Kehillah in 2017.
The letter expressing serious concerns about the name change and calling on Kehillah to reverse the decision was signed by two decades of graduates, current students and parents of both.
“We come together now as loyal alumni and families of Kehillah Jewish High School — an institution that taught us to be unashamed of our identities, to call out injustice where we see it, and to seek T’shuvah when we make a mistake,” the letter states. “In that spirit, we respectfully ask that the Board return the school’s name — Kehillah Jewish High School — and its unapologetic Jewish identity. We have been proud to support both for 22 years.”
Feldman, Labunsky and other alumni who spoke with J. said they found out about the name change not through direct communication from the school but through Kehillah’s post on Facebook.
Labunsky said he was unhappy that alumni were left out of the loop and didn’t appreciate that Kehillah responded to a wave of negative reactions by turning off comments on the post.
“We’re genuinely heartened by how much Kehillah means to our alumni, and we regret that, for some, we did not meet expectations in how we shared this update,” the school’s leaders wrote to J. “Our primary focus was on our current students, families, and faculty, and we recognize that we didn’t sufficiently include our alumni in our personalized outreach.”
They added that comments were turned off because some didn’t align with “civil discourse.”
Like others, Jacob Kaplan-Lipkin, who graduated from Kehillah in 2015, described the timing of the announcement as tactless so close to the Oct. 7 anniversary.
“Really? Right now?” he asked.
Miriam Permut, a parent of two former Kehillah students, agreed. With the rise of antisemitism since last October, Permut said, she believes that taking “Jewish” out of the name is “tone deaf” at the least. She said her family isn’t particularly observant but was drawn to Kehillah because it is a Jewish school.
“I’ve been very proud in the past to say my kids went to Kehillah. Now I feel ashamed,” said Permut, who signed the petition.
Pellant and Manson said they understand criticism in light of the Oct. 7 anniversary.
“We agree the timing is not ideal,” they told J.
They noted that the process began before last October and took more than a year. “Given the realities of the enrollment and [fall] admissions timeline, we decided to move forward, despite the unfortunate timing,” they said.
Several alumni who spoke with J. said dropping “Jewish” from the name as a way to increase enrollment was the wrong approach.
“Kehillah wants to be a good, competitive prep school,” said Kaplan-Lipkin. But he doesn’t believe that changing the name will achieve that goal. “I do suspect that this [strategy] will backfire,” he said.
He described his reaction to the change as “sad, disappointed, betrayed” and said the dissatisfaction is widespread among alumni.
“I’ve been in touch with people who are just distraught,” he said.
Feldman said he and his parents get asked every year by potential families if they would recommend Kehillah. Usually the answer is “yes” — but not anymore, he said.
Eisner said he understands that the name change is “emotional” for alumni.
“We don’t have any delusion that everybody’s going to always agree with everything we do,” he said.
“Where we’re weak is when we tear each other down, when the Jewish community tears another Jewish community because they don’t agree about something,” Eisner added. “That’s the danger.”
A ‘Goldilocks’ situation
Concerns about enrollment were borne out by the school’s research and the March report, which noted a “recent decline in enrollment” and a “lack of clarity and uncertain identity, perceived to be largely based on questions of Jewish identity.”
The survey, conducted by consultant Jamie Reichman, also identified a Goldilocks-like conundrum among students, parents and staff. Some believe the school should be “more Jewish.” Others think “less Jewish.” Each solution, Reichman concluded in the report, risked alienating those on the other side.
The survey of current students in January also found that 65% identified “culturally or ethnically” as Jewish.
As far as how parents of current students feel, 44% said “Jewish values” were a factor when considering a high school, while 27% said Jewish studies were. However, these factors were pretty far down the list of considerations: 89% said “student well-being” and 87% said small class sizes. At the same time, “stronger Jewish identity” was also a top choice for “opportunity for meaningful improvement,” according to parents. For students, the importance of “Jewish values” dropped to 30%.
We want people to evaluate our school in its entirety — with Jewish values being a fundamental part of our identity — and not simply by our name. Head of school Daisy Pellant and board chair Jonathan Manson
According to the report, interviews with staff at schools that feed into Kehillah showed that it was not regarded as having strong academics. Staff also shared that some families do not consider Kehillah as an option because they “stop at Jewish.” (The school has been open to non-Jewish students for more than a decade and has always been inclusive about how Jewish is defined.)
“The issue with ‘Jewish school’ in the name is the confusion created by the spectrum of associations people have with that term,” the report said, including “weak academics” and “not for me.”
Removing Jewish from the name would also reduce “brand confusion” and “cast a wider net,” the report stated.
Regardless, it’s an unusual step for a Jewish school to take. At least two schools (in New Orleans and Connecticut) dropped “Jewish” or “Hebrew” from their name in the early 2010s, but it appears to be a rare move.
While Kehillah cites declining enrollment as an issue, Prizmah, a national Jewish day school association, reported in June that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack actually increased enrollment in Jewish schools across the U.S.
“More than half of responding schools (60%) reported that they had new students enrolled or projected to enroll for the 2024-25 school year as a result of the change in climate post Oct. 7,” the report said.
Some of that bump came from Israeli families who turned to connections and relatives in the U.S. to find a safe haven from the ongoing war, including at Kehillah. The increase also came from families concerned about increased antisemitism in public schools since last October.
Corinne Lipman has been a Kehillah parent for years — three of her sons are graduates and another one is a senior. She is also a former board member.
She emphasized that Kehillah has been an incredibly special place for her family and that the school’s reputation speaks for itself. However, Lipman said, changing the name sends the wrong message at a time when the Jewish community should be encouraging Jews to proudly embrace their identity.
“It’s an amazing place, and we do not need to hide our identity to convey this,” she said. “If Judaism is truly still integral to Kehillah’s mission, then it feels misguided to remove it from its name.”
Built on a dream
The degree of unhappiness among alumni about the name change does testify to how important the school still is to them.
Kehillah was founded in 2002 in San Jose as the first Jewish high school in Silicon Valley, with around 30 ninth-graders, just a year after the Jewish Community High School of the Bay opened. In 2005, Kehillah moved to a new campus in Palo Alto, across the street from the Oshman Family JCC. The school was a success. In 2016, J. reported that Kehillah had grown to 185 students, was the fastest-growing Jewish community high school in North America and expected to reach full capacity of 240 students in fall 2017. Its peak, though, was during the Covid-19 pandemic, when enrollment reached 212.
Currently, 185 students are enrolled.
Since its opening, the school broadly defined “Jewish” in terms of its student body and included children of interfaith families. But it began to include students “of all backgrounds” after 2010 when enrollment was around 140, according to Pellant and Manson.
Founding the school was a team effort, but one family was instrumental in its inception. When the school opened, half of each student’s $18,000 tuition was subsidized by the Levine-Lent Family Foundation, J. reported. (Today the tuition is $62,050.)
Philanthropists Fran and Bobby Lent pledged upward of $1 million, with an additional $5,000 scholarship for each student when they headed to college.
The Lents continued giving to the school — $500,000 in 2022-23 fiscal year, according to the most recent public documents.
Bradley Lent, Fran and Bobby’s son, graduated from Kehillah in 2010.
“It breaks my heart to see Kehillah’s new head of school and board taking the school in a direction so different from its original mandate, stripping away the Jewish identity from both its name and its soul,” Bradley Lent told J. “While I hesitate to call it a hostile takeover, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this decision was made without truly considering the hearts and values of those who founded the school and sacrificed so much to see it succeed.”
Bobby Lent did not return a request for comment.
Whether the name change will cause more than a short-lived wave of discontent remains to be seen.
“We recognize that actions speak louder than words, and we look forward to demonstrating our commitment,” Pellant and Manson told J. “Ultimately, whether the school is Jewish ‘enough’ is up to each family.”