Laurie and Stuart Marson believe their son Jonas — who graduated with his bachelor’s and law degree from Harvard — got his love of learning from Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito.
“The kids there have been taught to love learning,” said Laurie Marson. “The process is made so enjoyable to them.”
The Kensington couple is one of 13 East Bay families who came together in 1980 to found the Jewish day school.
“We were members of [Berkeley’s] Congregation Beth El,” Marson recalled. “We were from diverse backgrounds, but we felt a great need to have a school that was both secular but having a Jewish identity.”
While some of the families were more observant, why would the nonobservant families want their children in a Jewish school?
Laurie Marson said she saw her sons getting a positive Jewish identity from attending the preschool at Beth El. She had less of a positive Jewish experience growing up, and she wanted her children to feel good about being Jewish. Other families had different reasons.
An Israeli wanted his child to learn Hebrew. Other parents had attended Jewish day school and wanted the same for their children. Some parents were not at all religious, but wanted their children to learn about Jewish culture.
“Rather than a small group with a specific view, we had diversity at the beginning, which was fundamental to have wide appeal,” said Stuart Marson. “That’s made us more malleable.”
In their first year, they rented rooms at the Kensington Youth Hut, where they laid the tile themselves and built the furniture. They began with 15 students in kindergarten and first grade.
Laurie Marson served as Tehiyah’s first president, and Stuart as its third. The couple is still involved with the school. The Marsons admitted the founders weren’t so sure of themselves in the beginning, but other parents “were brave enough to throw their lot into a school so shaky. Failing was not an option.”
And despite the challenges, along with them came instant gratification. “Our kids were so happy,” said Laurie Marson. “They would sing their songs and were so adorable, so there was instant reward, which is necessary to continue a hard fight.”
The next year they doubled the number of students, adding second and third grades.
After they ran out of rooms to rent, the Marsons rented space near University Avenue and Sixth Street, in Berkeley.
And then, in 1984, the school moved to El Cerrito, to the site of an elementary school annex. In 1996, it began a major expansion, and today there are 325 students, from kindergarten through eighth grades.
Over the years, the question of “how Jewish should a Jewish school be?” has been the trickiest to solve. With the school remaining independent and including students from secular to completely observant, that issue recurs frequently, said Stuart Marson.
“Some parents are of the ‘We love this day school thing but we don’t want our kids to get too Jewish,’ variety, while others are saying ‘How can it be a Jewish day school without daily prayer?’ It’s an ongoing challenge,” he said.
Money is the other.
Next on the agenda: modernizing the library and completing the middle school — when there’s enough money, said Steve Tabak, head of school for the past seven years.
“Money is always a struggle,” he said. “The school is largely supported through tuition dollars paid by parents, and we don’t have much support outside our own community.”
Nevertheless, those involved with the school are proud of how far they’ve come in these 25 years.
“What’s remarkable is that Tehiyah is very consistent with the vision that the founders had,” said Tabak. “This school had a very unique and compelling mission: the idea of serving a diverse Jewish community, not be tied to a movement.”
He concluded, “In a Jewish world that too often can be divided by what movement you’re part of, this incredible Jewish diversity, envisioned by the founders, has remained true over 25 years.”