News

House, Check. Shul, Check. Now Jared and Ivanka Hunt for a School.

Image by Twitter

By Daniel J. Solomon January 5, 2017

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have settled on a home in Washington, D.C. — a mansion right around the block from where President Barack Obama and his family will soon live. And now the question looms, which school will the couple’s three children attend?

As Orthodox Jews, it’s likely the two will opt to send their kids to Jewish day school, to give the children a fully rounded education in the faith. Kushner himself went to the Frisch School, a Modern Orthodox yeshiva in his native New Jersey.

There’s a rumor currently swirling that their oldest, five-year-old Arabella, will be enrolled in the Jewish Primary Day School, a nondenominational institution located in the capital’s Brightwood neighborhood. It’s a place where power brokers including ex-Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s children sent their children. Elena Kagan has lit Hanukkah candles there. And it recently received a landmark $20 million donation.

If not, there are more options in the Maryland suburb of Rockville. There’s the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, a pluralistic institution named for a local real estate magnate with the largest private enrollment of any metro area school. And if the two want a Modern Orthodox school, there’s the Berman Hebrew Academy, which occupies a space that once belonged to a local public school.

From their home in the Kalorama neighborhood, the Jewish Primary Day School is about four miles away, while the trek to either of the schools in Rockville would be about triple that distance.

And then there’s the world of tony non-Jewish private schools that draw Washington elites, including Sidwell Friends (where the Obama sisters and Chelsea Clinton went) and a bevy of others, among them the National Cathedral School for Girls, Georgetown Day School and the Saint Albans’ School for Boys.

The city also has some good public school options. There’s Stevens Elementary School, where Amy Carter enrolled while her father led the free world, and even the Sela Public Charter School, which is unique in the Washington, D.C. metro area for centering its curriculum around Hebrew language immersion.

But Kushner and Trump have a bit of time to make up their minds. While their daughter Arabella is in the kindergarten zone, her two brothers are a bit off the mark from the classroom — middle child Joseph is three years old, while baby Theodore is a mere nine months out of the womb.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO