Paving the Way

Southfield native brings progressive educational model to Israel.

NECHAMA ELBAZ SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

I

t’s rare that a suburban family hosts livestock in their
backyard, yet every Passover, Simon and Rachail
Kresch of Southfield purchased two goats to bring
the concept of the pascal offering to life for their chil-
dren.
“My dad always said school is a limited institution,
that we should learn from the world, from people, from
experiences,” says daughter Malka Greenblatt. She said
the goats entered for part of her family’s seder, stayed a
while for fun and then were donated to farms.
The Kresch kids also were pushed beyond their
comfort zones. “It was torture, but now we all have
this insane confidence that we can go out and just try
things, and we do.”
Malka always ran businesses in high school at Bais
Yaacov in Southfield and today owns a high-end con-
signment wig shop in Jerusalem. But her real baby is
Yahalom Montessori, the preschool she started with
husband, Ephraim. It is the first of its kind in Israel.
Ephraim grew up in a home dedicated to communal
needs.
“My father worked a lot with kids falling out of the
school system,” he says. “The more I observed, the
more I realized these weren’t bad children; they were
just products of a failed educational model.”

When he began studying psychology, he drew more
parallels.
“I’m amazed at how much we, as a society, put into
fixing things that are broken in adults and how much of
it happens in childhood,” he says. “It’s crazy we don’t just
create whole children from the get-go, so we don’t need
to put people back together.”
Malka’s sister, Dina, started a Montessori preschool in
Miami; she inspired the couple to start their own.
“It was crazy,” Malka says. “We had no money, no stu-
dents, but we needed this for our son. We wanted him
to be in a place that encouraged his love of learning, but
would also develop him as a whole person, not a brain.”
They rented a space, leveled walls themselves and were
ready just weeks before the school year started. Only
three students came to orientation, but another three
joined soon after, then two more, then another two.
By the end of the year, they had outgrown their loca-
tion — and garnered enough interest to open another
classroom and hire more teachers. The Greenblatts
flew in an American educator to run formal training
for the staff.
Yahalom Montessori registered for municipal status
and ended up partnering with the municipality. Future
goals include replicating the model for use in other Israeli

ABOVE: Naama, Malka, Ephraim and Binyamin Greenblatt at the
Yahalom Montessori the Greenblatts started in Jerusalem

schools.
Yahalom is religious, and one of its selling points is the
way Judaism is implemented into the Montessori meth-
od. The Greenblatts say they are not adverse to sharing
its model with secular and religious schools.
Though tuition is fairly competitive, the program is
expensive to run. Teacher-student ratios are higher than
mainstream programs, and materials are specialized and
high quality.
“We have four scholarship families and a long waiting
list,” she says. “We’ve also had many families unable to
register because the cost is prohibitive for them.”
The Greenblatts support about half the budget
themselves — not a sustainable financial model. They
launched a crowdfunding campaign on CauseMatch
(causematch.com/yahalom), which runs through Jan.
22. •

For details, go to yahalomschool.com. Nechama (Tawil) Elbaz grew
up in Oak Park and Southfield. She now lives in Jerusalem and works
at Yahalom Montessori.

ACHIEVE
ANYTHING

jn

January 12 • 2017

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