26 | AUGUST 3 • 2023 

T

he Sarah & Irving Pitt Early 
Childhood Center (ECC) located 
at the Jewish Community Center 
in West Bloomfield will be holding an 
open house for prospective students 
and their families on Wednesday, Aug. 
9, from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4-6 p.m. 
The preschool, founded in 1976 and 
accepts children as young as newborns 
up to pre-K 4-year-olds, will restart its 
enrichment program for the coming 
academic year alongside its well-
rounded academic curriculum. 
The preschool’s enrichment 
programs had been on pause since 
the pandemic, but now gym, music, 
cooking and Hebrew classes will 
be offered, and a full-time Judaic 
educator, Ilyssa Oppenheim, will be on 
staff offering a novel Judaic education 
program for young Metro Detroit 
families. 
As an added incentive this year, the 

$100 enrollment fee is being waived 
for new students to help reduce the 
overall cost, plus new families that sign 
up by Sept. 1 will receive two weeks of 
free school, a value of $368 to $800, 
depending on the schedule of school 
hours chosen. 
While no stranger to the preschool, 
having worked there as a teacher 
since 2015, Oppenheim spent the past 
three years on a fellowship in Judaic 
education with the JCC Association 
of North America. The association 
launched a program called Sheva, 
which means “seven” in Hebrew. It 
employs seven core principles of early 
childcare and education, using seven 
Jewish lenses to reveal universal values. 
Educators trained in the program 
are skilled in weaving these values 
throughout their educational day. 
Oppenheim, 35, who lives in 
Commerce, and attended both Hillel 

Day School and Frankel Jewish 
Academy before studying elementary 
school education at Michigan State 
University, said her role at the 
preschool will be two-fold. “First, I’ll 
be supporting educators 
in the classroom with 
additional knowledge about 
holidays and Shabbat,” she 
explained. “And next, I will 
be introducing a ‘value of 
the month’, focusing on 
amazing Jewish values such 
as kindness and respect, 
which are universal values.” 
During the schoolyear, two “lenses” 
will be used to explore values in 
depth. For the first half of the 2023-
2024 academic year, the focus will be 
Kehillah Kedosha, exploring the sacred 
and special community of the school 
and its parents, teachers and students.
Director of the Sarah & Irving 
Pitt Early Childhood Center Lauren 
Bogorad, a 16-year veteran of the 
preschool, said she was happy the 
enrichment programming would be 
robust this year, and particularly so 
for the addition of the new specialized 
Judaic programming. 
“Our Sheva programming is a unique 
new offering for young families in the 
Metro Detroit Jewish community, and 
we are proud to be the first school to 
provide the program,” she said.
Explaining that approximately two-

OUR COMMUNITY

Preschool Open 
House Aug. 9

Lauren 
Bogorad

Sarah & Irving Pitt Early Childhood Center 
will be the first area preschool to offer new 
Judaic education program.

ALISON SCHWARTZ SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS 

A science 
class learns 
about flowers.

The front of the 
Early Childhood 
Center building

