The first Jewish day school for students with mental health challenges is set to open in NYC

A network of Jewish schools for children with special needs is raising funds to open the United States’ first therapeutic day school for Jewish students with mental health challenges.

Adir Academy — the name means “might” or “strength” in Hebrew —  will open in a yet-to-be-secured New York City location in the fall of 2026, according to an announcement made Sunday at the annual fundraising gala for Sinai Schools, a network of Jewish day schools in New York and New Jersey for students with special needs.

Founded in 1982 as a small program for students with learning disabilities within the Hebrew Youth Academy in West Caldwell, New Jersey, Sinai Schools now operates programs at four K-8 Jewish day schools and four Jewish high schools, including SAR Academy in the Bronx. It also offers instruction for Jewish adults with a variety of learning and developmental disabilities.

Adir Academy will be its first standalone Jewish day school — and the first Jewish school operated by anyone to focus specifically on high schoolers with mental health challenges.

“It is so painful when parents have to make that choice between giving their kids what they need therapeutically or keeping them within the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Yisrael Rothwachs, dean of Sinai Schools.

“It’s hard to identify those students right now,” Rothwachs said of the school’s prospective student body, “because we don’t know yet who they are. But we are confident, unfortunately, that those students do exist.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics has documented a teen mental health crisis, finding that 40% of high school students report feeling persistent “sadness or hopelessness” — more than in the past, in part because of the added stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic. The incidence of depression and anxiety among teens is particularly on the rise.

Adir Academy will accommodate teens with mood disorders such as depression, anxiety, emotional dysregulation and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Opening with fewer than 10 students each in ninth and 10th grades, it aims to tailor instruction in a way that can prepare students to enroll later in a mainstream Jewish day school or continue their education in high school.

“Our focus in the Judaic studies department is primarily to make sure that our kids are keeping up with the skills that they will need to continue their Jewish education in a mainstream environment,” Rothwachs said. “Our program is going to be very individualized to make sure that every child is getting what they need, where they are — not only academically, but spiritually as well.”

Jewish schools that serve students with special needs have seen significant growth in recent years. In the fall of 2024, for example, the Shefa School — which specializes in teaching students with language-based learning disabilities like dyslexia — moved into a new $100 million building on the Upper West Side to accommodate its 230 students.

Other new Jewish schools for students with special needs include Torah and Learning Academy, a yeshiva for kids with language-based learning disabilities in Belle Harbor, Queens, which opened in 2023, and Yeshivat Shalshelet, an Orthodox school for kids with learning disabilities that opened in Tenafly, New Jersey, in 2022.

While in the past, parents may have had to look outside the school for therapeutic support, Adir Academy will provide its students with clinical staff and programming — including individual, group and family therapy — to learn real-world skills outside of academics.

“The challenges these students face can lead to severe emotional distress, difficulty forming and maintaining social connections, or other types of struggles that impact the student’s wellbeing,” Rebecca Eliason, a psychologist who consults on curricular development for schools and will be Adir Academy’s associate dean, said in a statement. “Working on therapeutic skills in real-life situations helps students to generalize the skills they are learning.”

In New York, students whose special needs cannot be accommodated by public schools can also petition to have their private school tuition paid by their home district — a provision that can enable families to afford the high cost of specialized schools.

But startup costs for new schools must be raised privately. Sinai Schools aims to raise $10 million to fund the opening of Adir Academy. One major funder of Jewish disability inclusion efforts recently cut off its longtime support for the cause, but school leaders say they are optimistic about meeting their goal.

“We have launched an active campaign in which we are seeking major funding from foundations and philanthropists to cover the start-up and initial costs of the school until it reaches a financially sustainable scale,” Arielle Greenbaum Saposh, associate managing director of Sinai Schools, said by email. “We have been speaking to people and entities who care deeply about the mental health crisis as well as those who want to be part of filling this essential unmet need within the Jewish community.”

Like some other therapeutic schools, Adir Academy will be year-round.

“We have students that will be coming to us at all different points in the school year,” Rothwachs said. “Kids get to a point of mental health crisis at their own rate, their own pace, and will come to us at all different points of the year. And we want to make sure that when students are coming to us, that they have continued support in the vital areas that they need.”