TheRabbi Jacob Joseph School is anOrthodoxJewish day school located inStaten Island,New York that serves students from nursery through eighth grade, with another branch inEdison, New Jersey which serves High School and Beis Medrash. The school was founded in 1903 by Rabbi Shmuel Yitzchok Andron and named in honor of RabbiJacob Joseph, chief rabbi ofNew York City's Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations.[1]
After Rabbi Andron's death, his son Raphael and Samuel I. Andron obtained a charter from theNew York Board of Regents in 1903 to establish a school in his name. The Rabbi Jacob Joseph School was known for its rigorousTalmudic curriculum and remains open to students from nursery age through the twelfth grade.
In 1969, it stopped its younger grades. Enrollment was low, and the neighborhood had become rough.[2] In 1972, it made plans to open a new campus in Riverdale,[2] but ultimately, in 1976, the school moved to theRichmondtown area ofStaten Island, where it maintained the boys' school campus until 2017 (they then moved to Amboy Rd); a girls division of the elementary school was established in Staten Island'sGraniteville section. In 1982, a boys high school branch and Beis Medrash was opened inEdison, New Jersey.
Although the school ("RJJ") is no longer an"advanced" yeshiva, it "produced hundred of rabbis and community leaders in the late 1940s, the 1950s and the 1960s, and was also an important feeder school for the Lakewood yeshiva,Beis Medrash Govoha".[5]
The school also produces a semi-annual scholarly publication, theJournal of Halacha and Contemporary Society ("The RJJ Journal"), edited by one of its rabbinic alumni. The purpose of the Journal is to "study the major questions facing Jews ... through the prism of Torah values," and "explore the relevant biblical and Talmudic passages and survey the halakhic literature including the most recentresponsa. The Journal does not in any way seek to present itself as the halachic authority on any question, but hopes rather to inform the Jewish public of the positions taken by rabbinic leaders over the generations."
Rabbi Dr.Marvin Schick served for over 30 years as the (unpaid) President of RJJ until his death in 2020; he had succeededIrving Bunim.[2]
^Austerlitz, Saul."Hollywood’s Oscar-Winning Rabbi Takes Jewish History to the Stars",Tablet, March 17, 2014. Accessed December 10, 2024. "He received his rabbinic degree from the Rabbi Jacob Joseph yeshiva and served as a pulpit rabbi in Vancouver, B.C., before heading out to Los Angeles in the late 1970s to start the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named after the famous Nazi hunter, which elbowed aside the Martyrs Memorial Museum, then being put together by local Holocaust survivors."
^Kobre, Eytan."Where Maryland Meets the Mir",Mishpacha, December 30, 2014. Accessed December 10, 2024. "Rav Ahron is a born-and-bred native of New York’s Lower East Side, where his parents, both Holocaust survivors — his father had lost a wife and children in Europe — settled after the war. He attended the local Rabbi Jacob Joseph School (RJJ), where Rav Zeidel Epstein taught the 11th-grade shiur."
^Zuroff, Avraham.Rabbi Wittow, Behind the Wheel With Harav Scheinberg.Hamodia Magazine, 2 June 2011, pp. 26–27. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
