TORONTO — The Anne and Max Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto (TanenbaumCHAT) has come a long way since Judith Weinroth attended what was then known as the Toronto Hebrew High School. The Toronto physician was a member of its small first graduating class in 1965.
“We really were the pioneers,” she recalls.
TanenbaumCHAT now has a total of 1,450 students at two campuses and is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with a series of events.
On March 6, there will be a Birthday Bash Gala at On The Park, the site of the former Inn on the Park hotel. Attire – ’60s chic – is a nod to the school’s beginnings.
The $180-a-plate dinner, which will feature a commemorative video, is a fundraiser for a school fund that subsidizes school activities and the purchase of equipment.
A planned $8-million expansion and refurbishment of the school’s Wilmington Ave. campus, including five new science labs, will be funded through TanenbaumCHAT’s capital fund. Fundraising for the project will begin after the gala.
The expansion is expected to be completed in 2013, said Paul Shaviv, TanenbaumCHAT’s director of education.
Since Shaviv joined the school 12 years ago, it has doubled in size, adding a second campus in Richmond Hill.
As well, Shaviv noted, extracurricular activities have expanded, and there is now a full music program at both campuses in “purpose-built, fully equipped music centres.”
He added that the school has become a more “user-friendly place to a wider range of students and denominations of the community,” and that it continues to have the best university entrance record of any school in Ontario.
As well, he said, “It’s the largest private high school in Canada, even though we recruit from a relatively small community.”
The school’s emphasis on academics dates back to its beginning, when it started as an outgrowth of Associated Hebrew Schools and was housed on Neptune Drive. It became independent early in its history.
For the school’s first students, there was pressure to succeed, said Weinroth. “If we didn’t do well, I think the school probably wouldn’t have existed any more.”
Jewish studies courses did not count for credit at the time, and students’ standings were based entirely on provincial departmental exams. Although facilities such as science labs were “primitive,” Weinroth said she had “a great experience” at the school, with wonderful teachers and strong friendships that have lasted ever since.
She credits the school and its double curriculum for helping her “learn how to be organized and work hard.” Those skills served her well as a medical student, when she was in her 30s with four young children. Three of them are also graduates of the school.
Shaviv said that the jubilee year is “a time for us to take quiet pride in the achievements of 50 years, and to spend a lot of energy looking forward to what we have to do to make sure our coming 50 years are as momentous.”
School president Cecile Zaifman, the mother of a Grade 10 TanenbaumCHAT student and two graduates of the school, said it has educated thousands of students and prepared them to be leaders of the community.
She added that about 400 people are expected to attend the gala. “We’re very excited. We think it’s a great thing to celebrate, and we look forward to our next 50 years.”
Other jubilee year events include a homecoming weekend held last fall, and an upcoming event this fall with guest speaker Rabbi Donniel Hartman. The president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem will talk about the future of Judaism.
For more information, or to reserve for March 6, go to fiftyandfabulous.org.
