TAMPA, Fla. – Shuli Goldenberg didn’t need to see Tampa Torah Academy to know it would be just right for her now 12-year-old son, Yanky. After talking on the phone with a rabbi who co-founded the school, she was sure it was “perfection.”
Still, she had persuaded her husband, Yisroel Aron, to move 1,200 miles from the Catskills in upstate New York; to leave family behind; to start life anew in the Sunshine State – all for a school they’d never seen.
So, when she finally got to see it in person, a few days after the family moved down …
“I stood there with tears in my eyes thinking, ‘I’m home,’ ” Mrs. Goldenberg said. “It was like magic. It was exactly the school I wanted and exactly the school I knew my son would thrive in.”
The Goldenbergs are yet another example of a family drawn to Florida by educational opportunity (see others here, here, and here).
In their case, they represent what is likely the biggest group of “school choice transplants.” Hundreds if not thousands of Jewish families have moved to Florida in recent years, motivated at least in part by booming Jewish schools and the universal availability of state school choice scholarships.
The result: Between 2007-08 and 2022-23, the number of students in Florida’s Jewish schools grew 58%, to 13,379, and the number of Jewish day schools and yeshivas nearly doubled, from 40 to 74.
The Destination Florida pipeline is especially strong from New York to South Florida. But there are growing pockets of Jewish schools emerging in other parts of Florida too, like Tampa.
The why is obvious, said Rabbi Ariel Wohlfarth, co-founder of Tampa Torah Academy.
“School vouchers, no income tax, nice weather; why would you be any place else?” he said.
Tampa Torah Academy occupies a former preschool in a polished suburb. The school and its dormer windows and wraparound porch are framed by stately oaks and towering palms, next to a pond with a fountain whose streams arc outward in a circle, like the petals of a giant aquatic flower. An aerial view is the first thing people see when they visit the school website, along with the words, “Experience the Warmth of a Jewish Connection.”
Tampa Torah Academy opened in 2022 with 10 families, eight of whom relocated from New York. In the three years since, it’s tripled in size, from 33 students in grades K-7 to nearly 100 in K-12.
Every student uses a choice scholarship, which averages $8,000 or $10,000 a year, depending on the scholarship type. As of 2023, they’re available to every student in the state.
In New York, Yanky attended Jewish schools before Mrs. Goldenberg pulled him after a bullying incident.
She tried to homeschool him, but it wasn’t easy. She worried he wasn’t proficient enough in some subjects, like math, because of her own academic shortcomings, and that he wasn’t hanging out enough with other kids.
There were a few other Jewish schools in the area. But they were too expensive, too far away, or too big. Yanky, she said, “would have been lost and miserable.”
Thankfully, in the summer of 2022, Mrs. Goldenberg said, a miracle happened.
As word spread about a wave of Orthodox Jewish people leaving New York for schools in Florida, Mrs. Goldenberg got a fundraising pitch for Tampa Torah Academy. She donated, then called, then had a long conversation with one of the co-founders, Rabbi Yirmiyahu Rubenstein.
She was amazed by what she heard. The school promised solid instruction in both secular and religious studies; small class sizes; and teachers who would know each student’s strengths and weaknesses and adjust accordingly.
Everything “was like perfection,” Mrs. Goldenberg said. “I hung up the phone, I went across the house to my husband, and I said, ‘We’re moving to Tampa.’ “
Mr. Goldenberg is a retired businessman who worked in real estate. Mrs. Goldenberg is a former English teacher. Both had familiarity with Florida, having lived near Miami before things, for them, got too congested and hectic.
Neither knew the Tampa Bay area. But seven months after the call with Rabbi Rubenstein, they settled in Wimauma, a suburb 30 miles south of Tampa where a Jewish community is growing and former pastures are sprouting subdivisions.
“I thought Florida had flamingos, but we have cows next door,” Mrs. Goldenberg said.
Odds are high that more out-of-state families will be joining the Goldenbergs soon.
Tampa Torah Academy has room for 170 students – and it’s actively informing families in other states about what’s available in sunny Florida. Families in New York, New Jersey, and California, all states without private school choice programs, are among them.
As one indicator of the interest level, Rabbi Wohlfarth pointed to a recent, online “community fair” that connected Jewish communities nationwide to Jewish families interested in moving. Nearly 150 families visited the Tampa booth; more than 30 indicated serious interest.
The choice scholarships, Rabbi Wohlfarth said, are a powerful draw.
Jewish families are generally familiar with private school choice programs, “but they don’t know the amounts,” Rabbi Wohlfarth continued. When they hear what Florida provides, their ears perk up, he said. “They’re like, ‘I didn’t realize it was that much.’ “
Even without the scholarships, tuition at Tampa Torah Academy was more reasonable than similar schools up North, Mrs. Goldenberg said. The scholarship made it better still.
Without it, she said, paying for the school “would have been an enormous amount of stress.”
Tampa Torah Academy provides Yanky everything he needs to be successful, she said. It’s strong in both general academic subjects, what Orthodox families call “English,” and Jewish religious studies, often called “Judaics.”
“I wanted him to have both. That’s very important,” Mrs. Goldenberg said. “At Tampa Torah Academy, they also have a high school division now, so they can prepare to send the kids to the best colleges.”
Yanky said he’s happy with his new school and state. For top Florida amenities, he listed 1) “It’s not cold,” 2) theme parks, 3) Top Golf.
Mrs. Goldenberg said the only downside is the family’s two older children – a son and a daughter and their four grandchildren – are still in New York.
Otherwise? The people of Tampa Bay are “lovely,” she said, and the pace of life just right: “not as rush-y” as South Florida but more energizing than the Catskills. “There’s always something to do,” she said.
The cherry on top is the school, and the tight-knit community that revolves around it.
“Oh my God I love it. I feel like all of us are thriving,” she said. Meanwhile, friends up North are “buried under 27 inches of snow.”
