Jewish day schools experienced a two-pronged influx of students following the Hamas attacks on Israel, from American students and their parents seeking a safer Jewish environment as well as from Israelis escaping the war.

Right after October 7, Jewish day schools began absorbing large numbers of Israeli students, some already in the United States on vacation and unable or unwilling to return home, while others came directly from Israel.

By January, Prizmah reported that more than 1,000 Israeli students had enrolled in schools from Atlanta to Boca Raton to Los Angeles. By June, most of the Israelis had returned home.

But another group of new students has stayed—those who transferred midyear from public and non-Jewish private schools. 

More than a third of day schools in North America saw increased inquiries from parents at some point after October 7, according to Prizmah. 

It’s unusual for students to transfer midyear, said Helena Levine, head of school at Donna Klein in Boca Raton. This past January, however, her school accepted 13 transfer students, way above its usual “one or two.”

The enrollment bump has continued, with more students making the switch for this academic year. A May 2024 Prizmah report that surveyed 103 day schools found that 62 of them said they were enrolling new students for 2024-2025 “as a result of the change in climate post October 7th.” While Prizmah does not yet have a tally of the total number of new students nationwide, half of the schools surveyed said they were getting students who did not come from their usual list of prospective families.

READ MORE: Ramping up—and Rethinking— Israel Education

“We are seeing kids we would not have seen before, not from our usual feeder schools,” said Sarah Shulkind, head of school at the Milken school in Los Angeles. But, she cautioned, “How much is because of October 7 is hard to say.” 

When asked their reasons for enrolling their children, parents in the Prizmah survey cited different
factors, from safety concerns to wanting a more Jewish environment. The top reason, however, was concern about antisemitism—everything from anti-Israel school board resolutions to teachers bringing pro-Palestinian material into the classroom to harassment from other students.

Of the 177 new students at Donna Klein this fall, Levine said 35 families cited antisemitism or anti-Zionism as their major motivation for making the switch.

“We have families moving here from Canada, England, South Africa and Belgium as well as from other states,” Levine said. “And they are looking for a Jewish day school when they might not have done so in the past.” 

That was true for Leora and Josh Rubin, who moved to Boca Raton over the summer from Ann Arbor, Mich., because, they said, they no longer felt comfortable in their city. 

The final straw came in January when their local school board passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. “Everyone wants a ceasefire in theory, but this is not the purview of a school board,” said Josh Rubin. “It was an attempt to demonize the Jewish community. We went to the meeting and were shocked by the hundreds of keffiyeh-clad people screaming at any Jew who spoke out.”  

“It was like a dagger to the heart,” said Leora Rubin. Agreeing that they no longer wanted to raise their children, now 8, 10 and 13, in such an atmosphere, the Rubins enrolled the kids in Donna Klein. It was their first time sending them to a Jewish day school.

“It just felt right to us,” Josh Rubin said. “After October 7, we realized that our Jewish identity and our kids’ Jewish identity and them understanding who they are, their history, their present and their future, is very important. We think that sending them to Jewish day school is doing our bit.”

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Sue Fishkoff is the former editor of J. The Jewish News of Northern California and the author of The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch and Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority.