Education

Jewish immigrants embraced public and higher education as a way to prosper in their new country. In the early 1900s, their children attended neighborhood elementary schools in North and South Omaha. Kellom School in North Omaha offered evening English classes to local family members who spoke Russian, Polish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish.

HIGH SCHOOL
In 1876, Esther Jacobs and Addie Gladstone were members of the first graduating class at Central High, Omaha’s first high school. Both women went on to teach in public schools. Many Jewish students found community at Central and contributed to its tradition of academic excellence as Nobel Prize winners and leaders in literature, the arts, medicine, law, and mathematics. As the city’s population moved west in the 1950s, many Jewish students attended Westside High School, and Jews attend high schools throughout the city today.

FRIEDEL JEWISH ACADEMY
In 1964, a small group of Omahans who recognized the need for a quality, all-day education that included Jewish content started the city’s first Jewish day school. The school struggled to find an audience at first, but in 1985 Leonard and Phyllis Friedel endowed the school and put the renamed Friedel Jewish Academy on a solid foundation. In 1994, the Gordman family, with the Jewish Federation of Omaha and other donors, funded the building of a permanent facility for the K-6 school. In 2023, the Academy expanded to include middle-school grades. Today, the Academy’s excellence and innovative general education program, combined with a Jewish studies curriculum that includes teaching Hebrew as a second language, attracts Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.

KLUTZNICK CHAIR & SYMPOSIUM
In 1988, Philip and Ethel Klutznick established the Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization at Creighton University. A unique feature of this endowment is the requirement that the chair is actively involved in the Jewish community enabling Creighton’s Catholic community to join Omahas Jewish community. For thirty-five years, the Klutznick Chair has presented a symposium, each one with a different theme, which attracts scholars from around the world. Currently, the symposium is co-hosted by the Kripke Center (Creighton), the Harris Center for Judaic Studies (UNL), the Schwalb Center (UNO), and the JFO.