Ramaz School (New York, N.Y.)

The Ramaz School is an American coeducational Jewish Modern Orthodox day school which offers a dual curriculum of general studies taught in English and Judaic studies taught in Hebrew. The school is located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It has an early childhood center (nursery-kindergarten), a lower school (1st-4th grade), a middle school (5th-8th grade), and an upper school (9th-12th grade). The Ramaz Upper School is a college preparatory program designed to develop an appreciation for and understanding of the intellectual disciplines that are part of western civilization. The Judaic studies curriculum provides a program through which the religious and cultural tradition of Judaism is both taught and experienced. It is located on East 78th Street, seven city blocks (0.5 km) away from the other two school buildings located on East 85th Street. Approximately fifty percent of the upper school student body advances from the Middle School. Students commute from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Westchester, and Nassau counties in New York; Stamford and New Haven in Connecticut; and metropolitan New Jersey. Some students attend on a weekly or less frequent basis, coming from more distant communities. Ramaz was founded in 1937 and is affiliated with Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun ("KJ"), a synagogue located on East 85th Street which shares a building with the lower school and is across the street from the middle school. The congregation and its rabbi, Joseph Lookstein, helped to found and finance the school. Architect James Rossant designed the modernist upper school building, completed in 1981. In 2007, the school was featured in the Wall Street Journal for its exceptional acceptance rates into elite universities.