The Adir Academy, the United States’ first therapeutic Jewish day school for students with mental health challenges, will open in Manhattan in September 2026, Sinai Schools announced at its annual dinner on Sunday night. 

The new initiative will provide year-round support for children with anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, a history of suicidal ideation and other significant mental health needs that require an integrative educational approach. Sinai Schools, which aims to raise $10 million from the initiative, will provide students with individual, group and family therapy through the school, and teachers and staff members will be trained to provide therapeutic support alongside a trained mental health team.

The Teaneck, N.J.-based Sinai — a network of eight Jewish special education schools throughout New York and New Jersey — will be using its existing infrastructure to support the new academy. But unlike Sinai schools, which operate within existing day schools, Adir Academy will be a stand-alone school with its own programming, and will not cater to students with learning or developmental disabilities, according to Arielle Greenbaum Saposh, Sinai Schools’ associate managing director and counsel. The organization is still considering location options.

According to Greenbaum Saposh, Sinai frequently received inquiries from families of children with mental health struggles wanting to enroll their children in Sinai schools. Because Sinai didn’t have the correct resources, those families often had to turn to non-Jewish institutions. 

“It’s heartbreaking every time we need to tell a family that we are not the right place for their child and that there is no Jewish option out there,” Greenbaum Saposh told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

According to Rabbi Yisrael Rothwachs, dean of Sinai Schools, that recurring experience started the process that led to Adir Academy. Sinai recruited a committee of psychologists, psychiatrists, school professionals and community lay leaders to visit therapeutic schools and learn best practices. Then, upon conducting a needs assessment targeting principals, mental health professionals — school-based and those in private practices — and parents, it became that there was a large gap in support, and a demand for it to be filled. 

“The best-case scenario is that these kids are getting the help that they need in secular therapeutic schools. But at the same time, those families and those kids are feeling rejected by the community,” Rothwachs told eJP. 

According to Rebecca Eliason, the incoming associate dean and co-founder of Adir Academy, since mental health struggles can make every aspect of education more difficult, from attendance to creating friendships, a therapeutic environment can directly address those struggles.  

“Working on therapeutic skills in real-life situations helps students to generalize the skills they are learning,” Eliason said in a statement. “Students will not only be working toward their therapeutic goals in therapy sessions with the clinical team, but also throughout the school day, including in college preparatory classes, Judaic studies, extracurricular activities, and social interactions.

The new school will be called “Adir” Academy, the Hebrew word for “strength,” to reference the inner strength it takes to overcome mental health struggles, Rothwachs told eJP. He hopes the conversation surrounding the new school will help start conversations that help combat mental health stigmas within the Jewish community.  

“Our community has come a long way in terms of their understanding of mental illness and mental health challenges, and we are more open now than we were a decade ago, but we still have a long way to go,” Rothwachs told eJP.  “I hope that building Adir Academy will bring to the forefront a conversation around the teen mental health crisis in the country, which is no different in our Jewish community.”