Yavneh Academy 3.23

The Yavneh Academy is a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school located in Paramus, New Jersey, United States. It educates over 800 students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Yavneh's graduating class of 2016 consisted of approximately 90 children. The school's motto is "Stimulating the mind, Nourishing the soul." The school was originally established in Paterson, New Jersey.Yavneh's current principal is Rabbi Jonathan Knapp.In 2006, the SINAI Special Needs Institute, an educational program for Jewish children and young adults with special needs, opened its first full-time Jewish elementary school program in Northern New Jersey at Yavneh Academy.HistoryYavneh started in 1942 in Paterson, New Jersey, but has roots going back at least seventeen years earlier. Initially, it had a six-child kindergarten, with classes held in a local kosher delicatessen. Two years later, it moved to 11th Avenue and 25th Street. It shared its space with the Paterson Talmud Torah, an older, part-time school, that had graduated its first confirmation class in 1925. The two merged in 1950. A few years later, the combined institution bought the Griggs estate and built a new campus, which it started using for the 1954-1955 school year.Yavneh used that campus until 1981, when it took over a five acre school campus in Paramus. In 1986, the Paterson Public Schools district opened the Rosa L. Parks School of Fine and Performing Arts, a high school, on the Griggs campus.