Jordan Hirsch is originally from Dallas, but decided to move to Baltimore post-pandemic to be with family. While he grew up more than a thousand miles away, he quickly found a home in Charm City.
“My wife’s older sister, Elana Weissman, who’s the principal at the Beth Tfiloh Lower School, is married to [former White House Jewish Liaison] Chanan Weissman, who is from Baltimore,” Hirsch said. “We decided to platoon together. We each have four kids, so after COVID we said, ‘hey, now’s our chance to actually do this together.’”
Today, Hirsch and his family are as much a part of the Beth Tfiloh community as his sister-in-law. The Hirsch’s were already synagogue members and the kids were students at the school when, last year, Jordan Hirsch was struck by an idea.
“I had this idea last summer after hearing [writer, podcast host and former political advisor] Dan Senor’s speech on the state of American Jewry at the 92nd Street Y in New York that he delivered last year,” Hirsch, a Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School board member, said. “There was a line in his speech where he applauded a major financier for giving an incredible amount of money to Tel Aviv University. He said, ‘this is wonderful, but who’s going to do that for us in the United States?’”
Hirsch thought about it, and realized that it would take mobilization from everyday people like himself to step up.
“It kind of hit me all of a sudden that we can’t wait for a savior to come out of the sky. We need to build it ourselves. And that’s really the genesis of the Ark Initiative, which is really giving us a stake in our own future and giving us a sense of empowerment and agency over that future,” Hirsch said.
The Ark Initiative is a program at Beth Tfiloh that is seeking to reinforce the important role that Jewish day schools play in the community and equip Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School for the future. It is garnering funds to invest in more teachers, stronger security, connections to and work with Israel, an expanded alumni network and increased scholarship opportunities.
Hirsch, who holds a law degree from Yale and whose day job is serving as a senior counselor at Palantir Technologies, said that this mission means a lot to him personally because of the role that Jewish education played in his own life. He said it was “without question” formative to his identity.
“I married someone who also had the same experience with Jewish day school, and for us, it was never a question about whether we would send our kids to Jewish day school,” Hirsch said.
He added that, growing up, he fielded questions from people about why he enjoyed a Jewish day education as opposed to the one he would get at a public or nondenominational private school. Hirsch said that, in some cases, those options might even provide stronger academics or sports opportunities — but it’s not just about that.
“I think what matters most [when] getting up to the age of 18 is developing a sense of identity and understanding who you are and what your place in the world is. For me, that was the greatest gift I got from Jewish day schools. I really understood my context. It’s a very big world out there, with innumerable options for people who are lucky enough to have good circumstances. I think it’s important to have some sense of a compass, and I think that’s what Jewish day school education gives people,” Hirsch said.
What Hirsch experienced growing up is something he sees his own children going through right now, which is rewarding and only reinforces his excitement to build a better future at Beth Tfiloh.
“Our kids are coming home and telling the stories they’re hearing at school about the holidays and the parsha, and even beyond the knowledge they’re getting, I think that they just wear their Judaism on their sleeve. They wouldn’t even know the concept of shame or needing to hide it, or necessarily even needing to flaunt it. It’s just so clearly a part of who they are, their daily rhythm of their lives. That’s all we can hope for, and it’s worth every penny for us,” Hirsch said.
Hirsch added that Beth Tfiloh is a special place, and that’s why he’s so committed to being a part of it and helping it further solidify its place in the community.
“I think it’s a model for what our community can be at its finest, which is rooted in tradition, rooted in Torah, and not in a judgmental way. That’s not to say that anybody else is judgmental, but holding to your principles while also feeling welcoming is a really hard balance to strike. I think that Beth Tfiloh has really achieved that,” he said. “Maintaining that is so important, and I think it’s going to get harder in a more polarized world. Beth Tfiloh is a really important institution in American Jewish life — there’s really nothing quite like it.”
