In early September, as New York’s children returned to the classroom, the city witnessed a landmark in educational history. Forty pioneering students—fifth-, sixth-, and ninth-graders—became the inaugural cohort at Emet Classical Academy, the first Jewish school founded on the principles of classical education.
The need for classical alternatives to traditional public education has intensified in recent years, as political indoctrination—often including anti-American rhetoric, gender ideology, and anti-Semitic propaganda—is increasingly inflicted on public school students. The classical education movement’s response to these developments is to remove political bias from the classroom, focusing instead on equipping students with foundational knowledge and fostering logic, critical thinking, and an appreciation for the core texts of Western civilization.
Emet Academy’s commitment to “take your child as far as he or she can go” is a useful encapsulation of its approach. Along with teaching classic texts, the school also offers a rigorous STEM program. Its Judaic studies program, which encompasses the Tanakh and Talmudic reasoning, sets it apart from other classical institutions. Classes are taught seminar-style to facilitate serious discussions about the material, and to allow students to hone their public-speaking and debate skills. Electives are offered by experts in their respective fields—music, by an orchestrator from the Manhattan School of Music; theater, by a professional Shakespearean actor; a philosophy-of-math course—for the most advanced ninth-grade students—by a renowned mathematician.
Dr. Abraham Unger, Emet’s founding head of school, highlighted the importance of keeping political bias out of the classroom. “To impose ideology on a text is really to halt the progress of humanity,” he said. An emphasis on ideology has led many curricula, he said, to lose a sense of “how to move the human prospect forward.”
Emet had to grapple with the aftermath of the attack against Israel on October 7, 2023—specifically, the outbreak of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli content in many of America’s K-12 schools. The school had initially planned to begin classes in the fall of 2025, starting with one grade and adding a new one each year until it became a full fifth-through-12th-grade institution. The events and fallout from October 7, however, prompted an influx of application queries to the school. Following widespread encouragement from Jewish parents, Emet opened its doors this year.
When we asked Dr. Unger how his students have coped with the resurgence of anti-Semitism, he emphasized the students’ self-confidence as Jewish Americans, which he says has given them the strength to endure the challenge. He noted that, for Emet students, there should be no “compartmentalization” between their Jewish and civic identities.
While many parents send their children to classical schools like Emet to avoid politicized curricula, it’s important to note that studying politics is an important part of a well-rounded education. This is different, of course, than partisanship. As Kathleen O’Toole, the assistant provost for K-12 education at Hillsdale College, explains, “We are political animals, as Aristotle says, which means that we must study politics to be educated. But education must not be narrowly partisan, because the K-12 years are for developing a well-rounded foundation that will serve us well as adults.”
This vision is embraced at Emet Academy, where the hallways are adorned with images of Moses Maimonides, George Washington, Jane Austen, Frederick Douglass, and Winston Churchill. These figures reflect the academy’s commitment to celebrating the best of Western civilization and its students’ Jewish identities—a combination that could serve the school well for years to come.
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