Intermountain Jewish News

Avi Halzel’s first year as president and CEO of Herzl-RMHA at the Denver Campus has been anything but dull.

He came aboard just in time to play a role in the school’s participation in the Allied Jewish Federation’s Jewish Colorado Tomorrow project, which hopes to dramatically alter the day school’s physical plant.

He also got to cheer as the RMHA Tigers, both the boy’s and girls’ basketball teams, made history by getting this close to state championships, all while not compromising on the school’s pledge never to compete on the Jewish Sabbath — a stance that earned the school not only international attention, but respect.

He adds that while he was pleased that his inaugural year featured such dramatic developments as those noted above, he was even more pleased that the day-to-day brass tacks of his job were exactly what he was looking forward to.

“The thing I was most pleased about was that I found the job to be as advertised. As things can go sometimes, you’re told certain things and it turns out to be slightly different. In this case, it really wasn’t.

“The lay people did a really good job figuring out what it was that they needed and describing the position and its challenges and directions. That’s what made the first year successful. It was a good year — as advertised.”

That’s not say that his introduction to Denver hasn’t been challenging, Halzel is quick to add, but that hasn’t bothered him a bit.

“The challenges that we face are exciting and interesting — how to engage a population that doesn’t know about us, or doesn’t know what we have to offer, or doesn’t realize that if they came in our doors that ultimately they might find something they really like.”

Halzel came to Herzl-RMHA by way of Memphis, where he served as head of school at the Bornblum Solomon Schechter School, a K-8 day school with 200 students. Prior to that, he directed a religious school in Ohio and worked as a teacher in California.

A native of the Boston area, he is a member of a family with impeccable Jewish education credentials. His father was a day school principal; his mother a teacher at Hebrew and day schools.

His wife Rayne — with whom Halzel has four children — is also an educator, with experience as a day school teacher.

Herzl-RMHA interested Halzel because of its K-12 range of classes and its central role in the Denver Jewish community. He also found the job attractive because he knew it would involve a lot of fundraising, a skill he had learned to love at his Memphis job.

Denver’s streamlined and coordinated method of communal fundraising, however, struck him as considerably more sensible than the comparatively chaotic approach in Memphis, where fundraisers “were all going to the same people and kind of trampling on each other. It was quite difficult to raise money that way.

“One of the things that really interested me here in Denver, when I came out to interview and become familiar with the community, was that when agencies wanted to embark on capital campaigns, it was done in an organized fashion through the federation, the Jewish Colorado Tomorrow campaign.

“I think it’s a really wonderful way for a community to move forward together, instead of individual agencies competing with each other.”

In June, Herzl-RMHA signed an agreement with federation by which the two agencies would embark on planning and fundraising for the school’s first phase in the Jewish Colorado Tomorrow project.

With a projected $ 3.2 million budget, the campaign would establish two endowments for the school and focus mainly on capital improvements.

“We have plans to build a multi-purpose facility that will include a cafeteria and social hall facilities, as well as a stage. It’s a facility that we really need on this campus. There’s no good place for our students to perform at this time. They’re eating lunch in classrooms in the lower school. It would be much better to have an appropriate cafeteria with a real kitchen. We’re cooking our school lunches in what is essentially a small vending area in our gym, which was meant to provide snacks for games. So it’s something that we really need.”

Although classroom space is sufficient at the moment, he adds, “the upper school is bursting at the seams. They use every bit of classroom space that they have. They would love to have more, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Adding upper school classrooms may have to wait until the second phase of Jewish Colorado Tomorrow, as will replacements for kindergarten, first grade and second grade classrooms, currently located in the school’s 1950s-era original building.

Even more exciting than contemplating challenging capital campaigns was watching the upper school’s basketball teams light up the courts during state playoffs last winter.

Halzel cheered on his teams and stood up to the Colorado High School Activities Assn., which refused to budge on scheduling playoff games on Saturdays.

When the school announced that it would rather respect the Sabbath than earn a state crown, Jews and others from across the country, and even internationally, praised the stance.

“It was a very interesting few months,” Halzel says. “The support that we received was very comforting and very welcome. It certainly indicated to me that we were doing the right thing.

“And our teams were very good, the girls basketball team and the boy’s basketball team. The boys were a bucket away from making the next round.

“And this is going to happen again this year. We’re going to have teams again that are going to be very good. The issue hasn’t been completely resolved in terms of how it’s going to be handled. As far as we’re concerned, we’re not going to play on Shabbos. That much is clear.”

CHSA “was in a very difficult position,” Halzel concedes, adding that Herzl-RMHA is still engaged in dialogue with the association.

“We’re going to see whether they say, ‘We’re going to make this work for you,’ and I hope they will.”

Scheduling difficulties aside, Halzel was pleased to see how the teams’ success contributed to the sense of school spirit, something that isn’t all that common in Jewish day schools.

“It’s all positive, all good,” he says. “I love the fact that some people feel that in going to a Jewish day school perhaps they are sacrificing the athletic piece, the spirit, the ability to hold a pep rally. That’s just not true here.

“This is a place where athletics are important and there’s a lot of spirit involved. It’s just a lot of fun. The kids love it. We have more kids participating in our athletic program than we’ve ever had.”

More immediately pressing to Halzel than raising money and scheduling basketball games is the daily business of running — and hopefully growing — the school he supervises.

With nearly 400 students, Herzl-RMHA is the intermountain region’s largest Jewish day school, but Halzel believes it has the potential to be considerably larger.

He compares and contrasts the Jewish communities of Memphis and Denver to make his point.

“In Memphis there are about 8,500 Jewish people. It’s small but very strong, a very affiliated population, with 200 students in the day school. There’s not a lot of room for growth there because they are already very involved.

“Here, there are 85,000 Jews. We have about 400 in this day school. And there’s this tremendous potential for growth here.”