Yoshi Zweiback, the senior rabbi at the Stephen Wise Temple, a more than 60-year-old Reform congregation in Los Angeles, pressed his feet into tiles on the ground as he gazed out over the Santa Monica Mountains.
“Watch this,” he told JNS excitedly.
The tiles played music. “You should see their faces when kids discover this for the first time,” the rabbi said.
Zweiback gave JNS a recent tour of the $35 million Aaron Milken Center for Early Childhood Education, whose March 23 ribbon-cutting drew more than 500 people.
The center’s new campus “builds on parenting and early childhood education, physically, conceptually and professionally,” stated Lowell Milken, founder of the Lowell Milken Family Foundation. “It expands, enhances and enriches efforts to embrace children with the kind of attention and care, with the kind of love, that has everything to do with who they become.”
The center is a tribute to Aaron Milken, the late son of Milken and his wife, Sandra Salka Milken, its lead donors. Aaron Milken died on Jan. 20, 2018, at the age of 23.
“I’ll never forget the first day of preschool for Aaron, 17 years after his oldest brother, Jeremy, when Aaron and I walked hand in hand into the same classroom and greeted Cynthia, the same teacher,” Lowell Milken said at the ribbon-cutting, per the Jewish Journal. “Nor will we forget all the memorable experiences that we enjoyed in all the years thereafter.”
“While this occasion is one of great joy and accomplishment, it is also bittersweet for Aaron’s absence is reflected in a constant presence,” Milken added at the ceremony. “The school and new facility will perpetuate Aaron’s memory, creating a living memorial, stemming from something that mattered greatly for him throughout his life.”
The new center, which is part of the synagogue’s campus, is distinct from but shares principal donors with the Milken Community School in Los Angeles.
Zweiback showed JNS outdoor play areas, classrooms, a rooftop pavilion and a Beit Midrash during the tour. It also has a lounge for parents to use after they drop their children off at school.
“If you’re going to be doing Jewish early childhood, then it should be outstanding,” the rabbi told JNS. “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”
‘Gratifying, inspiring’
Zweiback told JNS that the synagogue’s “beautiful” campus, which was constructed in the 1970s, was due for an upgrade. The first phase of the renovation, a pavilion, was completed in 2017. The main sanctuary of the synagogue and its administrative offices were slated to come next, but on a walk around the campus, the rabbi and Milken decided to change course.
“He said, ‘I think phase two should be the early childhood center,’” Zweiback told JNS. “He said, ‘That’s the funnel into the Jewish community. That’s the entry point, and we should be investing in that entry point.’”
The COVID pandemic interrupted the fundraising campaign, but the necessary monies were raised. The center is slated to open officially in June. “The dominant feeling was a sense of gratitude,” Zweiback told JNS of the completion of the center renovation.
The rabbi hopes the Aaron Milken Center will be a model for others nationwide.
“It was not lost on me that in the midst of this project, we experienced the trauma of Oct. 7,” he told JNS. “To think about what it means to be part of a Jewish community that says, ‘We will never stop learning. We will never stop hoping. We will never stop investing and planning for our future no matter what challenges come our way.’”
“To achieve this in the midst of all of that was gratifying and inspiring,” he said. “For the Jewish people, it’s a real gift.”