Our Story
Joy and Yvonne, mother and daughter, were both born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and have wide-ranging experiences with Sephardic community yeshivot - Joy as a parent and Yvonne as a student and educator. For the past five years, the duo have been identifying and researching areas within modern Jewish education that could be improved upon and began to envision creating their dream school. They pushed themselves to think outside the current structures and mindsets of what is typical in conventional yeshivot and considered what a Jewish education could look like when building a school from the ground up. In 2020, both Joy and Yvonne and their families moved to the Deal, NJ area. With two young children, Yvonne began to search for a school that would best fit their needs. With much respect to existing institutions and the incredible services they provide, Yvonne quickly realized it was the right time for her and Joy to finally implement all their hard work - their passion project - and launch their dream school. They researched and visited many institutions with similar values and conferred with top educators around the world. Guided by their strong faith in G-d and their unique vision, Joy and Yvonne followed their calling to create Golden Academy - a new model for Jewish education, incorporating some of the best practices of progressive educational ideologies merged with traditional Sephardic Torah values. Golden Academy strives to cultivate tomorrow’s leaders by instilling in its young students a strong sense of identity, spirituality, and confidence to take risks and meet challenges.