By ELANA WARREN / Assistant Editor
The Amos and Celia Heilicher Minneapolis Jewish Day School will open its doors in the fall as the Harold and Mickey Smith Jewish Academy.
The renaming honors a historic gift — the largest donation in the school’s history — from Rabbi Mitchell Smith in memory of his parents, Mickey and Harold Smith, St. Paul philanthropists who had a passion for Jewish youth and education.
Previously, in 2017, the Lynne and Andrew Redleaf Foundation gave a $9 million, 10-year grant to provide financial stability and financial aid for Heilicher families. As the Redleaf gift comes closer to its end date, Heilicher is taking a new initiative: the Hineini Campaign.
The Smith gift is the lead donation of this major fundraising campaign, whose goal is twofold: to raise $10 million for affordability and programmatic excellence in the near term and to grow the school’s endowment to $40 million over the next 10 years to sustain the school for years to come.
“We just celebrated 40 years of the day school, and really looking forward to the next 40 years and beyond, it feels like this is a moment that we are at an inflection point — that we can really choose to invest and make a statement that this is an important institution in the community that the community needs to step up and support to create our leaders and engaged people in [the] Jewish community here in the Twin Cities and beyond,” Heilicher Board President and Hineini Campaign Co-Chair Esther Goldberg-Davis said. “This really allows us to do the things that we want to do to make sure that the school continues to thrive and grow and improve on itself.”
Combined with endowed funds on hand, the Smith money gets the endowment to $15 million and closer to the $40 million goal.
“Right now the cost of an education here at Heilicher is around $30,000-$32,000 per student. The average tuition is around $15,000-16,000, so we have a gap between what our parents are paying and what the education costs,” Heilicher Head of School Dan Ahlstrom said. “The reason we landed on the $40 million campaign is because we figure that’s about $2 million a year in scholarship, considering that the school may grow, and that’s what it will take to fund that level of [financial assistance].”
Affordability is one of three pillars of the campaign, Ahlstrom said. The other two are program and capital investment. Campaign donations for the near term will go toward scholarship awards, professional development and enhancing and sustaining programs, such as the b’not sherut (Israeli service volunteer) program and the eighth-grade Israel trip. Funds also will go toward capital expenses, such as updating the kitchen and other spaces.
“As that money is pledged and committed, then we will begin making those changes into the school,” Ahlstrom said.
“We are 100 percent committed to making some investments in the near term so that our current families and incoming families will reap the benefits of this gift,” Goldberg-Davis added. “We think about it [as] sort of short term, near term investments in the school, to really benefit the families and the community that’s experiencing Smith Jewish Academy now while we build towards sustainability and affordability for generations to come.”
Ahlstrom said he hopes improvements can be started on the kitchen in the next year and added that he is taking input from teachers on how to use the initial funds. The first changes, of course, will be branding — new logos, signs, etc. to go with the new name.
From Heilicher Minneapolis Jewish Day School to Smith Jewish Academy
The late Amos and Celia Heilicher’s names were added to the Minneapolis Jewish Day School when Amos Heilicher made a donation in 2008. The school will continue to honor the Heilichers, Heilicher Development Director Kiel Majewski said, “by naming its part of the building on the Barry Family Campus after Amos and Celia Heilicher and developing a timeline exhibit about the school’s history and key figures, including the Heilicher family.”
As the Heilicher name is removed from the school and added to the building, the Smith name will be removed from the Harold and Mickey Smith Judaic Studies Department (designated in 2019 with a previous donation of $2.5 million from Mitchell Smith) and added to the school.
One thing about this new school naming is notably different from these previous Heilicher and Smith namings — in addition to adding the names of honorees, Harold and Mickey Smith Jewish Academy removes “Minneapolis” and “Day School” from the name. Heilicher stresses this shift emphasizes rather than changes its values and mission to create lifelong learners and honor individuals’ unique contributions.
Goldberg-Davis said, “In honoring the legacy of Harold and Mickey Smith, we are very excited to use this opportunity to reenvision what the next chapter of the school could look like, and so we took a step back to do some thinking and decided that now, as the only pluralistic community day school in the Twin Cities, we wanted to lose demographic specificity and really be more open to all of the Twin Cities and beyond.”
Ahlstrom said Heilicher aims to be a bi-cities organization and is exploring ideas on how to serve the broader community, as Heilicher is the only non-Orthodox Jewish day school option in the Twin Cities following the closure of the Talmud Torah of St. Paul Newman School ahead of the 2023-2024 school year.
Goldberg-Davis continued, “Smith Jewish Academy just feels like it’s a way to emphasize our academic excellence and really lean into the way we prepare our alumni to be leaders and excel academically in the world beyond eighth grade.”
(Editor’s note: Elana Warren works at both the American Jewish World and Heilicher Minneapolis Jewish Day School.)
(American Jewish World, July 2025)
