Brandeis Starts Construction of Nation’s First Judaism-based Prep School

On a sunny hillside in Santa Susana, 35 miles northwest of Los Angeles, construction will start this month on America’s first Judaism-based, residential, four-year college preparatory school. Final plans for the unprecedented educational venture were announced by Dr. Max W. Bay of Beverly Hills, president of the Brandeis Camp Institute, 30-year-old “laboratory of living Judaism,” on whose 2200-acre site the unique school, open to both Jews and non-Jews, will be built. The last obstacle to the project was removed, Dr. Bay said, when the Brandeis board of directors unanimously approved the recommendation of its finance committee, headed by past president Willard Chotiner, now a vice-president of the institute. Chotiner was authorized to complete blueprints with Los Angeles architect Sidney M. Eisenshtat for the first of a series of planned structures and to seek a $1.25 million loan, which subsequently was negotiated with the Union Bank of Los Angeles. Building permits were obtained from the Ventura County Planning Commission which approved construction of the Academy’s Judaica Building. The building also will serve as the Brandeis Camp Institute’s House of the Book, available to Southland Jewish leaders for weekend events and to Jewish college youth who attend the camp institute during the summer to learn about “meaningful Judaism” in the modern world.