Far Rockaway’s Darchei Torah will grow on new land

Far Rockaway’s 2,100-student Yeshiva Darchei Torah will expand onto a nearby 25,000-square foot lot that is being donated by a neighbor.

The owners of a nursing home next door to Darchei Torah’s 257 B. 17 St. campus, said this week that they had transferred the vacant parcel, valued at $1.1-million and located directly across Beach 17 Street from the school’s Heichal Shlomo and Kleinman buildings.

The property was owned by Woodmere-based SentosaCare, the largest nursing home network in New York State, which acquired it as part of its purchase of the Brookhaven Rehabilitation and Health Care Center.

When SentosaCare’s co-founders and partners, Benjamin Landa and Ben Philipson, determined the land was not needed by the center, they “decided that rather than selling the land, we would donate it,” Landa said.

The land “will allow us to significantly enhance the overall environment in which our students learn and develop spiritually, physically and emotionally,” said Darchei Torah’s principal, Rabbi Yaakov Bender.

Landa’s son is an alumnus of Darchei Torah, “but Mr. Landa’s affinity for our school and support for our mission was in place for a long time before that,” the school’s director of communications and alumni affairs, Rabbi Moshe Benoliel, told The Jewish Star.

“Having an opportunity to support a world-class institution that has contributed so much to the lives of so many and to the Far Rockaway community is a unique privilege and an honor,” Landa said.

The school, founded in 1972, consists of a preschool, elementary school, junior high school, high school and beis medrash, and includes the Rabenstein Learning Center (servicing both children with special needs as well as gifted students), the Weiss Vocational Program (in which students take part in religious studies in the morning and then learn trades in the afternoon), a study hall, an institute for advanced learning, and dormitory space utilized both by out-of-area students and by local boys who stay on campus because of the long school day.

Most students are from Far Rockaway and surrounding communities, Rabbi Benoliel said.