DALLAS — Meral Tubi and her Israeli husband Kfir never imagined they’d one day leave their Los Angeles home to move to Texas.
But something changed over the last two years. Their young children reached school age, they saw a sharp rise in antisemitism following Oct. 7, 2023, and then they experienced wave after wave of devastating California wildfires.
This summer they decided enough was enough. Shortly after Meral Tubi visited Dallas for a work conference, they decided to sell their house in Studio City, Calif., and make Dallas their new home.
“I didn’t even know there were Jews in Dallas,” said Tubi, 35, who now works in medical imaging for a major pharmaceutical company in Dallas. “We came out here and everyone was so kind and direct. It felt so refreshing.”
Perhaps the main highlight, they said, is the school their two children, 6-year-old Lavi and 3-year-old Yaeli, attend: Akiba Yavneh Academy (AYA).
The Jewish day school hit just the right sweet spot for them: It’s modern Orthodox but welcomes families of all levels of observance. It offers a pre-K-through-12 education rooted in Zionism and strong Hebrew language skills. And tuition costs are far less than at most Jewish day schools in L.A.
Economics is one of the main reasons the modern Orthodox community in Dallas is growing. It’s not just that day school tuition and real estate is more affordable than in the large Orthodox Jewish population centers in California and on the East Coast, it’s also that the Texas economy is booming, jobs are plentiful and there’s no state income tax.
“You can find a home here with five bedrooms, four baths and a swimming pool for half a million dollars,” said Natalie Solomon, Akiba Yavneh’s director of marketing and communications. “That’s important, especially for observant families who keep kosher and tend to have more children.”
Dallas is home to an estimated 80,000 Jews, six Jewish day schools, and 16 kosher restaurants and caterers, according to the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas. North Texas as a whole has 47 synagogues of all denominations, according to the federation. That puts the Dallas area — including Arlington, Irving, Plano and Richardson — a close second to Houston, the state’s largest Jewish community. In all, Texas has about 175,000 Jews among some 31 million people.
Seventh grade boys at the modern Orthodox Akiba Yavneh Academy in Dallas are part of a student body that draws families of all levels of observance. (Laura Feinberg)
Along with the growing Jewish population is a booming regional job market. Fortune 500 giants have added thousands of employees this year in healthcare, energy and logistics, including at American Airlines, JP Morgan Chase and Toyota North America. In 2021, financial services giant Charles Schwab relocated from San Francisco to the Dallas suburb of Westlake, and Goldman Sachs is now building a $500 million, 800,000-sq.-foot campus in Dallas that will eventually have 5,000 employees.
An additional benefit for Jews is that Texas is not experiencing the same surge in antisemitism and anti-Zionism that has become palpable in New York City, L.A., Boston and elsewhere, according to Solomon. She said her school has seen an uptick in enrollment inquiries recently from families in the New York metro area.
Edut Rindenow, 43, Akiba Yavneh’s new learning designer specialist, moved to Dallas from Israel and has three kids at the school: Avital (14), Avia (9) and Gefen (7).
“We came here only for a few years, but this community specifically was very attractive to us,” Rindenow said. “I interviewed in several other locations, including Houston, Memphis and Miami, but we chose Dallas because the people are so different. The community is very warm and welcoming. We felt their energy even before we came here.”
Akiba Yavneh has about 475 students, ranging from those whose families are strictly observant to those who are not. At school, the administration expects modern Orthodox observance — requiring all boys to wear a kippah and wrap tefillin in daily prayer, for example — but embraces a diversity of practices outside of school.
Chaya Kenigsberg, the school’s principal of K-6 Judaic studies, said the key is to foster a positive relationship with Judaism. “It’s about developing a strong, positive connection with Hashem and Judaism, especially around Shabbat and the holidays,” she said.
Each Friday morning, the entire student body gathers in the school’s gym for a weekly Shabbat Shebang featuring singing, dancing and other performances.
Zionism and Hebrew fluency are among the school’s core tenets. Last year, 18 of Akiba Yavneh’s 24 graduating seniors went to Israel for a gap year, with two enlisting in the Israel Defense Forces and a third volunteering for Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency services organization.
Akiba Yavneh Academy school mom Sophie Jakubowich with her twin daughters, Elly and Leah. The school serves kids from early childhood through grade 12. (Natalie Solomon)
Whitney Hurwitz, the school’s principal of K-6 general studies, said the school’s secret sauce is its warm and caring community.
“We’re a very diverse school yet everybody gets along,” said Hurwitz, a Florida native who has lived in Dallas for the last 17 years.
Meral Tubi said that as a Jew from an Israeli family she is more comfortable in Dallas than California. She recalled an Israeli neighbor in California whose house was broken into by a man yelling “Free Palestine!” and a friend of her son who said after Oct. 7 that his parents hate Jews.
Likewise, Barry and Amy, a young Canadian couple from suburban Toronto who asked that their last name be withheld due to security concerns, left Canada because of the antisemitism there.
“For years I’ve been watching Canada decline. Last year, a Jewish seminary on our street got vandalized three weekends in a row,” recalled Barry, a real estate developer. “The synagogue my father attends has been shot at 10 times.”
He and his wife considered moving with their daughters to Florida but ultimately chose Dallas, he said, “because of the Texas way of life and its values.”
So did Elysheva Ramírez, Akiba Yavneh’s fine arts teacher. A native of Puerto Rico, Ramírez moved to Dallas four months ago from Orlando, where she had worked at a Jewish day school.
“I was attracted to Dallas because I had been told it had a vibrant Jewish community, and also because of its many professional opportunities,” said Ramírez, who has two children enrolled at Akiba Yavneh. “For me, this community has been so welcoming.”
