Fifty-eight years ago, five dedicated community leaders recognized the need for a community Jewish Day School that would blend a top notch general studies education with the timeless teaching of Torah study. Less than a year later, the “Founding Five” – Abraham and Donald Butler, Rabbi Baruch Poupko, Adolph Schoenbrun and Rabbi Joseph Shapiro incorporated Hillel Academy, the first day school in North America to use that name. The first class of students was comprised of 17 boys and one girl. The automobile showrooms in the Morrowfield Apartments were their beginning classrooms. When the booming student population had outgrown their home donated by David and Esther Horvitz, the community came together and raised enough money to purchase a larger building. Their new home was the former Ellis School on Ellsworth Avenue. By 1959 a larger facility was needed for a thriving student population. A building fund campaign was initiated, and with vital support from Harry and Pearl Morris and Sau
