SAR Academy

SAR Academy

SAR Academy — Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy — opened in 1969 as a co-educational Modern Orthodox Jewish day school spanning nursery through 8th grade. President Jack C. Bendheim, who also leads Phibro Animal Health, chairs a board that includes Vice President Michael Jesselson of Jesselson Capital Corporation and trustee Harvey Beker, chairman of Millburn Ridgefield Corporation. The school is rooted in the Riverdale community and draws significant philanthropic coordination from the UJA-Federation of New York. The endowment is structured as a classic infinite-horizon pool whose primary mandate is capital preservation to support scholarships and school operations. The investment committee includes Faye Landes, a former equities analyst with experience in consumer behavior investing, signaling at least one active-selection orientation. SAR’s asset footprint is concentrated in direct real estate: the Academy itself occupies 655 West 254th Street on the Jesselson Campus, the High School operates at 503 West 259th Street, and the school controls an expansion site at 5977 Riverdale Avenue in the Bronx. No publicly disclosed venture, private equity, or hedge fund positions break the pattern of a real-estate-heavy, low-disclosure institutional portfolio. Beyond its investment pool, SAR’s operating model depends on an annual fundraising cycle that, in recent campaigns, has drawn participation from nearly 750 families. The UJA-Federation of New York acts as a major philanthropic partner, providing grant capital for endowment building and crisis response. The adjacent SAR Academy Scholarship Fund underwrites tuition and programmatic costs for qualifying families. In membership terms, SAR belongs to Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools and the Riverdale Jewish Community Partnership, reflecting a dual identity as both an educational institution and a networked local institution. What structurally separates SAR’s endowment from other pools is its ownership of three contiguous Riverdale real estate assets directly tied to program delivery, which concentrates financial risk in a single New York submarket. There is no evidence of a multi-asset outsourced CIO arrangement or separate investment office — governance appears fully board-directed. Donor-advised giving flows through UJA-Federation channels rather than an internal donor-advised fund, a demarcation that preserves the school’s operational focus while externalizing grant-making infrastructure.