About ATID Academy About ATID Academy Atid Academy, run by Marilyn David, is a new alternative to Hebrew School, currently located at three sites in Brooklyn. The third site, in the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center, starts in Fall 2000. Atid runs a two day per week program for Jewish youth from third through eighth grades, many of whom are immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Atid is not a traditional Hebrew School, basing its curriculum on camps, high school seminars, NCSY programming, and other forms of informal education.
Interactive activities incorporate trips, music, and art in the educational process.
Atid students have performed tashlich at the Verrazano Bridge and have lit the menorah at City Hall with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. As a benefit of belonging to Atid Academy, participants receive free Bar or Bat Mitzvah lessons. Local yeshiva high school students in eleventh and twelfth grade volunteer their time to teach Atid participants to read Hebrew. Atid participants have gone on to celebrate Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, to receive Jewish names, to participate in Jewish Summer Programs, and other milestones.