San Diego, Calif. (special) -- Hilltop property above the intersection of Interstate 5 and State Route 56 in the Carmel Valley area has been set aside as the future home of the San Diego Jewish Academy. Richard and Ann Jaffe are determined that a kindergarten-through-high school campus will be located there in time for the opening day of school in September of 2000. 

Ann Jaffe is completing her term as SDJA's president. Her husband, Richard Jaffe is chairman of the school's capital campaign, as well as founder of Safeskin, a multimillion dollar company that manufactures examination gloves which can be worn all day by medical personnel with little risk of developing rashes on their hands. 

In concert with other members of the Jaffe family, the couple donated $7 million to make their dream of a thoroughly modern community Jewish day school a reality.  Approximately $18 million thus far has been raised in donations or pledges -- about half the total $36 million construction campaign.  As envisioned, a 165,000-square-foot academy will wrap around the hill, blending as much as possible into the landscape. Only 20 acres of the 40-acre property will be developed: the blance will be left in open space.  LPA, the architectural firm which designed the Tarbut v'Torah academy in Orange County, CA., also is designing this facility.  Motorists on Carmel Peak Road will enter the school grounds by an entrance for the kindergarten, elementary and middle schools, or by a second entrance for the high school. Knowing that high school students will drive themselves to school, the thought was to keep their cars away from the areas where little children will be dropped off by their parents.

CAMPUS OUTLOOK -- Richard and Ann Jaffe stand on the hilltop land where San Diego Jewish Academy will be built overlooking the intersection of Interstate 5 and State Route 56.

Leading a conceptual tour with the help of such visual aids as a scale model and an architectural rendering, the Jaffes started their narrative on the kindergarten end of the school and worked to the high school end. The school is being designed to accommodate a total of 1,200 students. 

At the kindergarten end, "each room has a restroom in it, and a sink, to make it very nice, and so the pupils don't have to go too far," Ann said. "We have a separate playground for kindergarten and first grade" --a nurtured and separate environment. 

When a child is promoted to the second grade, he or she will enter the rest of the elementary school, built around a little plaza--which is known to planners as "Elementary Village." 

Similar plaza configurations--not unlike quads found on college campuses--will be created for the middle school (grades 6-8) and the high school (9-12), she said. 

"Within the school's atmosphere, we want the kids to say that they are in a Jewish place," Ann said. "They will be taking a Jewish journey from kindergarten through 12th grade." Murals in the hallways are planned to emphasize, with pictures and quotations, the Academy's Jewish nature. 

For older students, "we are going to have integrated classrooms where we can teach science and math, utilize computers, and have team teaching," Ann said. 

Additionally, she said, there will be a library and a "Cyber Cafe," where students and staff can work on computers -- and perhaps find something to eat at a snack bar. "We hope to have enough space there to make it an intergenerational meeting area, where people from Seacrest Village can come down," she said. 

In this area of the school, there also will be a "personal learning center" where students can meet on a 1:1 basis with teachers or tutors. At San Diego Jewish Academy's two current day school sites, "there are not a lot of areas to have pull out programs for people with learning differences, but here we will have the space to do it," she said. 

The central area of the academy will be the Beit Knesset (synagogue). "Of course the bima (stage for Torah Ark) is facing the east," she said. "We will have a stage area that is both inside and outside the southern wall. Inside there will be moveable walls, so that we can have small classes there learning how to pray -- very hamische (warm and home-like); or we can blow out the walls and have a seder (ritual Passover meal) there for the whole school." 

In other parts of the school there will be areas for music and for dance, science laboratories, and such recreational facilities as a gymnasium, tennis courts, soccer fields, baseball fields and basketball courts. 

In the second phase of construction, Ann said, plans call for a performing arts location and an aquatics center. 

 "This is a work in progress," Richard said, "so we welcome anyone who wants to be involved in the committee, the vision, the donations. This is a piece of clay that is getting sculpted." 

He added: "This is not a place where we are going to be pushing education onto people; it really will be a learning institution. How do you create an environment for the same child who might be in the 5th grade but who can learn 7th grade math and 4th grade English? People learn art their own speed." 

Further, said Richard, "how do we create an institution where we can teach using teachers in Jerusalem, New York and San Diego at the same time? Technologies change so quickly: how do you design the infrastructure to allow ourselves to grow for the next 20-30 years, while building something that will be recognized immediately as a world class learning institution that is Jewish?" 

 * * *
If the challenges seem large and exciting, so too have been those of Richard Jaffe's life since as a graduate of Cornell University he started a company that distributed frozen juice bars and ices under the trade name "Guido's Ices" until Coca Cola bought the company and renamed the product "Minute Maid Fruit Juices." 

While still in that phase of his life, Richard set up a factory in Fullerton and decided to attend a seminar at the Hotel del Coronado of the American School Food Services Association -- the group whose members purchase foods for students to eat during the school day. At that time Ann Levinson, a registered dietician, was field service director for Escondido City Schools. After having met earlier in the proceedings, they found themselves attending a motivational lecture by Cecil Reeves, who asked "How many of you out there believe you are God's miracle, God's gift?" 

"I raised my hand because I really feel that way about myself, and I look at her and her hand is up too," Richard recalled. 

"Because I believe we are all God's miracles," Ann said. 

Theirs were the only two hands in the room that went up. Following an emotional discussion about world hunger in which panelists urged the food industry to help, the two decided to take a walk along the ocean. 

"It's the Del Coronado, walking along the beach, the sun is setting, the palm trees are swaying; the waves are crashing," Richard recalled. "She is telling me about her upbringing, her Jewish heritage, her philosophy in life, and I am very interested and then she says 'What about you?' and it was my turn. I said 'well I could probably sum it up in a poem, I'm a poet. Let me share with you a poem I wrote. It really reflects my philosophy of life." 

Richard recited his poem Eternal Happiness during an interview with HERITAGE, as Ann beamed: 

Our lifetimes pass so swiftly In the search for what is real, It often takes another's heart To know what we can feel. And though love's bond with friendship  Is the strongest ever known, It's inner peace, life's eternal happiness We all must discover on our own. For love that brings us happiness Binds with strength knowing we are sure, But, what if we awake one day And that love remains no more. Our souls will fill with loneliness, And emptiness abound, We will have lost our happiness Until another love is found.

But a happiness with one's own true self... Not an easy bond to make, Allows our hearts to pour out love Without a need to take. And then if we be blessed with love Found only 'wished upon a star,' Do we first begin our journey. In search for who we really are. So if we find everlasting love, The one fate has meant to be, Together, we will inspire Him To set our spirits free. But if it's just another love To teach us how to care, We each will have our own happiness And inner peace still left to share.

How did Ann react to the poem? She said she thought to herself, "Oh, no, this is it!" and later "called up one of my girlfriends and I said 'I met the guy I am going to marry.' I knew then. ..." 

Ann's father was a consultant in the restaurant business, a career path that found the family living in 18 cities during her lifetime. As a result, she said, "my Jewish education lacked a little bit, because in some cases there wasn't a synagogue within 60 miles. When I was an 8th grader, we moved to Las Vegas and that is when my Jewish education got kick started again. It was mostly through USY (United Synagogue Youth), and I got excited, and I wasn't bat mitzvahed until I was 17, because I just wasn't prepared for it before then." 

Before her meeting with Richard, Ann had attended the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in the Simi Valley north of Los Angeles, where she was exposed to such teachers as Dennis Praeger and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. Both today are well known authors, with Telushkin, whom she considers a mentor, having written such books as Jewish Literacy and Jewish Humor.

Richard had grown up in Great Neck, N.Y., where his family attended High Holiday services, participated in his bar mitzvah, saw to it that he was confirmed, "but that really was the extent of it." However, he said, "I always knew in my heart that I wanted to marry someone Jewish ... As I met Ann, one of the things that really appealed to me was her Jewish heritage and that she could help me create a home and be more observant." 

After their wedding, they moved to Orange County, and later to Houston, Tex., where they became involved with the Young Leadership Group of the United Jewish Federation. 

Although Richard remained president of the juice bar company, because it was a subsidiary of Coca Cola he no longer could act as an entrepreneur; he had to comply with the parent company's comparatively laborious schedule for bringing new products on line. Feeling that the company could not grow under such restrictions, he decided to resign, take a year off to write poetry and play golf, and to look for new opportunities. When he asked Ann where she would like to live, she said she would like to return to San Diego County. 

As soon as they arrived in San Diego, they became involved in the Young Leadership Division of the local United Jewish Federation, through which they became exposed to the overall Jewish community.

One meeting, in particular, remains vivid in Ann's memory: representatives of the various agencies came to tell about their programs, including Mark Berger (a lay leader who served as SDJA president). She recalls Berger saying "Our school is a Jewish school; we want to teach respect for all types of Judaism and have the children get a great education." 

Berger's presentation reminded her of what she had learned at  the  Brandeis Bardin Institute from Praeger and Telushkin. Although her oldest child, Brett, was only 2 or 3 at the time (he is now 12), "I decided that this is the place that I am going to go to," Ann said. 

Richard, meanwhile, soon tired of playing golf and writing poetry; in fact, "after two months I was itching for something to do." His father mentioned this to an acquaintance, who in turn called Richard to tell him of "a fellow who is starting a glove company who ran out of money, and needs some capital." 

He and his father decided to fly to Miami, Florida, where they met Neil Braverman, who impressed them with his knowledge of manufacturing. A day or so later, they decided to fly to Malaysia to further explore the business. 

"I had always believed that you create wealth by anticipating future behavior changes and then providing something that is going to be needed," Richard said. "I didn't know anything about the medical business, but I knew how to run a business, and as I went over there and looked at what is going on, I learned that in 1987 the Center for Disease Control had issued universal precautions that all health care workers coming into contact with bodily fluids needed to wear gloves, masks, gowns, etcetera." 

This was at a time when the world was becoming more alert to the danger of AIDS, Richard said.l "So here I saw a behavior change: instead of wearing gloves 10 minutes a day, health care workers would wear gloves for 10 hours a day." 

The problem with that, he said, is that the latex used in making gloves had been treated with chemicals that could cause skin rashes. He decided, "what you really need to do is design a glove that will protect the health worker from the glove itself." 

Eventually, the company won FDA approval to bring out a hypoallergenic latex exam glove, so we had a little sizzle to sell, and we took the product and went out to our customers and said, 'Hey, how do you like the product?' They came back and said 'could you give us a little less powder?' What I really heard them say is that they didn't want any powder. " So the company developed a powder-free glove. "We weren't able to keep it in stock for seven or eight years," he said. "Today the market is 54-55 percent powder free, but it was zero before." 

The Safeskin president said that his company has five values, all of which are consistent with Torah values. 

"The first one is to exceed customer expectation," he said. "The second value is to live up to all commitments--probably the hardest one. When you give a commitment and you live up to it, your customers will follow you in life wherever you go. Very few people in life live up to their commitments.. Third, is to do the right thing. When anyone has a decision to make, I believe, they have a gut instinct of what is right and what is wrong. They know inside. ... Fourth is 'be the best.' That doesn't mean compare yourself to competition; don't compare yourself to the past-- compare yourself to the opportunity. Raise the bar yourself and do as good as you can possibly do. Fifth, and absolutely most important, is treat everyone with caring and respect. The end doesn't justify the means. Treat people the way you want to be treated." 

Ann noted that her husband's fifth maxim sounds a lot like Hillel's teaching, that we should not do to others what is objectionable to us. 

"A company can make values its own; school children can make them their own," she said. "The world would be a better place if everyone could do it." 

As Ann became increasingly active on the SDJA board and as daughters Charly, 9, and Maxi, 6, followed Brett into the school, the Jaffes became increasingly enamored with what they found at the institution. 

"I found it all there: mothering teachers, nurturing atmosphere, respect for those who keep kosher and for those who don't keep kosher, for those who are shomer shabbos (guardians of the Sabbath) and those who are not," Ann said. 

"I have been impressed with the fact that the friends of our kids have been so warm, so loving," said Richard. "They have such good friends from good families. I couldn't be happier with the friends who surround our kids. As you grow up you know what peer pressure is like. We are so pleased, and lucky, to have healthy, happy kids." 

Richard said that one day after Ann had been elected as president , "we were talking about how fortunate we are -- how well Safeskin had done -- and we talked about what kind of legacy we can leave in our lives. 

"We looked at each other and said, 'You now what, we have been trying to build a school for a while -- let's go ahead and see if we can't really build a Jewish school, one that goes from kindergarten to 12th grade, and finally get a high school. 

"I like to say I measure people's success by what you create while you are alive, not what you give at the end of your life," Richard said. "We said 'let's not wait until the end of our lives; let's create while we are here, and see it grow.' And we are firm believers that the more you give, the more you get. 

"And we just said, 'you know this is a vision for which someone needs to take the leadership role and really make happen...'"