majority of students and the teachers are not fully religiously observant. In all Jewish day schools, students are taught to read, speak, and understand the Hebrew language. Usually beginning in grade school, students have intensive Hebrew studies. This is challenging for many students, since Hebrew uses different letters and a different script than English, French, and other languages that use the Latin alphabet. History The first Jewish day school in North America was established in 1731 at the Congregation Shearith Israel. German Jewish immigrants who arrived in the 19th Century establish day schools in their own communities, but this movement to establish Jewish day schools had lost momentum by the 1870s. This was caused by the perception among American Jews that not sending your children to public schools was "un-American". Most American Jewish day schools founded in the late 19th and early 20th Century were Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox institutions founded by recent immigrants, modelled after Eastern European cheders, which emphasized religious learning over general studies. During the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, a movement began in the United States to create modernized Jewish day schools which were more secular and emphasized general studies alongside Jewish learning, as well as Liberal Jewish schools. Between 1917 and 1939, over 23 Jewish day schools were founded in the New York Metropolitan area. After The Holocaust and the aftermath of World War II, the interest in Jewish day schools increased dramatically. In 1944, Torah Umesorah was founded to expand the number of Jewish day schools, especially beyond those already found in New York City. Day schools were established in great numbers in the United States and in other Western countries such as Canada, England, South Africa, Australia, and in South America. In the United States the dislike for, and decline of, the old-fashioned Talmud Torahs and a disenchantment with public schools led to a push for the formation of full-time all-day dual-curriculum schools. The Talmud Torah system of afternoon schools was deemed "failing to transmit Yiddishkeit in a compelling manner to students who arrived tired in the afternoons and were constantly subjected to assimilationist influences in American culture." White flight, caused by the Desegregation of American schools, also led to increasing numbers of Jewish day schools as parents removed their children from public schools. In 1960, approximately 60,000 children in the United States, 10% of the school age Jewish population, attended