GAN RINA is the oldest privately owned Jewish nursery school in Bergen County. It was founded in 1978 by Rena Taubes and run by her until her passing in 1997.

Rena began her career as a pre-school educator and in 1976 and when the opportunity arose to start her own nursery, the chance to inaugurate and direct a nursery school was too good to turn down.

 

In choosing a name for the new school, Rena followed the common practice in Israel of naming a nursery school or kindergarten (a gan) after the owner or head teacher; hence GAN RINA. The slight change from the spelling of her own name was intended to bring out more clearly the actual meaning of the name, a combination of joy and song. Those two terms would become major features of the program. Joyful, bright, smiling faces of children delighted to be in the classroom were the result of Rena’s natural pedagogic talents. Song, and music in general, is part of many pre-school programs, but Rena’s special “piano time” segments were a great favorite of children year after year. The school was an immediate and consistent success.

 

After her passing, Rena's husband considered closing the school at the end of that school year, however, the teachers who had been working with Rena suggested continuing the program if the community wanted it and with registration filling each year, GAN RINA has in fact continued.

Eventually GAN RINA moved to its current location at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck. The school was popular from the start, and in the yeshiva elementary schools, GAN RINA graduates were recognized as special.

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More than a thousand children received their first taste of school at GAN RINA, and in recent years it has been a special delight to see children at the graduation ceremony whose parents were themselves graduates. Such continuity is a great tribute that would have made Rena very proud, as she would have been very proud of another continuity. Her granddaughter, Rue Taubes Edelman, herself a GAN RINA graduate, majored in early childhood education and began teaching in the school in 2010.

In 2014 Morah Rue took over as director of the school and works with each of the wonderful Morot on staff to continue the legacy and tradition of quality early childhood education that Rena first established and set out before them.