Stephen Wise Temple and Schools Break Ground on Aaron Milken Center

An Educational Village

Designed by Abramson Architects, the 20,000-square-foot educational village on Wise’s mountaintop campus will feature a unique mix of indoor and outdoor spaces to facilitate learning and play, along with specialist areas including an art studio, learning kitchen, music room, and tinkering space.

Outside, students will be encouraged to explore green spaces. They will learn from the world around them through a hillside trail; sensory garden; vegetable garden; areas for water, sand, and mud play; and climbing structures. Inside, classrooms will be filled with light from floor to ceiling and an array of materials for exploration and discovery. Windows and skylights in common spaces will allow children to experience the outdoors from a different perspective.

“The classrooms and their respective play areas are arranged by age group, allowing students to ascend throughout the Wise campus as they grow through their early childhood education,” said Abramson partner Marco Marraccini, AIA. “The open layout provides a visual and physical connection to the new outdoor learning spaces and the expansive hillside views. Aaron Milken Center was designed to reflect this vibrant community and enhance its emergent curriculum.”

A Community Commitment

For more than four decades, Wise has been recognized internationally as a leader in Jewish early childhood education. As the first synagogue in Los Angeles to create a parenting center, Wise’s programs have inspired other synagogues and Jewish community centers around the world: The Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa is modeled directly on Wise’s approach.

While work on the larger Aaron Milken Center project began over the summer with the renovation of Wise’s Lower Village learning spaces, the journey to groundbreaking started in 1975, two years before Wise School first opened its doors. That year, after the birth of his first son Jeremy, Lowell Milken met with Rabbi Zeldin to discuss his views on Jewish education.

Aaron Milken at play in 1998 during his time at Wise. (Courtesy: Lowell Milken)

Lowell was struck by the Wise founder’s vision of providing a robust secular and Jewish education for the community’s youngest members. As a result, he enrolled Jeremy into Wise’s Mommy and Me program. Nineteen years later, Lowell took his first Daddy and Me class with Aaron.

“How I looked forward to those Daddy and Me classes, for three precious hours, every Saturday morning,” Lowell said. “And, I’ll never forget the first day of preschool, 19 years after his oldest brother Jeremy, when Sandy, Aaron, and I walked hand-in-hand into the same classroom and greeted the same talented teachers.”

Aaron and his three older brothers—Jeremy, Ryan, and David—all flourished in the Stephen Wise Temple parenting and preschool program, and Aaron grew into a young man passionate about both education and the Wise community. It was his passing in 2018 that spurred a generous matching grant from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation, ensuring that Aaron’s passion and commitment to Wise would find expression for generations to come. The construction of the $30 million center could not have been possible without the Milken family’s generosity, as well as that of Martha and Bruce Karsh, Wendy and Ken Ruby, Andrea and Barry Cayton, and many others. 

“Over the last five years, the persistence, camaraderie, creativity, and drive displayed by the entire community has made this moment a reality,” said Tyberg. “It is because of our united community that we were able to overcome logistical, economical, and historical obstacles, including inflation, supply-chain issues, and the lingering effects COVID-19 pandemic.”

In a testament to the Milken family’s long-standing dedication to Rabbi Zeldin’s vision, Aaron Milken Center’s construction poetically echoes the last construction of a new central complex on the Wise campus: In 1990, the building housing Wise School classrooms and administrative offices was named in honor of Lowell’s mother Ferne.

“Aaron Milken Center represents the next chapter in the Wise community’s extraordinary commitment to early childhood education,” said Rabbi Yoshi. “The investment our community is making presently is a tangible expression of our belief in the Jewish future. These past few years have demonstrated dramatically just how important it is to have the proper facilities with plenty of outdoor space for early childhood education, to say nothing of our extraordinary emergent curriculum. Through our work in Aaron Milken Center we are granted the amazing opportunity to enrich the Jewish life of children, their parents, and their grandparents, touching three generations at the same moment. I feel a great sense of gratitude to our generous community and especially to the Lowell Milken family, whose vision and commitment have made it all possible.”