The first private religious high school may soon be established in a rapidly expanding Orthodox Jewish neighborhood close to the Jersey Shore.
An application to transform a former senior health facility into a private Orthodox Jewish yeshiva for high school students is set to be heard by the Toms River zoning board on Thursday.
According to a meeting notification, the company in charge of the project, New Jersey Home Care Service, is requesting a variance to open the school on an 8.5-acre plot of land at 105 Sunset Avenue, which is presently designated for residential use.
The Medex Home Health Center, which is now closed, was housed in the building. Ocean County tax records show that the property last sold for $2.08 million in February 2024.
According to township documents, the developer is also asking for licenses to repave the parking lot and renovate the current 9,560-square-foot building.
The number of Orthodox Jews in Toms River has increased recently, as has the case in neighboring municipalities in Ocean and Monmouth County that surround Lakewood. To the south of the township is Lakewood, which is the location of New Jersey’s fastest-growing Orthodox Jewish population. In order to stay near established Orthodox neighborhoods, schools, synagogues, and extended family, many families have moved to Toms River.
Many Orthodox Jewish kids in Toms River depend on district-funded busing to attend religious schools in nearby Lakewood because there are currently no private yeshivas operating in the township.
As more Orthodox families relocate to the area, transportation expenditures have increased in a number of districts, including Toms River Regional, Brick, Jackson, and Howell. According to their budgets, the districts were paying more and more money year to transport pupils to more than 100 private religious schools in Lakewood.
The Asbury Park Press reports that the township’s first two Orthodox synagogues, or shuls, on Stevens Road and Whitesville Road were permitted by the zoning board last year.
After years of legal disputes over municipal zoning restrictions, that milestone was reached. To prevent legal action from the U.S. Department of Justice, which claimed the town had broken federal law by limiting the locations of places of worship, Toms River updated its zoning regulations for houses of religion in 2021.
Following the township’s 2009 restriction on houses of worship in three zoning zones, its 2017 increase in the minimum lot size, and its prohibition on their location on minor collector highways, the Department of Justice launched an investigation in 2018. Orthodox Jews, who frequently go to small neighborhood synagogues on the Sabbath and festivals, were disproportionately affected by the adjustments, according to federal officials.
The Department of Justice complaint claims that Toms River is now home to over 1,000 Orthodox Jewish families. The township already had roughly 42 houses of worship, including 38 churches, two mosques, one Conservative Jewish synagogue, and one Hindu temple, before sanctioning its first two Orthodox Jewish synagogues last year.
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