In 1965 Rebibo and his wife Odette moved to Phoenix, where he established the Phoenix Hebrew Academy, the city's first Jewish day school. Rebibo's efforts were opposed by the city's non-Orthodox rabbis, who believed that Jewish students should be absorbed into the larger community. Since most of the student body were not from Orthodox homes, Rebibo calmed parents' fears that their children would be "converted" to Orthodoxy by setting a policy accepting children from all streams of Judaism. In time, some of the parents most active in the school were those who belonged to the local Reform temple.