WARSAW, March 14 (JTA) — The first thing one notices about the only Jewish school in Warsaw is the art. There are seven depictions of the star of David on one stairwell, and six renderings of Shabbat candles on another. Purim is coming, so life-size cardboard cutouts of Queen Esther charm visitors on all five floors, but there are also fluttering trees of life with paper leaves that wind their way through the middle of corridors, menorahs in every conceivable color and size and cheerful illustrated salutes to Israel. About one-third of the 250 children in the school are non-Jews, but they are as enthusiastic in their tributes to the cycles of the Jewish calendar as are their Jewish classmates, the school’s administrators are quick to say. What began in 1993 in an apartment with 18 children whose parents thought it would be nice if their kids knew what it meant to be Jewish has grown into a well-equipped yet homey kindergarten, elementary and middle school. The school would be a mere fantasy if it had not been for the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, whose growing number of schools across the former Eastern Bloc are credited by many with reviving the Jewish life that the Holocaust, followed by four decades of religious persecution under communism, had nearly extinguished. As the school’s director, Helise Lieberman, puts it, “Without Lauder, it’s possible that there would be no Jewish education in Poland today, or it would be very limited. We’re the missing piece of the puzzle.” As school principals from across Central and Eastern Europe gathered earlier this month for a leadership seminar on the 18th anniversary of the creation of the Lauder Jewish schools, their tales illustrated that the key component of the Lauder philosophy — flexibility to suit local needs — was the key to their expansion. Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune and then-U.S. ambassador to Austria, saw the need to help an influx of Jewish children from the former Soviet Union to Vienna, and thus the foundation was born in 1987. The first Lauder school was established a year later. Following the collapse of communism, the Lauder network has extended to include 10,000 families, 34 schools and kindergartens in 14 countries as well as camps, youth centers and technology training centers. The foundation’s budget for 2006 is more than $10 million. Lauder took a different approach than many other donors: Parents would create the schools according to their beliefs and needs and in cooperation with existing Jewish structures and government requirements. This created a mosaic that the religiously fragmented Jewish communities of the region, rife with sectarian battles, might do well to emulate. Chabad runs the Lauder schools in Slovakia and Austria; the school in Kishinev, Moldova, is a yeshiva; the school in Sofia, Bulgaria, is public, and the foundation funds certain classes and programs for Jewish children, who make up 30 percent of the student population there. Some communities, as is the case in Sofia, had to include non-Jewish students because of state regulations. “The non-Jewish kids who come out of our schools, they are ambassadors for Jews and for Israel in Bulgaria,” said Becca Lazarova, principal of the Jewish elementary and high schools in Sofia. “They promote intercultural tolerance in a country where there are only a few thousand of us left,” she added. Other schools like the Lauder Morasha in Warsaw accept non-Jewish students because the parents wanted it that way. Meanwhile, all children at the school are still required to take classes in Judaism. But at the Lauder Shalom kindergarten and elementary school in Tula, Russia, where Jewish religion classes are optional, non-Jewish children often participate. “They are curious to learn that Jews don’t have horns on their head or make matzah from blood,” said the school’s director, Inessa Feldman, only half-joking. Non-Jewish parents often choose to send their children to Lauder schools because they are among the best in their respective cities based on test scores, principals and parents say. The subsidies provided by the Lauder Foundation usually guarantee higher pay for teachers than is typical in the region, subsidized tuition if the school is private, renovated buildings compared to crumbling, prison-like classrooms of the poorer Eastern European cities and an atmosphere of inclusion that is a rarity in school systems still dominated by rigid Communist-era teaching methods. All Lauder schools require students to have intensive training in English and Hebrew, often serving as the only place in a community where the teachers are native speakers. The Lauder Foundation’s CEO, George Ban, is unapologetic about some of the schools’ mixed populations: “What is better, to have a school where you can get Jewish education or to have no Jewish school at all?” On the other end of the spectrum, the Lauder principals at the Warsaw seminar viewed a film in which teenage boys with prayer shawls and peyos pray and wrap tefillin at a Lauder-funded yeshiva in Moldova. A student at the school explained that at first his parents were disturbed by his newfound religiosity. “I was carrying around my own dishes so I could keep kosher and this was difficult for them, but then when they saw I was learning English and that I was behaving better, they accepted my choice,” he said. Rabbi Hershel Lieber, who runs the Hebrew Academy of Moldova, which together with a girls school has some 50 pupils, estimated that “only 15 percent of our graduates become observant, but that’s more than zero, which is what you could expect without the school.” Nearly all Lauder schools have expanded, some dramatically, as Jews in the region continue to “come out of the closet,” as one educator put it. There are factors, however, such as emigration due to economic difficulties and anti-Semitism, or community squabbles, that are out of Lauder’s hands. Sara Bald, a principal from Lviv, Ukraine, said the number of her students at the modern Orthodox Gymnasium Acheinu Lauder has decreased by half recently to 64 children amid a climate of fear. “Just a few days ago, on the synagogue someone had written ‘We will slaughter the Jewish pigs,’ ” she said of the nearby synagogue that the students attend. In the middle of the spectrum, the Lauder Javne School in Budapest is consistent with Hungarian Neolog tradition, a mix of Reform and Conservative doctrine that is unique to that country. “At Lauder, no one says you must keep this or that. You learn about the traditions and you decide,” said David Feher, who was in the school’s first class, graduating high school in 2005. It is the least ritually observant of the three Jewish schools that are now in Budapest, said Feher. There is kosher food at the Lauder Javne cafeteria, but many students do not keep kosher outside of the school. Girls don’t have to wear skirts and boys don’t have to wear yarmulkes. “But every year we win the countrywide Tanach contest,” he said. “A student coming out of Lauder might not end up being observant,” Feher added, “but he will feel himself as Jewish, that is the most important thing.”
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