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Gila Katz travels to Ukraine every six to eight weeks to provide training and assistance to teachers in the Midreshet Yerushalayim schools. |
A Jewish Sunday school, serving 27 families with 63 children, was dedicated in Kiev last October - on Simchat Torah. A Jewish community center recently opened in Uzgorod in the Carpathian Mountains. Both are new links in the Midreshet Yerushalayim network of schools in the former Soviet Union (FSU).
Heading Midreshet Yerushalayim for the FSU and Eastern Europe is a remarkable woman named Gila Katz, who made aliyah to Israel in 1996 and now lives in Jerusalem. Katz grew up in Chernowitz, Ukraine. Her parents were the only ones in their respective families to survive the Nazi death machine.
"My parents felt it was very important to educate me as a Jew," Katz explains. "They kept Jewish tradition. There was still one small synagogue in Chernowitz. I remember as a girl visiting a home where matzohs were being baked for Passover, and my father strictly admonishing me to keep these visits a secret. So I was raised with a background that not many other Jews of my generation were privileged to have."
Katz received her education and training as a teacher. In the beginning of the 1980s, she became a Jewish activist and learned Hebrew. Eventually she began to teach what she herself had learned. At a time when there were no Hebrew textbooks or Hebrew classes, Katz brought Jewish education to Chernowitz.
Then, with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Katz was one of a group who set up a Sunday school to teach Hebrew and Jewish tradition to children in Chernowitz. The response was so overwhelming and interest so high among Jewish families that it was decided to transform this initial effort into a comprehensive Jewish day school.
"We wanted a school with a warm atmosphere, where students and teachers could have a constructive relationship," Katz notes. "We wanted a school that would place the child and the child's family at the center."
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Gila Katz and her students search for "Chametz" before Pesach in the Midreshet Yerushalayim TALI Jewish Day School in Chernowitz, Ukraine. |
At about this time, Katz first became acquainted with the work of Midreshet Yerushalayim, which is supported in part by the Jewish Agency. It is the Eastern European and FSU outreach arm of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, the Masorti (Conservative) Movement's graduate and rabbinical school in Israel. Midreshet Yerushalayim works to rekindle the flame of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and the FSU through support of Jewish schools, teacher training and the annual Ramah-Ukraine summer camp, which is sponsored by the Jewish Agency.
The Chernowitz school opened its doors in 1991, the first Jewish day school in the Ukraine in more than 50 years! Today, the school has 280 pupils in grades one through 11 plus a Sunday school serving parents, preschoolers and college students.
It is based on the TALI school system, which promotes pluralistic Jewish education based on democratic values and tolerance. The TALI program was created some 20 years ago in Israel, and TALI schools are supported by the Jewish Agency.
In addition to Chernowitz and Kiev, the Midreshet Yerushalayim network now includes a Sunday school in Berdichev and three schools in the Carpathian Mountain region. Katz believes that the Kiev and Berdichev schools, like the one in Chernowitz, will eventually evolve from Sunday schools into full Jewish day schools.
"Our schools are more than just schools; they are based on the "learning community" approach, and serve the entire family," Katz states. In line with this philosophy, Midreshet Yerushalayim also holds weekend retreats for families two or three times a year, as well as bar/bat mitzvah seminars for children and parents.
"A great many of the children who study in our schools go on to make aliyah," says Katz, who believes that the best way of promoting ties with Israel and aliyah is through Jewish renewal. "A good number of these do so through such Jewish Agency programs as Naaleh 16 and Selah, study programs for teens and young adults who come to Israel without their families. Their Jewish background provides high motivation for aliyah and their knowledge of Judaism and Israel makes it that much easier for them to integrate into Israeli society." |