THE REPORTER

The New Jews
Meet the Young Russians first discovering they're Jewish, and learning, through ORT, what it can mean for them.
By Lev Krichevsky

When Galia Dogmarova changed from a local public school in Moscow to the ORT school, she also changed her mind. "I never felt that being Jewish was something important until I came here," said Dogmarova, 15, a ninth grader at the Moscow ORT School, where she learns Hebrew, Jewish history and Jewish tradition. "Now I feel differently."
Very few children come to the Moscow ORT school with more than the rudimentary knowledge of Judaism that Dogmarova - and her family - had a few years ago. Many of them are merely looking for a better school. At ORT Moscow, they're finding that better school - and a Jewish identity to boot.

The Moscow school offers the kind of individual attention that would be
considered luxurious even at the best post-Soviet schools: 40 teachers for
only 280 students. Students get vocational and technical training in a
Jewish environment - something that was unthinkable just a decade ago in a
country that was usually hostile to the cultural and religious aspirations
of its minorities.
The Moscow ORT school is one of four founded in the former Soviet Union
over the past five years by ORT, Israel's Ministry of Education and the
local municipalities, with funding from Women's American ORT.
The 280 children, 80 percent of them Jewish, attend the ORT school in
Moscow. About 1,000 students are enrolled in three other ORT schools in the
former Soviet Union - in St. Petersburg, Kiev and Odessa. Thousands more
are eager to enroll in the schools, which charge no tuition. The
competition is fierce: This year, the ORT Moscow school, which serves
children aged 11 to 17, received three applications for every available
slot.

Vyacheslav Leschiner, the principal of the Moscow ORT school, says, given that most of the students come from totally assimilated or mixed families, it's not surprising that many applicants and even some of the students don't know they're Jewish, or if they do, are clueless as to what that might mean. The school encourages the acknowledgement of applicants' Jewish lineage by giving preferential admission to those with some Jewish heritage.
Leschiner recalls a boy whom he considered a non-Jew, who, after having spent a year in this school, suddenly told his teacher that he wanted to go to Israel to serve in the Israeli army.
"It came out that his grandfather was Jewish - something his parents
clearly didn't tell him when they applied to the school," Leschiner said.
How do such kids feel about their Judaism, having not been aware of it
before entering the ORT school?
"I knew I was Jewish," Dogmarova says. "But it was a word that meant
nothing to me."

Dogmarova and her classmates' parents' generation had every reason - based on their own life experience - not to focus their children's attention on their heritage.
"We discovered that we were Jewish only when someone on the street called us so," says Dina Tolstorukova, who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in Ukraine, and whose son is a tenth grader at the Moscow ORT school.

By contrast, her son Misha, 16, has spent every summer since he was 10 in a Jewish camp, and each school year going to Jewish clubs, celebrations and dances organized in Moscow by various Jewish groups. Misha's older sister went to Israel five years ago for high school and is now completing her two-year service in the Israeli army.
In Tolstorukov's situation, as in many others, the Jewish involvement of
the children is bringing the family back into the fold. Misha's example has
led his parents to take an active interest in Jewish life. Now they
celebrate Jewish holidays with the city's Jewish community. Misha's mother, in her late 40s, even started taking Hebrew lessons "just for herself."

Not everyone in school is as involved in Jewish activities as Misha is.
"Students take as much Judaism as they want," says Tolstorukov, who was recently circumcised and now sports a small knitted yarmulke. "The school does not require anything from you. It just awakens your interest and it's
up to you how much culture or religion you incorporate into your life."
The school's Jewish environment has a broad appeal. Masha Mogilevskaya, who graduated last year from the ORT school, says she most enjoyed what she terms "Jewish freedom." "There is a special atmosphere there that I haven't seen anywhere else," she said. "And its spirit stays with you even after you finish school."
This is by design, according to Leschiner. "Most of those who come to our school already know or feel something about their Judaism," he said. The importance of the school is to instill a positive sense of this
"something."
"We want our students to feel that they are not only a part of the Jewish
community here. We want them to feel connected to Israel," he says, noting that the school does many projects together with ORT Israel.
For the most part, the parents couldn't be more pleased. Natan Morakhovsky, a 46-year-old Moscow businessman whose daughter, Galina, is in tenth grade at the ORT school, says, "I feel how these kids are getting connected to what we were deprived of during Soviet times. And what is even more important, their Judaism is becoming a natural part of their life."
But old fears and prejudices die hard. Dina Tolstorukova says she sometimes feels uneasy seeing her son take open pride in his heritage. But she agrees that for her children, Judaism stopped being the trauma it was for three generations of Soviet Jews. "For our children's generation, Judaism is something very bright."