The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation

Lauder Javne Jewish Community School, Kindergarten, Music and Art School, Budapest

2011-12-14T12:05:46Z

The Lauder Javne Jewish Community School and Kindergarten was opened in 1990, immediately after the political transition in Hungary. This event marked the return of a Jewish presence in Central Europe.

The school is located in the capital of Hungary, Budapest. It is the largest Jewish Community institution focusing on education in Central and Eastern Europe. The school offers Jewish education and challenging academic programs to close to 600 children every year.

The Lauder Javne School was founded by a group of Jewish intellectuals and parents in 1990. Six years later in 1996, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation financed a new Lauder Javne facility on a five-acre site in the Buda hills. The municipality of Budapest made it possible for us to rent the land free for 99 years.

The school campus contains classrooms, a synagogue, a sports center, a library with 12.000 books, a computer center and rooms for the Music and Art School. In 1997, the Foundation acquired a beautiful old building adjacent to The Lauder Javne School to serve as The Lauder Javne Jewish Community Kindergarten.

Lauder graduates from the past 20 years have matured and grown into responsible young adults, and have succeeded in many different fields like science, engineering, law or art. They have remained connected to Jewish traditions and celebrate Jewish holidays together even many years after they had finished their studies at the Lauder School. Their connection to the School stays alive through our Alumni organization. In recent years we gladly welcomed children of our former graduates to our kindergarten and first grade classes.

MISSION STATEMENT:

Efficient indication of values on the base of the Jewish tradition and application of the knowledge in multicultural surrounding.

Our values

to get to know different Jewish approaches, trends by the end of their studies
our students became familiar with the Jewish tradition
learning must be an enjoyable process that comes naturally to all children
high value is placed on personal effort, honesty, responsibility and achievement
to develop learning and listening skills, necessary for lifelong learning
students are challenged to comprehend and respond analytically to written and oral communication
to be competent at critical and analytical thinking and to be pro-active problem solvers
students learn to have an open mind towards local and global environment

We provide a quality Jewish education in a caring environment in the following levels:

Preschool / Kindergarten
Elementary school
Middle school
High school
Music School

We offer:

knowledge, experience with positive emotion in practicing Jewish tradition
Individual program for gifted and talented students
English Plus - program for bilingual children
Special program for developing logic skills
Hebrew, English, French, Spanish languages
Special certificates in photography and graphic design
Extracurricular Projects in different fields eg. in information technology, multimedia studies, film making and editing, sound recording, digital technology
Sports, Art, Student Club, Music Club
Community events with families, excursions, camps

Want to Get Involved?
We welcome everybody who wants to develop the academic, social, and artistic skills that are necessary to continue their studies and live a happy and successful Jewish life.

Address: H-1121 Budapest, Budakeszi út 48.
Telephone: 36-1-275 2240
Fax: 36-1-275 2610
E-mail: javne@lauder.hu
Web: www.lauder.hu
English site: http://eng.lauder.hu

]]>

Ronald Lauder´s Jewish Kindergarten, Prague

2010-12-13T11:11:26Z

Lauder Business School, Vienna

2010-12-13T11:09:29Z

Children Enjoying The Chanukah Lights

2010-12-13T11:08:31Z

Beginning The New Year

2010-12-13T10:41:39Z

Children Gathered Round the Torah

2010-12-13T10:24:02Z

Orthodox Jewish Community Takes Hold in Berlin

2010-03-23T19:05:05Z

BERLIN (AP) -- When American Rabbi Joshua Spinner moved to Berlin's trendy Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood a decade ago, there were no other Jews to be seen.

Now when the sun sets on a Friday night, dozens of Jewish men clad in traditional Shabbat garb with big black hats and dark long coats walk down the streets past hip coffee shops, chic boutiques and tiny art galleries to attend services at Rykestrasse synagogue.

''When my wife and I arrived here in 2000, we were the only Jews around. There was nobody to invite for Shabbat dinner,'' the rabbi recalled over a cappuccino at kosher Cafe Rado, just down the street from the Jewish kindergarten.

He's in the middle of a thriving orthodox Lauder Yeshurun community of young immigrants mostly from the former Soviet Union. Members say its believers are more actively celebrating their faith than their oppressed parents and grandparents and moving forward from the traumatic past of Judaism in the country.

There about 200 believers now and it's growing fast: There are several weddings a year and the nursery school has become so overcrowded that parents have to register their children soon after birth if they want to get one of the coveted spots.

Spinner, 39, who was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in Canada, speaks fluent Russian and good German, as well. He helped build the tightly knit community in Prenzlauer Berg and is also the vice president for the American Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, which supports the Yeshurun community financially and is committed to rebuilding Jewish life in Eastern and Central Europe that was destroyed in the Holocaust.

Unlike many Jewish institutions elsewhere in Germany where the focus is on the past, members say Yeshurun is firmly rooted in the present and focused on the future.

''In many other Jewish places in Germany, there's a sadness, it's all about the past,'' said Rabbi David Rose, the director of the congregation's yeshiva where young men study Judaism's traditional texts. ''Here we have a lot of students, it's all very alive.''

Most members are in their 20s and 30s and among more than 200,000 ex-Soviet Jews who were let into the country after the German government relaxed immigration laws for Jews following reunification in 1990.

Genia Novominska was 10 years old when her family left Kiev, Ukraine, for Germany.

''For my parents' generation Judaism did not exist,'' said Novominska, now 22 and one of 20 students at the Yeshurun community's midrasha, or institute of Jewish studies for women. ''Under communism they would have gone to prison just for lighting the candles on Shabbat.''

Novominska, however, was curious to find out more about her Jewish roots and as a teenager attended an introductory weekend seminar by the Lauder Foundation. The seminars are held regularly in several German cities.

''First I stopped eating pork, then I became more and more observant of Jewish rules and now I'm recruiting Jewish girls for Lauder myself,'' Novominska said. While her parents remain secular, she said they did not mind their daughter's growing spirituality.

On a recent Saturday morning, Novominska led a group of visiting Jewish girls from all over Germany to the morning prayer at Rykestrasse synagogue and then introduced them to typical Shabbat dishes like from hamin, a long-simmered stew with beef, hard-boiled eggs, beans and potatoes, and kugel, a casserole made from sliced potatoes.

Active recruiting among young Eastern European Jewish immigrants is one of the secrets for Yeshurun's success and fast-growing membership. The other one involves matchmaking between the yeshiva's boys and the girls from the midrasha, which was originally in Frankfurt in west Germany before it moved to Berlin in 2006.

''The move was totally deliberate and it worked out,'' Spinner said. ''We had 13 weddings in the first year after the girl's midrasha moved to Berlin.''

Today, Berlin's Yeshurun community has become a center for orthodox Jewish life and learning in Germany. It boasts a rabbinical seminar, a yeshiva for boys, a midrasha for girls, a kindergarten, an elementary school and an entire economic network that has popped up to serve them, including a kosher grocery, a cafe and a bakery.

''It's just like a shtetl inside Berlin,'' said Novominska, referring to Jewish small town culture in 19th century Eastern Europe.

On a regular weekday morning, between 30 to 35 male students attend the yeshiva, reading and discussing the Talmud as they sit in the community center's study room, heads covered with yarmulkes. Two young men from the seminar were ordained as rabbis last year and six more are on track for ordination until 2012.

According to experts' studies, about 10 percent of the second generation of Jewish immigrants have turned to orthodox Judaism.

''There's a trend, you can see it in Israel as well, that Eastern European Jews, if they return to their roots, they do it all the way and very thoroughly,'' said Olaf Gloeckner from the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam.

Olga Afanasev, who emigrated from Kiev at age 15 and now heads the full-time program at the girls' midrasha, even noticed ''a whole wave of adolescents who are now becoming religious.''

The number of religious and secular Jews is still a far cry from Germany's flourishing Jewish community of 560,000 -- and its cultural and intellectual prominence -- before the Third Reich. Some 6 million European Jews were killed in the Nazi genocide, including 200,000 from Germany.

Today, around 250,000 Jews live in Germany. Berlin has the country's biggest Jewish community with 11,000 registered religious community members and 10 synagogues. Experts estimate between 20,000 to 30,000 Jews, including Americans and Israelis, live in the German capital.

Despite the religion's recent re-emergence in Germany, many Jews still feel the need to take precautions against anti-Semitism.

All Jewish institutions have 24-hour police guards and metal barriers, and Spinner has asked the congregation's men to hide their kippas with baseball caps when they're outside.

''Our goal is not to prove that Prenzlauer Berg is a Jewish neighborhood,'' said Spinner. ''We want Jewish life to become normal and it will become normal again just by us living it.''

------

On the Net:

http://www.lauderyeshurun.de

Note: This piece was originally published by the NY Times.

]]>

Our Work in Austria

2010-03-22T05:15:22Z

Imperial palaces still line the broad boulevards. Statues of Brahms and Beethoven tower above fountains. Elegant gardens designed centuries ago stand between columned museums. Vienna's architecture is timeless, but Nazi destruction drained the soul of the city, eradicating the great Jewish presence that once illuminated its culture and splendor.

The Jewish flame that burned brightly here for centuries was almost extinguished. But not quite.

In the years since the Holocaust, Vienna's Jewish life has reemerged in multifaceted form thanks to the thousands of Russian Jews who have settled in Austria. Ronald S. Lauder first discovered this remarkable reawakening in 1987, when he visited a cramped, two-room Chabad School for children from the Soviet Union. Even though their parents had been denied access to Judaism for decades, here were a handful of youngsters learning Hebrew, studying Talmud and taking part in their own religious services. He was so impressed that he immediately decided to support this program. Today, The Lauder Chabad School has grown to include a pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, primary and secondary school.

Not only does The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation continue to provide annual operating funds, but in recognition of the profound success of The Lauder Chabad School, the Foundation agreed to construct and furnish a new building to house the growing numbers of students. Thus, in September 1999, the Foundation celebrated the opening of a beautiful Lauder Chabad School building designed by the widely acclaimed European architect Professor A. Krischanitz. Located on the edge of the renowned Augarten Park, the new facility occupies land made available by the Municipality of Vienna.

The Lauder Chabad School can accommodate up to 400 children and has a current enrollment of 350. The curriculum, designed to develop proud, informed young Jews, focuses on the creative teaching of Hebrew, Talmud, and Jewish history in addition to high-level secular studies. State-of-the-art computer technology is available and afternoon sports programs are conducted daily. To further its positive impact, the School's facilities are also available to non-Jewish neighborhood children, who can utilize the spacious library and participate in a variety of after-school programs.

During the summer months, The Lauder Chabad School becomes a day camp with activities that combine sports and arts and crafts with Jewish tradition. Throughout the year, the School provides evening courses and cultural programs for parents so they can share in their children's discovery of Judaism.

In 1997, The Lauder Chabad School proudly announced the establishment of a pedagogical training academy. Created by a team of educators in conjunction with the Israeli and Austrian Ministries of Education, the program prepares young adults, including graduates of The Lauder Chabad School, to be pre-school and elementary school teachers.

As Jews arrived from the far corners of the collapsed Soviet Union-- from Bukhara, Georgia and Caucasia-- it became clear that their special needs could not be addressed within the city's traditionally Ashkenazic communal structures. Working in conjunction with the Vienna Jewish community, we proudly helped to build and continue to support The Sephardic Synagogue and Community Center, which houses two separate synagogues for the Bukharan and Georgian traditions. Connecting the two houses of prayer is The Lauder Social Hall -- frequently the venue for weddings, Bar Mitzvah celebrations, educational programs and lectures.

The Sephardic Synagogue and Community Center has become one of the liveliest hubs of activity in Vienna. Passersby can hear the sounds of Jewish life resounding from within -- children singing, choirs rehearsing and congregants chanting the weekly Torah portion. This rapidly growing Russian Jewish segment of the community is adding a vital and colorful new dimension to Vienna's Jewish population.

The Educator's Network of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation provides a unique forum for Jewish teachers, principles and educators of the more than 52 Kindergartens, primary, middle and high schools that the Foundation supports and sponsors throughout Eastern and Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union.

The Educator's Network has already sponsored several Tal AM/Tal Sela training sessions for Hebrew and Jewish study teachers and will offer other opportunities for professionals to meet, learn and develop pedagogical and communal programs which will help meet the ever-growing needs of Jewish Students, their families and communities throughout the region.

]]>

Ronald Lauder Visits Girls' School

2010-03-22T02:56:01Z

Ronald Lauder Shakes Student Hands

2010-03-22T02:55:58Z

Ronald Lauder Shakes Boy's Hand

2010-03-22T02:55:53Z

Ronald Lauder with Children

2010-03-22T02:52:24Z