The story of ORT in America began in 1922, but ORT started 42 years earlier. In 1880, most of the four million Jews living in Russia were required to live within a restricted area called “The Pale of Settlement.” Pogroms and poverty were rampant, and professions for Jews were limited. Three leaders in industry and science realized that vocational education was key to the survival of Russian Jewry. Samuel Poliakov, a railroad entrepreneur, and Baron Horace Günzburg, a founder of the St. Petersburg Jewish community along with Nikolai Bakst, a writer and professor of physiology at St. Petersburg University, successfully petitioned the Tsar to create Obshestvo Remeslennogo i Zemledelcheskogo Truda (The Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor), or ORT, which would provide education and training in practical occupations for Jews.
In the first 25 years of its existence, ORT helped Russian Jews with technical instruction and the tools needed to learn sewing, farming and electrical and automotive work. By 1921, ORT expanded its assistance to Jews, including those in Poland, Lithuania, Germany and Hungary. It trained people for industry and agriculture and added trades such as tailoring, shoemaking, locksmithing and carpentry.
From its inception, it was clear that fundraising was needed to continue ORT’s operations. In 1922, Leon Bramson, a Jewish activist, and Dr. Aron Syngalowski, a renowned Yiddish orator and thinker, went to the United States to establish American support. The American ORT Federation was formally launched with Jacob Panken as its first president and Louis B. Boudin as vice president.
Soon after its creation, the organization established the ORT Reconstruction Fund to help Eastern European Jews still recovering from WWI. It also received financial support from U.S. Jewish organizations (including the Joint Distribution Committee and The Workmen’s Circle) and attracted the interest of Jewish-American dignitaries such as New York’s Governor/Senator Herbert H. Lehman and Albert Einstein.
Women Proudly Carry the ORT Banner
Initially, the American organization was all male, but five years after its inception, Women’s American ORT (WAO) was founded in 1927 by the wives of the organization’s leaders, including Florence Dolowitz and Anna Boudin. WAO raised money via small events and grew to a point where in 1933, it put on a pageant called “Activities of ORT” at a Broadway theater, demonstrating the skills taught by ORT in different countries. Its purpose was to fundraise for 600 workshops in Poland, which trained 5,000 workers.
Miraculous ORT Work During WWII
With the rise of Nazi Germany and the start of WWII, ORT continued to maintain its training schools in Nazi-occupied territories. In fact, an ORT vocational high school stayed open in Berlin until 1943. With refugees fleeing for their lives, the organization intensified its efforts to meet their employment needs by creating training workshops and vocational schools for refugees in New York.
Recognizing its extraordinary capabilities, WAO established itself as an independent organization in 1940. Thus, as the Nazis conquered Europe, this devoted women’s organization funded refugee accommodations in France and vocational courses in Swiss internment camps. WAO also supported training workshops, remarkably still allowed to exist in Polish ghettos. This continued until the ghettos were dissolved and their inhabitants deported.
Life-changing Post-war American ORT Initiatives in the 1950s & ‘60s
By the end of the War, ORT was serving Displaced Persons (DPs) in Germany and throughout Europe, Israel and the U.S. In 1947, 267 ORT trade schools and workshops were functioning in 10 European countries. American supporters raised funds for these schools and employment training, opening the doors of opportunity and hope for Jews whose lives had been devastated by the Holocaust.
By the 1950s, funds were dedicated to the growing network of vocational and technical high schools in Western Europe, North Africa, Iran, India, Israel and the developing world. Later in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, ORT gave scholarships for teacher training, social assistance, medical care and school maintenance. In Israel, it established apprentice training centers and funded the Aron Syngalowski Centre in Tel Aviv, the first modern vocational institution in Israel.
Adapting to the Changing Times of the 1970s, ‘80s & ‘90s
Both the men’s and women’s organizations continued to grow, particularly WAO, which became World ORT’s largest and most successful fundraising arm. At its height, it had a dues-paying membership of 150,000 women in over 1,000 chapters across the United States.
As new Jewish immigrants arrived in the U.S. from Russia and Iran, WAO responded by supporting technical education schools and programs for these new immigrants. Among them: Bramson ORT Technical College in New York, Zarem-Golde ORT Technical Institute in Chicago, Los Angeles ORT Technical Institute and later, the David B. Hermelin ORT Resource Centre in the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Jewish Community Centre Michigan. Courses included ESL (English as a second language), robotics and computer science.
The New Millennium Heralds Landmark Growth and Change
After the fall of the Soviet Union, a major initiative called the Regeneration 2000 campaign focused on rebuilding and revitalizing Jewish communities, including those in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania.
And then, in a historic move in 2006, the American ORT and WAO formed a new entity – a single organization called ORT America. Today, with its eight regions across the United States, the organization remains at the forefront of funding 21st century technological training across the globe. ORT America now reaches 200,000 people a year in schools, universities, training programs and communities in more than 30 countries.
In Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America, ORT schools offer high-level STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses, providing young people with the ability to thrive through a technology-rich education together with Jewish studies. In Israel, ORT educates students from low socioeconomic backgrounds who benefit from afterschool programs in subjects such as robotics and cybersecurity. In recent years, a primary focus has been the Kfar Silver Youth Village in Israel’s south, where 915 students from under-resourced communities thrive. In South Africa, Greece and Ghana, ORT has many projects for struggling Jewish and non-Jewish communities.
ORT America has proven that it creates solutions for success and is committed to continuing its significant role in sustaining Jewish life today, as it did a century ago.
For more information, please visit ortamerica.org.
