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Vilniaus Šolomo Aleichemo ORT gimnazija

Vilnius, Lithuania · est. 1989 · State

Illustration · Vilnius

The Vilnius Sholom Aleichem ORT Gymnasium is Lithuania's only state Jewish school. It was founded on 2 October 1989 on the initiative of the then Ministry of Education, with support from the Jewish Agency for Israel, in memory of a pre-war Jewish school in Kaunas; today its founder is the Vilnius City Council. The first intake, in the 1990-1991 school year, was 16 students in a single class; by 2000-2001 the school had 204 students across grades 1-11, by 2019-2020 it had 458, and according to 2021-2023 data it had 522 students. In 2002 the school held its first graduating class of Jewish students in more than 60 years, in 2012 its secondary-education programme was accredited, and in 2013 it was reorganised into a gymnasium and took the name 'ORT', after the international Jewish education network ORT, which supports its STEAM programmes. The institution includes a kindergarten with pre-school and pre-primary groups and a gymnasium spanning grades 1 to 12. Instruction is in Lithuanian; Hebrew, English, French and Russian are taught as additional languages. The school is secular, not religious: alongside the general curriculum it teaches Jewish history, tradition and culture, marks Jewish holidays (including a weekly Shabbat), and runs projects such as 'Bar-Bat Mitzvah', 'My Roots', and exchanges with Israeli schools. After-school activities include ceramics, Lego, the 'SMEICHL' choir, the 'Simcha' dance studio, a drama studio, a science lab called 'Varniuko laboratorija', a Kyokushin karate section, a physics club, individual violin lessons, a Jewish holidays and traditions club, an art studio, two robotics sections (EV3 and Arduino), and basketball.