"Orach Hayim" school №299
Day school
About the school
The Jewish School 299 (“Orach Hayim”) was founded on December 4, 1990, due to the efforts of the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Yakov-Dov Bleich who convinced the late Soviet authorities to open a Jewish day school in Kiev. It became the first Jewish school in the European part of the Soviet Union. For 30 years of its history, “Orach Hayim” used to be a gymnasium, a combined boarding school, and today is functioning in the upgraded format of “educational complex”. However, every structural change gave a new push to the institution’s development and professional growth.
Orach Hayim is not just a school, it’s a loving family, with its own customs and traditions that are being thoroughly kept and transferred to every new generation of pupils. Our students are kind and educated, friendly and cheerful, the school has an excellent teaching staff. We are always together – in class, at recess, at a holiday, on Shabbat, in a camp. Our graduates remember with gratitude the years of study, keep in touch with us, help, come to visit and on holidays, and most importantly – send their children to study at the school that had become their pathway to the Jewish life.
About the community
The Kiev Jewish community "Orakh Chaim" developed around the famous Synagogue in Podil (Shchekavitskaya str. 29) – the only synagogue in Kiev that continued to operate after World War II. The revival of the community was led by the family of the young Rabbi Yakov Dov Bleich (since 1992 – Chief Rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine, President of the Union of Jewish Religious Organizations of Ukraine). The community's activities today include the synagogue, a school and a kindergarten, a kolel, a training center named after V. Shifrin, a cultural center named after V. L. Rodnyanskaya, a mikvah, a matso-bakery, the only Jewish hotel in Kiev, a recreation camp "Mahane Shuva". During 2001–2003, the synagogue building was fully reconstructed.
