(Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Krivoi Rog, Donetsk, and Kyiv) Report of a ...

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57. The Simcha-Chabad Jewish Academy was established in 1992 by Berel Karasik,
then a Chabad-associated local leader in Kyiv. The two-building institution is located in
the Dniprovskiy district of the city, on the east bank of the Dnipr River. Simcha is
affiliated with Tsirei Chabad (Young Chabad), an Israel-based faction of the Chabad
movement. The school receives no financial assistance from Ohr Avner, the educational
arm of the Chabad-controlled Federation of Jewish Communities. The writer spoke with
Rabbi Mordechai Levenhartz, director of Tsirei Chabad programs in Ukraine, and his
wife Devorah, who is a teacher at Simcha.
Rabbi Levenhartz began the discussion by thanking the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Chicago for its gift enabling the school to install a security fence around school
property. He added that United Jewish Community of Ukraine, an indigenous
umbrella body, also had been helpful, purchasing security cameras and financing the
employment of better trained and more professional security guards. No antisemitic
graffiti had been scrawled on the buildings since these measures had been
implemented, said Rabbi Levenhartz. Hooligans no longer loitered in the vicinity of the
school; cigarette butts and narcotics
paraphernalia were no longer found on
school grounds. 82
Israelis Devorah and Rabbi Mordechai Levenhartz
are committed to maintaining the
Simcha school in the impoverished Dniprovskiy
neighborhood.
Photo: the writer.
Rabbi Levenhartz and Mrs. Devorah Levenhartz said that enrollment in the school
continues to decline, from 540 in 2007-2008 to 440 in 2008-2009 to 392 in 2009-2010,
and 255 in 2010-2011. However, the preschool census has risen somewhat, from 72 in
2009-2010 to 80 youngsters in 2010-2011. All pupils are Jewish according to the Law
of Return, that is, they have at least one Jewish grandparent. However, said Rabbi and
Mrs. Levenhartz, more children in the preschool and lower grades are halachically
Jewish because the school started to check family documents more carefully about five
years ago. They had noticed, they continued, that some children seemed to be entering
Simcha under false pretenses, their parents claiming Jewish ancestry when there was
none. The character of the school was changing as a result. The school is a “magnet”
82 The school, which is located in an impoverished area, had been the site of severe antisemitic attacks,
including arson and crude daubing on school walls. See the writer’s 2010 report, April 2010 in Ukraine,
pages 58-60.
A school secretary also thanked the writer, observing that she no longer was compelled to walk through a
forest of drug syringes and other narcotics materials on her way into the school building every morning.