Recife May Lose Jewish School

Serving a Jewish community of just 1,400 and saddled with nearly US$250,000 in debt, the Colégio Israelita Moysés Chvarts could be forced to close at the end of the next term if administrators cannot find a way to reverse the financial slide. “We’ve been able to operate thanks to a miracle,” says Principal Marcelo Kozmhinsky, who doubles as the Jewish Culture teacher. “We’ve done it exclusively with resources from the community.”

Home to the Kahal Zur Israel, the first synagogue in the Americas, founded in 1637, Recife played a key role in Jewish history in the New World. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Iberian Jews fled the Inquisition to Recife and elsewhere in northeastern Brazil. When Holland seized the town for more than two decades in the mid-17th century, many Jews from Amsterdam moved there. When the Portuguese again conquered it, some of them escaped to New York, forming the first Jewish community there.

The core of the today’s community traces its roots to early 20th century Ashkenazim immigrants from Russia and Romania. They founded the school 85 years ago. In the early years, instruction was in Yiddish. Today the school offers courses in Jewish history and culture and Hebrew in addition to the standard secular curriculum.

The school hosts celebrations of all major Jewish holy days. Attendance has reached as high as 350. “That’s a pretty high percentage,” beams Kozmhinsky.

“This school is not like other schools. It is the only institution in this community,” says Rabbi Avraham Amitay. With support from the Jewish Agency for Israel, Amitay arrived from Israel last year, making him the first contemporary rabbi to reside in the city, he says. “I looked for a central place to work, and I settled on the school,” he says. Recife lacks a functioning synagogue (the restored 17th century building serves as a cultural center open to tourists), so Amitay adapts a classroom for Friday evening Kabbalat Shabbat.

More than such services, parents appreciate the religious instruction provided to their children. “My wife is also Jewish, but she didn’t want to send our daughter to the school because we live 30-40 minutes away,” says Ismar Kaufman. When their first-grader proved able to chant the Friday Shabbat prayers at home for the first time, Kaufman’s wife too was convinced. “It was heart warming,” says the father.

The school’s economic decline has tracked a downward trend in enrollment from a peak of 350 to the current 126. Numbers have dropped due to assimilation, an exodus by the middle class away from the area around the school to upscale beach neighborhoods, and because of out-migration to Israel and major Brazilian urban centers like São Paulo.

Brazil’s economic woes, especially in the drought-stricken, impoverished northeastern region where Recife lies, has reduced the middle class’s ability to pay private school tuition. Recife’s unemployment rate stood at 22.7% in March, according to DIESSE, a labor-funded think tank. At over US$250 a month, the school’s tuition is high by Brazilian standards – about 50% more expensive than other top private institutions in Recife, according to Kaufman. The school offers an introductory rate of about US$180 a month for new students. Most children receive “scholarships” – a euphemism for discounts because the school has no scholarship fund to tap to make up the difference.

With tuition hikes limited by the market, the school turned with some success to wealthier members of the community. Still, three years ago officials had to close the high school. Last year the administration began for the first time to actively recruit non-Jews for its remaining preschool, elementary and middle school programs. “At the end of every year, there’s uncertainty about the following year,” says Kaufman.

Albeit with no obvious solution is at hand, community leaders refuse to lose faith. Says Boris Berenstein, president of the Pernambuco State Israelite Federation: “We can’t let this community die. We have to invest in our present – and in our future.”

Visit the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in Recife

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