2016 Annual Assessment

Religious orientation within the community has strengthened with each successive generation, and since the 1981 communal elections this trend is also reflected in the communal leadership. This, together with the increased sense of having settled, led to a marked expansion of communal infrastructure and a more vital Jewish life. From the 1980s educational institutions for the general community have started to open.

Reflecting Vienna Jewry’s Orthodox orientation, cultural pluralism and increased interest in Judaism, Vienna’s Jewish infrastructure today includes 18 synagogues and prayer rooms, five Jewish elementary and high schools ,Talmud-Torah schools, the Vienna Yeshiva, a Jewish business school (the Lauder Business School is the first and only Jewish university in continental Europe), a Jewish Vocational Training Center, a Jewish teachers’ training academy, and other educational institutions. There is also a center for Jewish arts and music, a community center, the Sephardi Center, two ritual baths, the Ezra psycho-social center, a retirement home, an extensive kosher infrastructure (11 restaurants, 10 supermarkets and bakeries, 4 butchers), five kashrut authorities, and an eruv.

Together with establishing Jewish infrastructure, the IKG also began to open up toward the general Austrian population. It put increasing weight on informing the Austrian population about Judaism, showing them Jewish life in Vienna, and stressing the role of Vienna’s Jewish community in Austrian cultural life. It established the Jewish Institute for Adult Education (1989), which caters mainly to a non-Jewish audience.

JPPI

Action Strategies for the Jewish Future

2016 Annual Assessment

Annual Assessment 2016
5776