Warsaw Jewish community group seeking younger members

ROME -- Warsaw's Jews have formally established an organized Jewish religious community, electing a board that for the first time in Poland includes women.

Five out of seven of the new board members were born after World War II, marking a significant change in the local Jewish leadership profile.

Prior to its creation this month, there was no official Jewish community operating in Warsaw.

Warsaw Jews instead came under the Warsaw-based Federation of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, the umbrella organization of the country's Jewish groups.

The new Warsaw community plans to broaden its scope of activities so that local operations will no longer be identified only with synagogue service and charity.

This strategy, founding members say, is aimed at attracting membership, particularly among young people.

Hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of Jews are believed to live in Warsaw, but religious activities previously drew mainly elderly Holocaust survivors.

Educational programs run by organizations such as the U.S.-based Ronald Lauder Foundation and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee attract hundreds of younger people, but most have no official affiliation.

"I hope the new bylaws, the new faces at the meeting, the new board, all mark a new beginning," said Stanislaw Krajewski, the American Jewish Committee's Poland consultant and a member of the board of the Federation of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland.

"We hope that a new profile of the [community] will be forged, so that educated Polish Jews will join. If we fail to attract more of the assimilated Jews we will not survive," he said.