There is something deeply special about celebrating the holidays with your loved ones and community. This year, **JCC Warsaw has the privilege to illuminate that holiday spirit by bringing together our community during Chanukah, at our 6-day Winter Family camp**. In a small village at the foot of the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, our Winter retreat provides **a safe space for nearly 200 of our members** to immerse themselves in a rich tapestry of **Jewish culture, traditions, and values.**

We get to bring together representatives of different generations from all corners of Poland to participate in these Jewish experiences together.**** Our camps equip the members with lasting memories, friendships rooted in shared experiences, and a love for Jewish traditions. **Our camps are an opportunity for the young and old to fall in love with Judaism and share their story.**

*“I spent a week in the mountains with the Polish Jewish community. It was the best time I had in a very long time. I felt understood, heard and welcomed as a part of something bigger than me (a community). For a few days I did not have to defend myself, hide, feel threatened or unwelcomed. It was clear that now we needed that more than ever. I am so so grateful to have this small but resilient network of people who understand what is truly going on and what's at stake.”*

Tadek, participant of our Family Camp

**Join us in empowering the Jewish Holiday experience in Poland and help us fund families in need:**

- **50 USD helps cover the transportation for an individual**
- **150 USD covers kosher catering for one family of four per day**
- **700 USD covers the fees for one participant**
- **2200 USD sends one family of four to our Family camp**

**Thank you for supporting the future of Jewish life in Poland!**

Send a family in need to a JCC Family Camp

We bring together people interested in exploring, defining, and redefining diverse Jewish identities.

JCC Warsaw is a safe, caring, people-driven and inclusive space which brings together community members and newcomers interested in exploring, defining and redefining diverse Jewish identities through informal Jewish education and Jewish culture. 
We encourage intergenerational connections and mutual responsibility.
We enable a sense of community accompanied by joy and trust.

The JCC Warsaw opened in October 2013 in response to the need observed within the Jewish community of Warsaw. We started our operations from running a few cultural and educational programs for children, families and adults, held at different cultural venues around Warsaw. For the past ten years we have had the pleasure to run activities at our JCC building and outside of it, offering over 20 regular programs, 3 annual sleep away camps and several special events.

In June 2021, by an initiative of a group of active members and lay leaders, JCC Warsaw was registered as an independent local Foundation. Becoming an independent organization has meant creating brand new organizational structure, bringing together capable professionals and both already engaged and emerging lay leaders. With the anniversary of the opening upcoming in October 2023, we are at the same time getting ready to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our operations and still working on building a self-sufficient, sustainable organizational structure. 

One thing that has not changed throughout the first decade of our activity is that our JCC, frequently called “our little home” by the members, is always open and welcoming for members of our community and their families and friends.
We embrace the community in its entirety, consisting of varied individual Jewish narratives. 
We honor all personal stories and emphasize the need of building new connections between all different members of the community.

JCC Warsaw proudly stands as the epicenter of Jewish connections, nurturing vibrant cross-generational relationships that form the bedrock of our community. Through a diverse range of activities and initiatives, we foster bonds that transcend age boundaries. In some cases we start with age-specific programming, which is the case of the Moadon kids' club that offers engaging activities blending Jewish values, culture, and fun, allowing children to explore their heritage in a joyful and interactive way. One of our dreams for the future is to expand Moadon's activities from weekly meetings to meeting also any time there is an adults event.
On some other occasions, we get to bring representatives of different generations to immerse in Jewish experiences together, for example coming from all corners of Poland to join our sleep away family camps. Both Camp Atid and family sleep-away camps equip our members with lasting memories, friendships rooted in shared experiences and a love for Jewish traditions.

Looking back at the first decade of our activity, JCC Warsaw, undoubtedly, has been keeping the Jewish spirit alive despite different hardships coming our way. With such a long Jewish history as the one of Polish Jewry, including the chapter of irreparable losses brought by the Shoah, followed by the communal life suppression under the communist regime, cultivating individual and collective Jewish identities has been no easy feat. While accommodating to the post-pandemic new normal, marked with the society wide trend of withdrawing from social life, we couldn't have seen what was to come in February 2022. 
Yet in the light of the invasion in Ukraine and the huge refugee crisis it has brought, both the local Jewish community and the wider Polish society have shown up to help out millions of Ukrainians fleeing war. 
Having experienced living as a minority and being driven by the value of tikkun olam - the Jewish concept of repairing what is broken in the world, right after the invasion we have opened the JCC doors to the Ukrainian refugee community and have been sharing our home ever since. Over a hundred families found a safe entry point to their new life in Warsaw thanks to the daycare for Ukrainian kids that we run daily, several hundreds made new connections with each other and with the local Jewish community members joining our kids, adults (focusing mostly on mothers) and family programming. No matter their Jewish background or lack thereof, welcoming new Varsovians coming from Ukraine has become part of our daily routine and despite the fact that the merging process between the “old” and “new” communities may take several years, we are ready and up for this challenge. 

Although we are still feeling absolutely heartbroken after the tragic events of October 7th, 2023 we are aware of the fact that our community needs us now, probably more than ever. We know that many of our members are experiencing loneliness and anxiety. In these trying times we want to reaffirm our mission of being a safe, caring, people-driven and inclusive space bringing people together. We offer a place where where people can talk to each other both about their differences and similarities. We are now opening our refugee daycare program also to the children of Israelis who are coming to Warsaw. As a Jewish community center in Warsaw we can firmly say that we are at our best when we are there for each other. 

JCC Warsaw Foundation

1048940678

Every.org is a nonprofit, so instead of charging fees they rely on the generosity of donors like you.

Choose a donation for Every.org

1258415673

1435915265

1737023302

We are a nonprofit, so instead of charging fees we rely on the generosity of donors like you.

1807908542

2074652487

2360520245

240751341

2516130445

2547000601

2624895975

2883383521

339774024

3605944885

3755280456

3794356679

3797661376

3868271524

3884515653

410756082

496574456

579816602

761293274

772217036

2729980760

3440869557

671754822

1014384873

1112422858

153399038

2028390811

203088037

220342792

2266630408

2456389719

2519810400

2539558839

2826465835

2843798242

2898624300

2916352438

3259439560

3583328878

3642494300

3902459442

4054861980

4136002033

4177183036

4250940449

585491400

641510716

91682487

Send a family in need to a JCC Family Camp

JCC Warsaw Foundation

Donors

JCC Warsaw Foundation