The organization’s founding fathers were Nikolai Bakst, Baron Horace de Gunzburg and Samuel Poliakov.
Together with several influential members of the St Petersburg Jewish community, they obtained permission to form ORT, a “charitable fund for a useful purpose”, in honour of the Tsar’s 25th anniversary.
The name “ORT” was coined from the acronym of the Russian words “Obshestvo Remeslennogo i zemledelcheskogo Truda”, meaning “The Society for Trades and Agricultural Labour”.
ORT distributed funds to Jewish schools for handicraft and agricultural training and provided grants or loans to artisans and farmers. In the early 1900s the organization began to sponsor cooperative ventures, to support training programs in Jewish schools and to establish its own vocational schools.
Click here to view the ORT entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica published by the MacMillan Company, Volume 12, 1971 by Keter Publishing House Limited
To learn more about our history, click here.
ORT Montreal
250-5165 Queen Mary Rd.
Montreal, QC, H3W 1X7
Tel: 514-481-2787
Toll-Free: 1-866-481-2787
Email: info@ortmontreal.org
ORT Toronto
272 Codsell Ave
Toronto, ON, M3H 3X2
Tel: 416-787-0339
Toll-Free: 1-866-991-3045
Email: info@ort-toronto.org
World ORT Headquarters
126 Albert Street
London, NW1 7NE, United Kingdom, ORT.org
Tel: +44 (0)20 7446 8500
Email: wo@ort.org
Website: https://ort.org/en/
ORT Vancouver
570 - 4105 Arbutus Street
Vancouver, B.C. V6L 0C5
Tel: 604-569-0484
Email: maryt@ortcanada.org
ORT Archive Offers Access to Historical Documents and Images
World ORT has launched a digital archive which aims to preserve historical records of the organization’s activities and to place them in the context of contemporary Jewish history.
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ORT Canada, Registered Charity Number 118834910.
272 Codsell Ave, Toronto, ON, M3H 3X2
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