THE OZAR HATORAH ORG.

OZAR HATORAH
Ozar Hatorah (Hebrew: אוצר התורה, "treasure of Torah") is an organization for Orthodox Jewish education founded in 1945. Originally operating in Israel, it later focused on religious Jewish education in Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as on the Sephardi communities in France, establishing schools, teaching both religious and secular subjects. The organization is financed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, local communities, and private individuals. In 1945, Isaac Shalom from New York City together with Joseph Shamah of Jerusalem and Ezra Teubal of Buenos Aires, concerned about what they saw as Jewish spiritual decline and intellectual impoverishment, founded Ozar Hatorah as a non-profit organization in Jerusalem under the chairmanship of Joseph Shamah. The organization began its work with an investigation of Jewish communities in several Arab countries and Palestine, with the aim of providing good teaching, food, and medical care.
In this truncated Jewish world, attention focused on the Sephardic communities of North Africa and the Middle East. At the time, 1940’s and 1950’s, there were about one million Jews living in from Morocco on the Atlantic to Iran in the Persian Gulf. These were ancient communities, heirs to a glorious tradition. The golden days of Sephardic culture took place when Arab civilization was in the ascendant. The decline of that civilization took its toll on the Jewish communities living in its midst. By the middle of the 20th century these communities were stagnating in a cultural and economic backwater
In 1940, Isaac Shalom formed the committee to save these "Forgotten Million." Five years later, the first official committee for Ozar Hatorah was set up in Jerusalem under the chairmanship of Mr. Joseph Shamah.

The concept of Ozar Hatorah began to emerge in the aftermath of the Holocaust, as the full dimensions of that unspeakable horror became known to the Jewish people and their spiritual leaders. Fully one third of world Jewry was wiped out, and, with them, the great centers of Jewish learning in Eastern Europe which had been nurtured for many centuries. Many of the brightest stars in the firmament of Jewish culture were forever extinguished.

It was in one of their centers for learning in Toulouse, France where a deadly terrible shooting took place on March 19, 2012

http://www.shemayisrael.com/orgs/ozar/story_frame.htm