Home Archives for Life in the FSU Countries

Creating Community in Kiev

Posted on May 23, 2013 Written by Leave a Comment
Kiev Moishe House Pesach 2013; courtesy.

by Olga Bard Being a young Jewish adult in a city with many varied ways of spending your free time can easily leave you without a “Jewish” focus. That is why when Moishe House came to Kiev in September 2010, a quiet revolution started. It was the first time young adults were creating programs for their peers, offering a pluralistic space where everyone could find their Jewish identity and explore it in their own way. Moishe House has provided the Jewish hub and home base that neither I nor any of my Jewish friends had growing up. We come from a generation that learned about Jewish tradition at Hillel and JAFI summer camps, and then taught it to our parents. We never went to Jewish day school, but we did conduct hundreds of Shabbat services and Pesach Seders for kids and the elderly around … [Read more...]

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Claims Conference Considers Various Holocaust Commemorative Proposals

Posted on May 23, 2013 Written by Leave a Comment

On April 29, 2013, the Committee Memorializing Lost Jewish Culture and Heritage - revitalizing what formerly was known as the Memorial Committee - of the Claims Conference met in New York to consider various Holocaust commemorative proposals. Committee members attending the meeting or participating by telephone or video included the following; Amy Bressman, Sandra Cahn, Menachem Hacohen, Ben Helfgott, Judith Kaufthal, Mark Levin, Dan Mariaschin, David Marwell, Baruch Shub and Susie Stern. Julius Berman, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Claims Conference, as well as Claims Conference staff members - Greg Schneider, Dr. Wesley Fisher and Arie Bucheister - also participated. Chaim Chesler, Chairman of the Committee, had undertaken preliminary research with respect to the seven potential … [Read more...]

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Seeding Homegrown Innovators in St. Petersburg

Posted on May 19, 2013 Written by 2 Comments

by Katya Potapova St. Petersburg is the Paris of the North. Actually, it’s better. And colder. It boasts what we think is the world’s worst weather and what we know is the breathtaking White Nights. It is the most snobbish, vibrant and Western-leaning city in our enormous country. We, the locals, with our opulent architecture and great restaurants, still travel to Finland five times a year to do grocery shopping and because the Fins’ gloomy Northern Art Nouveau is worth seeing. We consider ourselves Europeans, but with a harder fortune, and although we consider leaving on every rainy day, the city has caught us and never sets us free. Our parents do not talk about the Shoah with us, not because it is difficult to find the words, but because they do not completely relate. That’s because … [Read more...]

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Philanthropic Freedom: If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It

Posted on May 19, 2013 Written by Leave a Comment
cgp

Hudson Institute's Center for Global Prosperity (CGP) has released Philanthropic Freedom: A Pilot Study, the first time ease of giving has been fully measured and compared across countries. The 13-country study fills a major gap in development policy and philanthropic research by surveying barriers and incentives to philanthropy in three main areas: the ease of registering and operating civil society organizations (CSOs); domestic tax policies for individual and corporate deductions, credits, and exemptions; and the ease of sending and receiving cash and in-kind goods across borders. India, South Africa, and Mexico have regulations and tax incentives conducive to philanthropy, yet the laws on the books are met with bureaucratic obstacles. While Brazil and Egypt have similar domestic tax … [Read more...]

Filed Under: In the Media, Life in the FSU Countries, Research

Reflections from Moscow

Posted on May 16, 2013 Written by

We need to move beyond offering just a gateway to the Jewish community and Judaism 101 experiences but also a way for young adults to continue growing Jewishly. by Yasha Moz Ten years ago I was a university student in Ekaterinburg, Russia. Studying international relations was good, but as a local Hillel activist at the time, my most memorable education came from my involvement in Jewish life. Working at Jewish camps, going on Birthright, learning about Judaism at Hillel seminars and then sharing it with my peers and the larger community made for a very busy but also incredibly rewarding time. Still to this day, the connections I made all over the FSU form the core of my social and professional networks. … [Read more...]

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Reflections: 20 Years of Hillel in the FSU

Posted on May 14, 2013 Written by

by Sanford R. Cardin In 1994, in the wake of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Charles and Lynn Schusterman seized upon what they determined was a window of opportunity to begin rebuilding a sense of community among those whose Jewish identities had been repressed by the twin forces of the Holocaust and state-supported persecution. The Schustermans had traveled to the region several times in the 1980’s to meet refuseniks, and they knew there was a generation of young adults, embracing new identities in the post-Soviet era, who wanted to learn about their Jewish heritage and reclaim the traditions that had been too far out of reach for far too long. … [Read more...]

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