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Life in the FSU Countries

Tel Aviv on the Black Sea: Odessa, the Cradle of Israeli Culture, Enjoys a Jewish Renaissance

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By Rebecca Greig Haaretz.com If you know where to look, the ghosts of Odessa’s Jewish past are everywhere, haunting and playful: in the pizza restaurant blaring “Hava Nagila” across from the Potemkin Steps; in the forshmak (chopped herring), tzimmes and gefilte fish served in the city’s oldest eating establishments; in the Jewish jokes and Yiddish words that pepper local patois; to the sign above an overgrown courtyard that reads “The State … [Read more...] about Tel Aviv on the Black Sea: Odessa, the Cradle of Israeli Culture, Enjoys a Jewish Renaissance

ORT Russia Expands Out of the Classroom

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ORT Russia has partnered with J-Camp, a leading Jewish Summer camp in the Moscow region, founded and supported by Genesis Philanthropy Group. Together they opened the first ORT Robotics Lab in one of their summer camps. Throughout the duration of J-Camp, kids aged 6-10 who have chosen to work in the lab learned how to construct and program their own robots and solve basic and advanced robotics exercises, under the direction of Mikhail Dichenko … [Read more...] about ORT Russia Expands Out of the Classroom

EnerJew Grand Shabbaton Rocks Belarus

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(FJC-CIS) A unique event marked the end of the season for the EnerJew Jewish youth movement this year. About 250 movement activists from 41 FSU cities gathered in Minsk, the capital of Belarus for the 5-day Grand Shabbaton seminar last week. Belarus is known for its rich history of Eastern European Jewry and the seminar’s organizers used the location as a kick-off point for the event’s general theme - “Explore Your Roots, History and … [Read more...] about EnerJew Grand Shabbaton Rocks Belarus

Jewish Ukraine after Maidan

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[This essay is from Contact, a publication of The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. Reprinted with permission.] By Josh Tapper Aaron Kaganovskiy had lived in the coastal city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine for nearly six peaceful years before the fighting began. One day in the early months of 2014, he noticed that the Ukrainian flags once flying above the city had been burned, replaced by those of Russia. Constant mortar shelling … [Read more...] about Jewish Ukraine after Maidan

Bringing Israel Studies to Russia

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Israel Institute and Genesis Philanthropy Group partner to bring a course on modern Israel to Russia’s leading international studies university By Noa Levanon Klein Last month, representatives of the Israel Institute, Genesis Philanthropy Group, the Israeli embassy, and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) gathered to celebrate a successful run of the Russian university’s first-ever dedicated course on Israel. The … [Read more...] about Bringing Israel Studies to Russia