Limmud FSU announced this week that the upcoming Limmud FSU conference in Belarus, planned for this June, will feature a special event in memory of the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon whose parents were born in Belarus. The conference is planned to take place in his father’s hometown of Brest and official representation from both the Belarus and Israeli governments is expected. According to Limmud FSU co-founders Chaim Chesler and Sandra Cahn, 700 Russian-speaking young adults from across Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and the Baltic states will attend.

Sharon’s parents were Shmuel Scheinerman (1896-1956) from Brest-Litovsk and Vera Scheinerman (1900-1988) from Mogilev; both towns are in what was then Belorussia and is now Belarus. The family immigrated to mandatory Palestine in 1922 in the wake of the growing persecution of Jews in the region and settled in the agricultural village of Kfar Malal in the Sharon plain.

Limmud FSU operates programs in eight countries and this will be the second Limmud FSU conference to be held in Belarus. The first was held in Vitebsk, the birth place of Marc Chagall, and honored the memory of two other prominent Israeli leaders, both of whom were also born in Belorussia: Prime Minister Menachem Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk one hundred years ago, and President Shimon Peres, in the town of Vishneyeva, 90 years ago.