MUNICH (JTA) — Weeks after they emigrated from Russia and moved to Germany, the Nedlin family sought to join the local Jewish community. Registering for membership in a Jewish community — a practice common in European countries — was a significant step for the Nedlins, who before emigrating in 1992… Read more »
Tagged Former Soviet Union
A video from JFSA’s partners at the JDC
Contributions to the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Community Campaign help support the JDC — and a variety of other causes in Tucson, Israel, and around the world.… Read more »
Temple Emanu-El celebrates b’nai mitzvah with a difference
A bar or bat mitzvah brings families together in a special way. In recent months, three Temple Emanu-El members with interfaith backgrounds created new family traditions as they demonstrated their commitment through this age-old rite of passage. A father and son celebrated a joint b’nai mitzvah, and the son of… Read more »
Two decades on, Russian immigrants a rare case of successful aliyah
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Growing up in the Urals, Pavel Polev was a precocious ice skater and a member of the Soviet Union’s national youth figure-skating team. But in 1992, at age 15, Polev’s life was upended when he joined the massive wave of Jews immigrating to Israel from… Read more »
In Ukraine, new funds for survivors brings high — some say unrealistic — expectations
ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) — In her dilapidated apartment, Larisa Rakovskaya examines a stack of unpaid heating bills. Sick and alone, the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor and widow is preparing for another encounter with the cold, her “worst and only fear.” Rakovskaya says her hope of staying warm this winter lies… Read more »
Moldovan Jews struggle to maintain their historic community amid poverty, anti-Semitism
CHISINAU, Moldova (JTA) — To tour the largely empty Jewish communities of Moldova and its capital, Chisinau — once known by Jews the world over as Kishinev — is not to wonder where did all the Jews go but why there are any remaining. Overgrown cemeteries are all that… Read more »
Put Russian-speaking Jews on the community’s radar
NEW YORK (JTA) — With the contemporary music world buzzing about Regina Spektor’s upcoming album more than a month before its release, I cannot help but think about the young musician’s rise in the context of Russian-speaking Jewry. Spektor, who came to the United States with her parents when… Read more »
The unhappy medium
(Jewish Ideas Daily) — Some days, I think back 25 years to my high-school French course, where I first encountered the concept of the juste milieu — the happy medium — and the difficulty of achieving it. Why is it so elusive? Why do I often feel caught betwixt… Read more »
FSU Jewish women take women’s case to U.N., D.C.
(JTA) — When Elena Kalnitskaya of Ukraine talked about her organization’s women’s empowerment projects at a United Nations conference last month, she was presenting the face of social progress in her country. And she was doing it as a Jewish woman — not unusual, perhaps, for an American participant… Read more »