Tagged Former Soviet Union

Soviet immigration, once a bane of Germany’s Jews, has become their salvation

Children stick white roses into a Star of David sculpture at the construction site of a new synagogue in Potsdam, Germany, Nov. 9, 2018, the 80th anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom. (Bernd Settnik/AFP/Getty Images)
December 10, 2018 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

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 »

Temple Emanu-El celebrates b’nai mitzvah with a difference

Grey Schwartzberg (left) and his father, Gary, carry Torahs at their b’nai mitzvah ceremony on May 6 at Temple Emanu-El. (Courtesy Gary Schwartzman)
July 6, 2017 / Kaye Patchett, Special to the AJP

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 »

In Ukraine, new funds for survivors brings high — some say unrealistic — expectations
October 2, 2012 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA
Holocaust survivor Larisa Rakovskaya in her Odessa apartment, Sept. 14, 2012. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

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 »

Put Russian-speaking Jews on the community’s radar
May 4, 2012 / Misha Galperin, JTA

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
February 7, 2012 / Erika Dreifus, Jewish Ideas Daily

(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.
March 7, 2011
Project Kesher activists Elena Kalnitskaya, Svetlana Yakimenko, Olga Krasko and Vlada Bystrova pose outside a U.N. workshop in New York on Feb. 25, 2011. (Project Kesher)

(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 »