RJC Monitor - 05.29.2002

 

The Russian Jewish Congress




Information Bulletin # 10 

US President George W. Bush Meets With the Full Spectrum of Russian Jewish Leadership

On May 26th, US President George W. Bush met with the leadership of Russia's major Jewish organizations in the St. Petersburg Choral Synagogue. Mr. Bush and his delegation - which included First Lady Laura Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice - met with both secular and religious leaders, representing the entire spectrum of organized Jewish life in Russia. Earlier in the month, during meetings with high-level White House and State Department officials in Washington, Russian Jewish Congress President Eugene Satanovsky urged that the President meet with Russian Jewry in all of its diversity. The meetings, which were organized by NCSJ, Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia, led to pluralistic representation in St. Petersburg for the Bush visit. In addition to Dr. Satanovsky, Evgeniya Lvova (Executive Vice President of the St. Petersburg RJC affiliate) was in attendance - as were the Chief Rabbis of Russia, Avram Shayevich (KEROOR) and Beryl Lazar (FEOR); executive vice president of KEROOR and a veteran of the Reform movement in Russia, Rabbi Grigory Kotlyar; the Rabbi of Moscow's Polyakov Synagoge and a native of St. Petersburg, Yitzchak Kogan; head of the Russian representative office of the Anti-Defamation League, Alexander Axelrod; executive vice president of FEOR, Valery Engel; the Chief Rabbi of St. Petersburg, Menachem Mendel Pevzner; and chairman of the St. Petersburg Religious Community, Mark Grubarg.

A New Level of Parnership Among Russian Jewish Communal Organizations

On May 24th and 25th, in Novosibirsk, Jewish businessmen and women came together for a forum on Business and Philanthropy. The forum was organized by the Inter-Regional Association of Chesedim in Russia, with support from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Rosenwald Institute for the study of Social Work, and the Novosibirsk-based community center "Chesed Hatikvah".

The forum was designed to help Jewish professionals make deeper connections to their Jewish heritage - and to integrate them into Jewish communal life. Participants came from towns in the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East - including Ekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kemerova, Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Orenburg, Birobidzhan, and Novosibirsk. The most popular seminars included "The Role of Businessmen in Communal Life," (V. Gordin), "Jewish Solidarity: What Does it Mean?" (Y. Aberdzhil), "Businessmen in Israeli Life (A. Fuks), and "Siberia's Most Successful Philanthropists" (Y. Kaufman).

Yury Raskin, RJC's Vice President for Regional Affairs, led two seminars: one on the elements of fundraising and one on the Jewish Internet Club as a resource for Jewish businessmen.

Seminars on Domestic Violence in Tula and Voronezh

The Jewish communities of Tula and Voronezh held training seminars on domestic violence and the role of the religious community during the first few weeks of May. The seminars are part of a U.S. State Department funded advocacy project to combat domestic violence in Russia. The project undertaken jointly by NCSJ, Jewish Women International, Russian Jewish Congress and Project Kesher focuses on the Jewish community with the goal of creating models that can be replicated by other faith communities and Jewish communities around the country.The seminars attracted a wide representation from the Tula and Voronezh government and civil society. Attending the seminars were representatives of the local administration, police, clergy, academicians, legal services, human rights organizations, women organizations and media. The project is the first comprehensive effort to address the problem of domestic violence in the country.

Israeli Theater Comes to Moscow

On May 13th through 19th, the Tel Aviv-based Habima Theater - Israel's national theater - visited Moscow as part of celebrations marking ten years of renewed diplomatic relations between Russia and Israel. Israel's Minister of Culture also came to Russia for the event - and Russian audiences were particularly pleased to learn that the theater's origins were in Russia (Stanislavsky) - and their first performances took place in Moscow in 1918. During its first ten years of existence, the theater played in Russia, Germany, and the United States. In 1928, however, the theater left Russia and moved to Israel; in 1958, it became Israel's national theater.