RJC Monitor - 08.29.2003

 

The Russian Jewish Congress

CHILDREN SOCCER TOURNAMENT KICKS OFF IN MOSCOW

On August 23, the Russian Jewish Congress and the American Youth Sports League kicked off a children soccer tournament in the grounds of the Central Army Club in Moscow.

RJC’s partner in organizing the tournament is the American Youth Sports League, which represents students of American and British secondary schools in Moscow, foreign embassy personnel and Moscow-based staff of such international companies as ABN AMRO Bank, American Express, Conoco, Coudert Brothers, Deloitte & Touche, DHL, KLM, Nestle, Penny Lane Realty, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Visa, and WimmBillDann.

Participating teams composed of boys and girls aged five to 18 years will be competing at the stadium each Saturday from nine in the morning till five in the afternoon until October 18. Each team will play eight to nine games, depending on performance. Girls under the age of 13 years will play on the same teams with boys.

Competitors will be served refreshments after the games. Registration forms for those willing to participate are available at http://soccer.themoscowtimes.com

Contact telephone: 232-9290

REAL ESTATE IN MOSCOW AND MOSCOW REGION

The next meeting of the business club “Congressman”, which is operated under the aegis of Russian Jewish Congress, will be held on September 18 at Moscow’s prestigious Monolith Club.

Representatives of the Moscow City Hall and the Moscow regional government, leading economists, lawyers and entrepreneurs will discuss an agenda related to “Real Estate in Moscow and Moscow Region”.

The meeting will be held under the tutelage of Mr. Vladimir I. Resin, First Deputy Mayor of Moscow, who was recently elected to head the Russian Jewish Congress Board of Trustees.

For more information, please contact:

Olga Akmulina, RJC Director for Development, telephone 780-6085, e-mail: akmulina@rjc.ru

Israeli Dancers to Perform at Moscow’s INTERNATIONAL BALLET FESTIVAL

The visiting Israeli dancers from the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company will present their popular ballet Screensaver for the first time in Moscow August 28. The Kibbutz Company performance is part of the Grand Pas Moscow International Ballet Festival. The show will take place at the Moscow Malyi Theater.

Screensaver is produced by the Kibbutz artistic director, Rami Be’ar. The 70-minute-long spectacle combines refined dancing with exquisite sets, original laser lights and special effects, among them, projections of the text and images of the Torah scrolls on the sets and bodies of the performers to create an exciting presentation of the entire history of the Jewish people.

The Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, set up in 1970 and established itself as one of the leading dancing groups in Israel, is regularly invited to perform on the best theatrical stages around the world. A group of the company’s soloists will participate in the gala concert concluding the festival, which will be held August 30 at the Bolshoi.

www.kontramarka.ru 

Spokesman for Progressive Judaism Proposes Cooperation with RJC

After the RJC president informed the visitors about the activities of the Congress and the situation in the Russian Jewish community as a whole, the conferees discussed in detail a whole range of issues related to Jewish education in Russia, the training of a new generation of Jewish community leaders and plans to engage the participation in Jewish life of previously uninvolved people.

Mr. Bauman also shared with his hosts his vision of possible cooperation between the World Council and American Association for Progressive Judaism, on the one hand, and Jewish organizations in Russia, on the other. In particular, he mentioned that the organizations he heads intend to discontinue donating funds to international Jewish agencies and concentrate instead on direct support of concrete projects in the United States and in Russia. The participants agreed that these plans may provide fresh impetus to collaboration between the organizations of progressive Judaism in the two countries.

Taking part in the meeting was Rabbi Zinovi Kogan, chairman of the KEROOR religious Jewish association, Rabbi Grigori Kotliar of the OROSIR organization, and Nikolai Propirny, editor-in-chief of the Jewish News weekly.

“Jewish Homeland” in Russia’s Far East to Mark 70th Anniversary by Building Synagogue

The Jewish Autonomous District in Russia’s Far East will be observing its 70th anniversary in 2004. In preparation for the event, R. Mardechai Sheiner, chief rabbi of Birobidzhan, capital of the Autonomous District, and Lev Toitman, chairman of the Birobidzhan “Freid” Jewish religious community, sent an appeal to Jews in Russia and other countries to help in collecting funds for the building of a synagogue in the city, the first ever in the Jewish Autonomy.

In all those years, the Jewish Autonomy did not have a synagogue. Now, to mark the 70th anniversary, members of the local community decided to construct the synagogue, a soup kitchen and a Sunday school. The construction got under way in August 2003. But the community does not have enough funds to complete the construction project, what with the needs to build an infrastructure for the new center, electricity and heat supply lines and landscape reclamation.

“We have managed to collect 12 million and 300,000 rubles. But we still require four and a half million rubles to complete the project in time,” says the appeal. The Birobidzhan community leaders hope that Jews in both Russia and around the world would find their project worthwhile and help them give Birobidzhan its first-ever synagogue in 70 years. The leaders pledge that strict accounting will be kept of all expenditures and donors will receive regular reports on how their funds are spent.