Moscow Times - 10.22.2004

The Moscow Times

The Quiet Helper

After decades of working behind the scenes, an aid organization comes out into the open. 

By Rebecca Reich

When the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee began handing out aid to the Jews of the western Russian empire in 1914, its representatives had to journey through a war-torn Europe, risking their lives along the way. Today's JDC, locally known as the Joint, is a visible presence in Jewish life, funding humanitarian relief and cultural programs across the former Soviet Union. 

In celebration of its 90th anniversary, the JDC launched two exhibits last Thursday, one documenting its past at the Moscow House of Photography, and the other presenting paintings on Jewish themes at the Na Solyanke Gallery.

The 250 photographs, documents and letters at the House of Photography cover the history of the philanthropic organization from its early attempts to recast Jews as Soviet farmers and factory workers, to current efforts to bring them back to their religious heritage. Gathered from archives and private collections worldwide, most have never been exhibited in Russia before. 

The JDC was founded during World War I to ease the effects of pogroms, famine and violence on Eastern Europe's Jews. Initially, it turned over funds collected in the United States to local organizations, but soon began taking part in distributing them itself. Photographs from these years show a house left in ruins after a pogrom, and orphanages for the 200,000 children who lost their families. 

The second part of the exhibition is devoted to the 1920s and '30s, when the JDC formed an offshoot organization known as Agro-Joint to help village Jews become full Soviet citizens as farmers and factory workers. Over 100,000 people were eventually resettled in specially designated Jewish colonies, and the photographic record left by visiting JDC representatives tells an uncensored story of the hardships and slow rewards of early communal farming that few inside the Soviet information blockade got to see. 

But Agro-Joint's days were numbered under Josef Stalin's rule, and in the purges of the late 1930s, its leaders were executed or expelled. The third portion of the exhibition is devoted to the period between 1938 and 1988, when the JDC was limited to sending its aid packages anonymously from abroad. Working underground, the organization was labeled a spy ring by Soviet authorities, and exhibits from this period include a propaganda caricature labeled "Joint" that shows a hook-nosed bald eagle gripping the New York skyline between its claws. 

According to Sam Amiel, deputy director of the organization's Moscow office, one of the purposes of the exhibition is to clear up any lingering suspicions. "We were the organization that would always help out, would always be there," he said. "There are actually documents coming out of archives that are part of this exhibit -- both in photographs and in documentation -- that now allow local populations to learn in a systematic and educated way what the Joint is, who helped them when they were young, and for those who have been receiving aid since 1991, to learn more about what we did back then."

While the exhibit was organized and sponsored by the JDC, House of Photography spokeswoman Irina Tkachyova sees many of its entries -- especially those that document early Soviet farming -- as part of a wider retelling of Russia's history. "For many years, we've been working on a project called the Photo-Chronicle of Russia," she said. "We collect photographs from many archives and try to recreate our history from these photographs. This exhibit can be counted in that project in every way."

In the final portion of the exhibition, the JDC brings viewers up-to-date with its accomplishments since returning to the former Soviet Union in 1989. Today, the organization provides aid to 240,000 elderly people in nearly 3000 cities, towns and villages across the region. It also funds community centers, libraries and youth culture programs aimed at reinvigorating Jewish life.

Among the cultural organizations jump-started by the JDC in the mid-1990s was the Jewish Fund for the Promotion of the Arts, which presents about 100 graphics, paintings and mosaics by past and present Jewish artists at the Na Solyanke Gallery.

"The artists are very different from each other, at opposite ends of the spectrum," organizer Inna Entina said last week, singling out the gap between the abstract works of Yevgeny Gor and the realist portraits of Iosif Rubanov. Nevertheless, Entina said, the exhibition sticks to Jewish themes, showing the diversity that can exist within a single group. "Generally, it's an estranged look at the world," she said.

Like other local groups, Entina's arts fund stopped receiving financial support several years ago in line with the JDC's policy of urging organizations to take care of themselves. "We empower local communities," Amiel said. "Our idea is that, eventually, once the community gets strong enough and stable, we can then phase out and move on to the next -- for lack of a better word -- hotspot in the world, to another population in distress."

"Joint in Russia, the U.S.S.R and the CIS" (Dzhoint v Rossii, SSSR, SNG) runs to Nov. 21 at the Moscow House of Photography, located at 18 Ulitsa Ostozhenka. Metro Kropotkinskaya. Tel. 202-1610/7612.

"We" (My) runs to Nov. 14 at the Na Solyanke Gallery, located at 1/2 Solyanka. Metro Kitai-Gorod. Tel. 921-5572/6332.