Highlights from the JDC Ambassadors Circle Global Symposium Part I

On May 19 JDC hosted the second JDC Ambassadors Circle Global Symposium. The event brought together over 60 people from all over the world to learn about JDC’s global mission of rescue, relief and renewal of Jewish communities in Israel and around the world.

Focusing on 'Hope and Crisis in the Jewish World', top professional staff shared their own personal stories of their work, giving participants insight into JDC that is shared all too infrequently.


Welcome and Briefing from Steve Schwager, CEO

Steven Price, Chair of the JDC Ambassadors Circle welcomes everyone at the opening of the Global Symposium.














Steve Schwager, CEO of JDC briefs everyone on the latest developments in the JDC world, including an update on the status of world hotspots and the effect of the current economic situation on JDC programs.







Innovating Israel
For 95 years, JDC has been on the ground in Israel, creating innovative approaches to helping the country’s most vulnerable people.

Gideon Herscher, Director of Field Relations tells the story of JDC in Israel, the history, the methodology and the people we help.

Gideon talks about JDC's beginnings. On the screen beside him is the telegram sent on August 31, 1914 by Henry Morgenthau, US Ambassador to Turkey to leaders of the Jewish community in New York. The telegram tells of the terrible conditions facing Jews living in (then) Palestine during World War I and the need for funds to be sent immediately to end starvation. This telegram was the initial step to the formation of JDC.

JDC in War and Conflict
A panel discussion on how JDC has responded in times of war and crisis, acting quickly to bring people to safety and helping with the recovery in the aftermath.

Amir Shaviv, Assistant Executive Vice President for Special Operations gives an overview of how JDC functions during war and conflict situations, in rescue operations and recovery and relief efforts.

Yechiel Bar-Chaim, Program Director for the Czech Republic, Algeria and Tunisia speaks about coordinating emergency rescue and relief operations in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War in the early 1990s.





Ami Bergman, now Country Director for Turkey and Egypt, played a prominent role in the planning and implementation of Operation Solomon in 1991, the largest human airlift in history which brought over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews and to Israel during a 36 hour period. Ami shares the story of this exciting and miraculous operation with participants.







During Operation Cast Lead in January, 2009 in the southern conflict region of Israel, JDC worked in partnership with the Israeli government and local municipalities ensure the safety and long-term well-being of the region's elderly, children and disabled residents. Using lessons learned during the Second Lebanon War, JDC created a series of programs to help these populations cope with the stress and trauma. Here Gideon Herscher demonstrates how Hibuki (Huggy Puppy in Hebrew) helps children articulate their fears and anxieties by transferring those feelings on the doll.

Hibuki Dolls Making a Difference for Children Living in Ashkelon

In Israel JDC works to create innovative programs that help the country’s most vulnerable citizens in coping with their daily lives, as well as to provide support in times of crisis or trauma. In the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military operation in Gaza in January 2009, JDC’s impact can be felt in its trauma relief programs designed to aid children living under fire, including Hibuki, (Hebrew for Huggy doll) Trauma Intervention. These emergency response programs are possible due to the support of our federation partners across the United States.

The barrage of Kassam rocket attacks over Ashkelon and southern Israel struck the physical, emotional and economic chords of the region, causing long-term damage to the most vulnerable populations. While the region is no longer in survival mode, the war-related trauma symptoms are now surfacing with great speed amongst the region's elderly, children, economically weak and disabled residents.

Thanks to the ongoing assistance provided by JDC’s proven emergency programs in Ashkelon, and in partnership with The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, these residents have come to rely on JDC’s expertise in child trauma relief, emergency management, community building and economic development as they recover.

As part of the Children’s Trauma Relief program, JDC introduced its Huggy Doll Trauma Intervention in Ashkelon. Known as ‘Hibuki’ in Hebrew, this entirely original intervention was created for children from Northern Israel who were in desperate need of therapeutic assistance, having been traumatized from the ongoing rocket attacks coming from Southern Lebanon. Once proven as an effective model, it was then introduced into the Southern conflict region to help yet more Israeli children suffering the outcomes of warfare.

The secret to the program's success is that it alleviates children's trauma and anxiety by transferring the therapeutic responsibility to children themselves. Using a Huggy Doll – a stuffed animal with Velcro strips on its long arms, which can 'hug' the child in various ways – as a focus, it employs self-help methods which empower children and reduce their feelings of helplessness.

(Photo from Focus on Ashekelon)

To see more photos, click on the picture above to visit FOCUS ON ASHKELON, a blog highlighting the The Ashkelon-Baltimore Partnership in Israel.

Briefing from Asher Ostrin, Executive Director of Former Soviet Union Programs

At what point does JDC make a decision that it is withdrawing from a city or town, and on what basis?

If we've learned anything in our work in the FSU it is that we are always faced with a series of alternatives. Decisions are rarely clear cut- we need to make choices, sometimes very painful ones.

When we say that we cannot "afford" to maintain programs in a place, we are not really saying that we don't have the money to do so. We are saying that when we weigh the needs, and advantages and disadvantages of working in a particular place, we have reached the conclusion that our resources are more effectively expended elsewhere. We could reallocate them if we choose to do so, to maintain operations in all of the places we currently work, but for a host of reasons we will not.

When JDC's strategic visioning paper communicates that in the next few years we will withdraw all but critical, life saving services from "the periphery", the translation of that into practice is by no means obvious. What are the factors we need to consider when determining that a place is in the category of "periphery"? Is it geographic location? The size of its Jewish population? Its viability as a community over time? Its strategic importance, or its traditional role? Why one place yes, and another no, even if the characteristics, on paper, appear to be similar.

I want to introduce you to a place where this question has become very real for us. It is a place that I am sure no readers of this have ever been to, although many dream of going there while travel is still an option. (Well, maybe not many, but hopefully one or two of you). The place is Nizhny Tagil. It lies on the Tagil River (a cross between the Mississippi and your local sewage outlet). "Nizhny" means lower, to distinguish it from Verkniy Tagil, which lies on the upper end of the Tagil River! (I apologize for reviewing this if some of this is already widely known). It is in the Ural Mountains, which demarcate the Europe/Asia boundary in Russia.

The town has a total population of about 390,000 inhabitants, of whom about 2,500 are Jews, down from some 3,000 about 10 years ago.

It is a small Jewish population, in a hard to reach region.

During Soviet times Nizhny Tagil was a closed military area. Visitors were only allowed with special permission. Even locals from the region could not freely enter the city. For some reason the Communist government was concerned that allowing free access would compromise important state secrets in the metallurgy, chemistry and metal working factories that employed most of the city's citizens. These same factories spewed air pollutants with impunity. The area is grey and often overcast due to the pollutants. A very unwelcoming place.

On paper there is not much reason for optimism about the long term sustainability of the local Jewish community. There is no history of Jewish life in the city before the Second World War, when factories were moved to this region to protect them from the Nazi blitzkrieg. So Jews have no deep roots in the area. There are no old synagogues or other evidence of a communal life. Moreover, the city has many qualities that would drive away its mobile inhabitants, which is characteristic of Jews. There are severe ecological problems, a crumbling infrastructure, and little serious cultural life. In other cities that contained this number of Jews just 10 years ago, few Jews remain.

But the Jews remain here. And their community thrives. Why?

One gets a hint of the answer on visiting the address given for the local JCC/Hesed. They are found in a large, deteriorating multi story that hosts nine minority groups in the city. Among the nine, the Jews stand out.

Enter the building and turn left into the "Jewish property". You will be stopped by Moise, the guard. He will sternly ask for identification and check your bag. After a cursory glance, and upon establishing that you are a "lantsman", Moise will engage you in conversation.

He is hardly the intimidating type. He is a 91 year old volunteer. And one gets the impression that he has assumed this grave responsibility for one reason- to find the right guest who can engage in Yiddish banter with him. The Yiddish jokes pour out of him, the smile is a mile wide, and the hug can suffocate you. The sense of heaviness and squalor that pervade outside give way to the warm embrace of community, and this is only the beginning.

Get past Moise and you begin to hear the chatter and squealing of preschoolers, and the choir of the Hesed practicing for an upcoming performance. The walls are covered with posters on Jewish themes. A schedule of activities on the board is totally covered with notes, on which groups meet when, when large community events are being held, the dates for family camp, when youth clubs meet, and so on.

The question is sharpened- why is this community flourishing when so many others of similar size are moribund, or about to expire?

There are, of course, many reasons, but experience teaches us that it all comes down to the people. In the case of Nizhny Tagil, the X factor is a 36 year old dynamo named Ira Gutkina.

Ira started volunteering in the Hesed when it was established in the mid 90's, when she was in her early 20's. The child of a father who was evacuated during the War from the siege of Leningrad, and a mother who was raised in Ukraine and moved to the city in Soviet times because of government incentives, she elected to stay put and enrich her own life through community activism. She stood out in the Jewish community from the outset of her involvement, and JDC professionals asked her to move from her engineering career into a role as a Jewish communal professional. She set two conditions: That JDC provide her training opportunities to build on her own abilities, and that JDC not abandon the community as long as it reached performance targets. From that point on, she never looked back.

From director of the Hesed, she eventually assumed additional responsibilities when JDC allocated funds to broaden community programming to include other age groups in JCC. Ira set about engaging volunteers, and put special emphasis on what she called "caring projects". The young and middle aged were challenged to help program for the elderly, and the elderly became teachers of Jewish culture for the young. Issues of personal responsibility towards the community became a hallmark of programming.

In a recent study JDC carried out in the field, Nizhny Tagil was the only community in its size category in which the level of voluntarism has remained stable over the last ten years, a remarkable accomplishment given the population shrinkage. In interviews, the volunteers stated that they feel they are partners in the community, and individually feel responsible for its fate. They noted that they were regularly consulted on the direction of the organizations and the community, and that their voices were heard. Moreover, they felt that their work was meaningful and they were making a real contribution.

Always on the lookout for more challenges, Ira used the Hesed as the convener of a Council of NGOs in the city. She was elected chairperson, and represents this group in dialogue with the local authorities. She is committed to attending at least two professional workshops a year sponsored by JDC, on subjects ranging from a JCC directors' course for management, a seminar on how to plan a community's future, to a course on using public relations tools to outreach to the unaffiliated. Her annual program has now been supplemented by her involvement as a faculty member in at least one FSU wide course a year.

Now, in the season in which budgets are allocated, we take a careful look at our choices. Jewish communities in large cities are clearly under funded. And the money for Nizhny Tagil is not great- the 130,000 USD spent on elderly welfare clients will be spent even if we pull back. The same holds true for the 34,000 USD for children at risk in Nizhny and its environs. The "discretionary" sum, about 14,000 USD for Jewish renewal is up for discussion. And we ask ourselves if that sum of money can be spent in a more meaningful, and purposeful setting than this small, but vibrant community?



Some insight into the current economic situation in Ukraine as related by a Jewish journalist:

In a small town on the Black Sea, there is a persistent drizzle that keeps residents in their homes. The town appears to the untrained eye to be deserted.

Everyone is laden with debts. Everyone lives on credit.

One day, a Russian tourist arrives in the town. He is clearly extremely wealthy.

He enters the town's only hotel, and very demonstratively puts on the counter a 100 Euro note. He takes off his coat, dripping wet, and climbs the stairs to check out a room in which he will be comfortable.

The hotel owner watches the man disappear up the stairs, and as soon as he is out of sight, grabs his coat and the bill, to pay his debt to the local butcher.

The butcher in turn takes the 100 Euro note and goes to the rancher to pay him the money for the meat he received the week before.

The rancher passes on the money to the person who supplied the feed for his animal, to whom he owes money.

The feed supplier grabs the bill and runs to pay the woman whose "services" he had hired the week before.

The woman takes the bill and runs to the hotel to pay off her debt to the owner who had provided the rooms where she had provided her "services" to clients the week before.

At that moment, the Russian tourist comes down the stairs, after checking all of the rooms, and takes back his 100 Euro note from the clenched fist of the hotel owner, saying that he did not find any room to his liking, and he is leaving town.

No one earned anything, but now the residents of the town have had their debts wiped out, and all can look to the future with optimism.

May, 2009.

Shabbat shalom,
Asher

Women Ensure Jewish Education for the Next Generation in Southern Turkey

Ami Bergman, JDC's Country Director for Turkey and Egypt will join us on Tuesday, May 19 for the JDC Ambassadors Circle Global Symposium to share his insights into this vibrant Jewish community as well as JDC's work in Turkey.


This year, the Jewish community of Izmir celebrates a very special milestone: the 10-year anniversary of its Sunday School. Though the birth of the Sunday School was bittersweet—it was launched to fill a gap left by the forced closure of the community’s beloved, long-running Talmud Torah Jewish Day School due to low enrollment and changes in the standards of government-enforced education—with guidance from JDC, the program itself has brought Jewish knowledge and a surge in women volunteers as teachers.

“When the Talmud Torah closed, we were very sad,” explains Sunday School founder Sara Pardo, who is warmly defined as “mother” and “older sister” to the community’s 1,500 Jews. “The closing of a Jewish school is like the closing of an era. It was a tragedy.”

But Sarah turned tragedy into action to ensure Jewish education for Izmir’s children. She organized a group of mothers to create a new school that would pass on the traditions and the heritage of Izmir’s ancient Jewish community.

It was the Izmir community’s executive committee that appointed Sara to “do something with the children,” she recalls. “Those were their exact words: ‘Do something!’ But I was so naive then, I had no idea what we could do.”

With no available space in any of Izmir’s one-room synagogues, Sara and her newly recruited group of young mothers and housewives found an apartment that could host the fledgling school.
“Many people in the community rejected this idea at first; they were concerned that we didn’t know anything about teaching,” Sara says. “And they were right, we didn’t! But all the time I was reading books and trying to learn everything myself.”

After the school survived one year, Sara and her 10 women volunteers received some much needed support from Dina, a Turkish Jew living in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

“Dina came from the United States with two suitcases full of books and stayed with us a full week, teaching the women from morning until night. She taught us how to teach,” Sara explained.

One of Sara’s early teaching protégés, Ester Cen, remembers what it was like learning enough about Judaism to pass it on to her students. “Those were exciting days, but frightening also because we realized we would be responsible for teaching the kids everything they needed to know about Judaism. But this project that Sara started was not just about educating children; she trained a generation of women who would in turn be able to educate generations of children.”
The Turkish women visited Dina’s Cherry Hill home and her synagogue, Beth Shalom, where they witnessed first hand the inner workings of a successful Sunday School.

Simone Alaluf recalls the important lessons each woman gleaned from the visit. “It was like a dream,” she says. “It’s not like we were kids; we were grown women having this amazing experience. We saw how organized they were and we learned lots of new ideas from them. We tried to get as much information as we could, but we were not professionals; we were just volunteers.”

The women returned to Izmir inspired and motivated to turn their humble beginnings into an institution—a lasting legacy. Sara happily reports that even the community members who originally opposed the idea eventually sent their children and praised the Sunday School’s success. With Jewish education, curriculum, and professional development support from a JDC Jewish Service Corps volunteer over the past number of years, the school has become the backbone of the community.

Though the Jewish community in Izmir has slowly begun to shrink in numbers, especially as Jewish young adults leave for Istanbul and elsewhere to attend university, after 10 years the volunteer teachers still lead classes for the children each Sunday for two hours. “Sunday School is a symbol of our Jewishness here in Turkey,” Sara shares. “If we close it, we are finished. This is the place for the children, and as long as there are children in this community, we will continue with it.”

Jewish nonprofits make Charity Navigator’s Top 10 lists, some for good some for bad

By Jacob Berkman
May 6, 2009
JTA

Charity Navigator just published its annual Top 10 lists, and Jewish nonprofits showed up on several of the rankings, including “Top 10 Charities with consecutive 4-star ratings” and “Top 10 charities drowning in administrative costs.” (No Jewish organizations showed up on the list of “highly effective charities with low paid CEOs.”)

Some Jewish charities fared well:
The Jewish Communal Fund in New York, which has nearly a half a billion dollars in assets, ranked number 1 on the list of “Slam dunk charities,” which points out nonprofits that spend their money well and make their donors happy.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was ranked number 9 on “Top 10 best charities everyone has heard of.”

The Western Wall Heritage Fund, which helps pay for construction and renovation on the Western Wall, ranked 6 on “Charities expanding in a hurry.”

Others showed up on less glorious lists:
The Center for Jewish History in New York made an auspicious list, ranking 6 on the “Ten charities that routinely operate in the red” list.

The Federation, Jewish Communities of Western Connecticut ranked number 5, and the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties ranked number 10 on the list of “Charities stockpiling your money,” a list that points out charities that are building their endowments and have at least two years of expenses in reserves, but aren’t really spending much money on programming.

And two Jewish charities simply don’t get much love. The Museum of Eldridge Street, which tracks the history of Jewish immigrants to New York’s Lower East Side, and the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut ranked number 9 and number 2, respectively, on the list of charities with the least page views on charitynavigator.org in April.


Source: http://blogs.jta.org/philanthropy/article/2009/05/06/1004964/jewish-nonprofits-make-charity-navigators-top-10-lists-some-for-good-some-for-bad

Briefing from Steve Schwager, CEO and Executive Vice President

Fred Zeidman, Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, publicly honored JDC on Yom Hashoah two weeks ago at the Days of Remembrance ceremony in our country’s Capitol Rotunda. In the presence of President Barack Obama, Zeidman praised JDC’s role in the 1939 story of the SS St. Louis. Irv and I feel enormous pride, as should we all, in this very meaningful recognition of JDC’s part in this series of historic events.

In an effort to flee Nazi Germany, 907 refugees sailed from Hamburg on May 15, 1939 on the SS St. Louis and reached Havana, Cuba on May 27, 1939. Arrangements for the voyage were organized independently by the Hamburg-American Line, without the involvement of any Jewish organizations. After the Cuban government refused to honor the refugees’ accredited landing documents, however, JDC became involved in negotiations with the Cuban government. These discussions unfortunately failed, as did efforts by JDC to find a haven for the desperate refugees elsewhere in the Americas. After 12 days of waiting, the St. Louis sadly sailed back to Hamburg with all of its passengers.

While the St. Louis was on the high seas, JDC, in close cooperation with other groups, negotiated with the governments of Holland, Belgium, England, and France to accept the refugees until homes in other countries could be found. JDC posted a cash guarantee of $500,000 ($500 per refugee) in order to make the arrangement feasible and to cover upkeep costs wherever necessary. The telegram from the appreciative passengers to Morris C. Troper, JDC’s Chairman, Executive Council 1938-1942 is in JDC’s archives and can be viewed here.

In England, JDC continued to support the last of the St. Louis refugees until 1948, but in France, Belgium, and Holland, the Nazi occupation reduced the channels of outside aid and ultimately brought those routes to a standstill. After the occupation of France, some St. Louis refugees escaped to Switzerland. But there were others who returned to Europe on that fateful ship who ultimately met a tragic end in concentration camps.

Fred Zeidman’s edited remarks are as follows:

Members of Congress, administration officials, ambassadors, liberators of the camps, righteous among the nations, friends of the Museum, and most especially, survivors of the Holocaust.

We are honored by your presence and grateful for your commitment to the cause of remembrance.

And Mr. President, it is our profound privilege to have you among us. As someone who has demonstrated a lifetime commitment to social justice, your presence is especially meaningful, and we welcome you today.

We often say that remembrance is not about the past. It is also about our world today. And in these days of remembrance, we recall that the responsibility for bringing the lessons of memory to bear in our world resides with each of us.

What each of us does, this year’s theme declares, makes a difference. . . .

. . . .and what is within our power is also our responsibility. What we do matters.

Therein lies a story—a story of heroism of the truest sort.

It began on an infamous ship called the St. Louis, whose Jewish passengers fled Nazi Germany 70 years ago in May 1939, seeking safety in the United States by way of Cuba. Most of you know the shameful result: first Cuba, then our country, turned them away.

The story might have ended there…because people concluded they could not make a difference…that the forces involved were too powerful, the number of individuals too vast, the dangers too distant.

But two individuals, Lawrence Berenson and Morris Troper, who worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, felt otherwise. They knew that returning these passengers to Hitler’s Germany would doom them. So they aggressively negotiated with Cuba, then the US, and when all that proved futile, arranged for the passengers to be accepted in what were then four safe European countries.

The following year, the continent was consumed by war, but the JDC clung to the belief that they could still make a difference for the passengers on the St. Louis.

They tracked them one by one as they spread across Europe. They allocated what were then enormous funds. They placed some children in safe homes. They helped some parents escape. Of course, they did not save them all. But they saved some. By the scale of the Holocaust, one might say they saved “few.” But the ethic these individuals lived by is the same ethic we celebrate today. What you do matters.

In that lesson there is an inspiration—and a warning.

The inspiration is the knowledge, the certainty, that what we do makes a difference.

The warning is this: the Holocaust was not merely a massive event on a massive scale. Six million Jews, each one an individual human being, were murdered by other individual human beings. Some individual human beings tried to help them. Most did not.

And when we—individual human beings—look away and surrender to futility, we are like the bystanders of this dark period, and become complicit in the crime. Inaction is as consequential as action.

Therefore, today, we recall individuals like Lawrence Berenson and Morris Troper whose actions mattered. And we honor others who rescued as well. And we pay tribute to those who helped defeat Nazi tyranny as we welcomed the flags of the liberating divisions of the United States army.

JDC Board member Susie Stern attended this commemoration and shared Mr. Zeidman’s remarks with us. As we learn over and over again, Board members are often filled with enormous pride at what our organization accomplishes and, equally important, they are also our finest advocates. JDC’s archives hold a letter from Bernard Horwich, a past JDC lay leader from Chicago, written on June 24, 1939, to James N. Rosenberg, JDC’s Board Chairman, and Joseph C. Hyman, JDC’s Executive Vice Chairman, in which he expressed very moving appreciation for what we were able to do for the passengers of the St. Louis. That remarkable letter can be seen here. And he concludes with a paragraph to which many of you can relate: “. . . . I shall make your wonderful work known by mail and otherwise to as many of my friends and acquaintances as possible.”

It is important that we keep telling the JDC story, as so many of you do, not only for the sake of pride in our past—but for what the legacy of those past achievements can provide for the future of Jewish people and others worldwide.

A JDC Legend Has Left Us - Paula Borenstein z"l

FROM: IRVING A. SMOKLER
STEVE SCHWAGER

DATE: MAY 4, 2009

It is with much sadness and a deep sense of JDC history that we inform you that Paula Borenstein died today in Paris after a long illness. The funeral will take place on Wednesday in Paris.

Paula Borenstein began working for JDC in France in November 1948, using her knowledge of Yiddish to record speeches given by delegates from the Displaced Persons countries at JDC’s third postwar conference. Her initial contact with JDC, however, came three and a half years earlier, when she arrived in Paris in May 1945 with a group of Holocaust survivors known as “the youngsters from Buchenwald.” With no knowledge of French, without a trade, and with no family or contacts in Paris, she and her friends were cared for by JDC, directed to a place where they received hot food and clothing, and sent to a special home for three months of recuperation. As she would later recount to hundreds of American audiences, “When we arrived, broken in spirit and body – skeletons, shaved and barefoot – the first dress, the first warm meal, the first love was given to us by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. And, most importantly, you gave us back our names, our humanity.”

Pessele—as she was known affectionately to friends and colleagues—always considered the Joint a part of her family. Over the next five decades, she served as Public Relations Officer in JDC’s Paris office, retiring in December 1998.To members of the media in Paris and to countless participants in missions organized by the Federations and what was then the national UJA, Paula was the public face of JDC.

During her decades with JDC, Paula brought thousands of American Jews to Poland on UJA/Federation missions, escorting them to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and the site of the Warsaw ghetto on visits that she made unforgettable. She impressed upon them JDC’s unwavering commitment to help care for the region’s lonely and aging Holocaust survivors. And cognizant always of the generation of Jewish children murdered by the Nazis, she spoke of the importance of teaching young Jews in newly emerging post-Communist communities about their Jewish culture and history—thereby helping to ensure that they did not become another “lost” generation.

Paula often said that there were two types of Holocaust survivors: those who became completely detached and unresponsive to their people’s needs and those who were determined to spend the rest of their lives relieving Jewish suffering and enriching the lives of Jews everywhere. Through her life’s work and her dedication to JDC, to Israel, and to the needs of the Jewish people, Paula Borenstein placed herself firmly among the latter, and she did so with charm, with a Yiddish heart, and with an elegance of manner that matched her Parisian environment.

May Paula’s memory be for a blessing for all those who knew and adored her.

Baruch Dayan Emet.

Biggest Jewish Studies Event in Continental Europe Gives Baltic Jews Reprieve from Crisis

Amidst the backdrop of a global economic crisis and looming political meltdown at home, the Baltic states refused to surrender their 6th Limmud-Keshet conference to circumstance. Instead, with JDC support, local volunteers poured in hours of preparation enabling 1,000 people to gather in Vilnius, Lithuania for a weekend-long study fest of Jewish learning and culture that has become a worldwide phenomenon.

Inspired by Limmud UK, the Baltics Limmud was initiated and is co-sponsored by JDC in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles. Since its launch in 2004, the event has resonated with the emerging Baltic communities, who struggled to revive their Jewish identities after the decades-long rule of Communism. With over 150 workshops offering topics as diverse as the Arab-Israeli conflict to the Jewish Kitchen, this year’s conference celebrated the richness and multi-dimensional nature of Judaism. One participant, Alina, age 32, said through Limmud she learned, “Judaism is like a diamond: the more facets it has, the more beautiful it is!”

Not only did the conference celebrate diversity of thought, it touted the accomplishments of a community learning to grow and stand on its own feet. Run entirely by over 100 local volunteers, every participant is encouraged to become a teacher as well as a student, such that sessions are conducted by local talent without famous guest lecturers or keynote speakers.

In the case of the Baltics Limmud, Jews who only recently rediscovered their own Jewish identities help fellow Jews do the same by organizing and leading the workshops and sessions themselves. The volunteers become grassroots leaders in their communities and carry on the ‘spirit of Limmud’ throughout the year—a very important step in self-sustainable community building.

Despite the gloomy atmosphere of job losses, rioting, looting, and growing anti-Semitism, this year’s Limmud managed to bring in new faces to Baltic community life. Over 15 percent of this year’s attendees had never participated in a Jewish community event. As every year, only the lack of a bigger venue prevented the admission of more participants; the event had a waiting list of 300 people.

Whether a first-timer or a six-year veteran of the annual event, this Limmud conference managed to distract all participants from the bitter realities encroaching on the outside world. Sasha, 28, from Riga, said of the event, “Everybody around me either lost his job or is afraid of losing it. I’m so grateful that we can have a respite from all that and feel the warmth of being together.”

And bringing Jews together is one of Limmud’s greatest purposes. Over the years, this initiative has grown to include new sponsors and, most notably, the contributions of the local community despite the economic downturn.

Andres Spokoiny, JDC Area Director for Poland and the Baltic States, emphasized the importance of events like Limmud in the face of such crises. “When people are afraid to lose their jobs, when they feel all around them is collapsing, when there’s so much insecurity around them, Limmud tells them that there’s always solace to be found in the community,” he said. “Here people discover one basic fact about our Jewish tradition—that it can give joy and meaning as well as comfort in tough times.”