JDC’s Return
JDC was allowed to return to Russia, in what was then still the Soviet Union, in 1988. In city after city, there were Jews who longed to reconnect with their Jewish heritage, but lacked even the most basic knowledge of Jewish culture, religion, history or community life. They were the product of seven decades of an enforced atheism that had all but destroyed Jewish communal life, and they lacked the training, skills and funds to open Jewish schools and community centers or establish and operate communal welfare services.

The latter were increasingly needed as the steep gyrations and eventual collapse of the Russian economy fell with particular harshness on the older generations and ultimately cast into poverty hundreds of thousands of lonely, elderly Jews.

Demographics
Though the largest concentrations of Jews in what is now called Russia, or the Russian Federation, can be found in St. Petersburg and Moscow, there are also hundreds of thousands of Jews scattered across Russia’s nine time zones.

In the decade following the lifting of emigration restrictions, more than 1 million Jews from the former Soviet Union (FSU) chose to make aliyah, while others left for Western Europe and North America. JDC estimates that, whether they are there by choice or by circumstance, approximately 600,000 Jews remain in Russia today.

The Miracle of Renewal
Since 1988, JDC has been helping Russian Jews create viable, self-sufficient Jewish communities that are reflective of local characteristics and capable of meeting their members’ physical, cultural, educational and religious needs.

Today, tens of thousands of Russian Jews are actively involved in Jewish communal life, and Jewish elderly are receiving the care and companionship that they desperately need.

Yet many challenges remain. None of Russia’s Jewish communities are able to sustain their activities without outside financial support. The needs of the elderly have not diminished; indeed, new pockets of desperately poor, lonely Jews are now being reached in the most remote regions. At the same time, a substantial portion of the Jewish population has yet to reconnect to Jewish life in any substantive way.

The Regions:
 
Moscow
Over the centuries, most Jews had been barred from living in Moscow. As a result, Moscow never developed a strong Jewish communal life. When thousands of Jews began to settle in the city during the Soviet era, they found few symbols of Jewish culture or history, and, not surprisingly, few expressions of Jewish identity were permitted to develop under Communism.

Currently, some 60,000 Jews are involved in Moscow’s Jewish life. Though this is an impressive number, it is still less than a quarter of the 250,000 Jews estimated to be living in that city today. JDC has embarked on a Jewish renewal initiative in Moscow that is equal to the challenges of this great Russian city.

St. Petersburg
When the Nazis invaded Russia, 200,000 Jews lived in St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad). Most escaped the Holocaust thanks to the city’s legendary resistance. While most Jewish life was suppressed during the Soviet era, an important kernel of Jewish consciousness remained. It was St. Petersburg that provided the impetus for the refusenik movement. These activists were also among the earliest to make aliyah. Ironically, their emigration left the city’s approximately 100,000 Jews with the need to train new leaders who could help them reconnect to Jewish life and rebuild a strong Jewish community.

With JDC’s help, the community today is witnessing the maturation of that Jewish leadership. Hesed welfare centers and Jewish schools, community centers and cultural events are now part of St. Petersburg’s landscape. Yet, if the Jewish community is to achieve complete independence and self-sufficiency, it must widen and deepen the circle of Jewish life in St. Petersburg.

Siberia/Vostok
Few places are more evocative of persecution, suffering and totalitarian injustice than Siberia. Untold thousands of Jews died in the gulags of Siberia. Thousands fled there to escape during the Nazi era. Others, in an earlier period, were "settled" in the "Birobidjan Jewish Autonomous Region." Dispersed among towns thousands of miles apart, these Jews were alone – without roots, without community, without a Jewish future. Yet, in pockets scattered across 3,000 miles, the Jewish spirit persisted.

Despite the harsh climate and the vast distances between cities and towns, JDC today is working to help some 70,000 Jews, living in towns from Omsk in the west to Khabarovsk in the Vostok region of Russia’s Pacific Rim, reconnect to their heritage.

The Urals
Tens of thousands of Jews settled in the Urals during and after World War II.

Though the end of the Soviet era reopened the Urals to the outside world, it has remained difficult to penetrate due to its remoteness and poor transportation facilities.

The practical challenges this has posed for JDC are considerable. The 70,000 Jews estimated to be living in the Urals are dispersed among the region’s widely scattered cities. Even the largest concentration of Jews, in Yekaterinburg, numbers just over 10,000.

Nevertheless, the Urals are proving to be fertile ground for Jewish renewal. The Jews in this region suffered less anti-Semitism and were spared the full impact of Soviet atheism. As a result, many successful Jews did not hesitate to identify as Jews. With JDC’s support, they have already made great strides in leading the process of community building.

Now, JDC is expanding its outreach to Jews living in dozens of smaller cities and towns who have been prevented by distance from participating in this resurgence of Jewish life.

The Russian Caucasus
Some 65,000 Jews are known to be living in the area of southern Russia that borders the Caucasus states, an area rife with poverty and crime. The area is also on the border with Chechnya, and it has been a refuge for a substantial number of Chechen Jews.

JDC’s newest FSU office is in this region, located in the city of Rostov-on-Don. We have helped to establish a Hillel program, a Hesed welfare center, a JCC as well as various programs for children, and the office is serving as a focal point for outreach activities in the surrounding area.

Other Regions
We do not know just how many Jews live in other regions of Russia – no less than 25,000, but perhaps three or four times that number. JDC is stretching the boundaries of the Jewish world to reach them.

In Central Russia and in the Volga region, where Jewish populations are significant, JDC is working to build a community base in several cities.

In the bitter far reaches of the northwest, where settlements are smaller and inaccessible for much of the year, JDC is targeting specific towns near Murmansk and Arkhangelsk – towns such as Appatity, where a relatively large number of Jews live.

As long as thousands of Russian Jews are cut off from their people, JDC will continue its efforts to reach them and return them to the Jewish fold.

2005