Freeing the Jewish Spirit

As a child in the southern Urals city of Ufa, Anya felt different somehow from her classmates, but didn’t understand why.  So she asked her mother to explain what it means to be Jewish.  "She had a sense of what being Jewish meant to her," Anya recalls.  "But apart from a few photographs of my grandparents’ home in Ukraine, there was nothing she could show me or tell me that would help me understand."

For years, Anya had to make do with what she calls a "spiritual Jewishness" – a Jewish awareness without Jewish content.  But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Anya gradually discovered ways of supplying that content.  And four years ago, she sealed her commitment.  With some critical help from JDC, she and her fiancé celebrated the first Jewish wedding to be held in that region in half a century.

At 25, Anya has since become a leading figure in Ufa’s small but increasingly vibrant Jewish community.  Her drive led to the opening of the city’s first Jewish kindergarten.  And this past summer, she became the editor of Ufa’s newly established Jewish newspaper.

"The newspaper is important for us here in Ufa," Anya says.  "But it’s also a way for us to reach the Jews who live in some of the smaller towns a few hundred miles from here; people who don’t have the opportunities I had in Ufa.  It’s one way we can add content to their "Spiritual Jewishness."