Alone No More

In 1983, Yakov Lieberman began searching for the family roots he had always felt cut off from him following his grandparents’ deaths at the hands of the Nazis.  Using credentials he forged on his university’s letterhead, the engineering professor gained access to a collection of medieval Jewish literature in St. Petersburg.  The Communists showed him the way, he says. "The Party made a list of the most ‘dangerous’ books.  So those were the ones I looked at first."

He knew that he could only scratch the surface, though, and that he needed help from others to pursue his Jewish studies in a disciplined, academic way.  He sought out others engaged in a similar quest, meeting them secretly at first, and more openly later as Soviet control loosened.   And when JDC helped create Sefer, an organization designed to foster these contacts and expand the academic study of Jewish subjects in the FSU, he quickly signed up.

With the formal, and even more important, informal contacts he made through Sefer, Yakov honed his skills as a specialist in Jewish literature.  Switching career tracks, he now heads the Ekaterinburg State University’s department of cultural studies. He has succeeded in inspiring dozens of students to pursue degrees in the once-forbidden field of Jewish studies, and in attracting dozens more to the informal lectures he helps arrange in the community.  

But his impact reaches far beyond his hometown in the Urals.  Working with other specialists from the FSU and Israel whom he met through Sefer, he prepared a three-volume teaching guide on Jewish literature that has become an important resource for teachers in Ukraine’s Jewish schools.  "I could have remained an engineer dabbling alone in Jewish literature," Yakov explains.  "But Sefer has built a community of academics who are helping Jews rediscover their roots, just as I did."