Posted on 08/06/2005 7:37:12 PM PDT by Crackingham
The pioneers came in the late 1920s, lured to the uninhabited Siberian forests and mosquito-infested swamps by a mixture of communist ideological fervor and their dream of a Jewish homeland. They pitched tents and planted farms. They were followed by thousands of others -- cobblers and barbers, haberdashers and milliners -- fleeing famine and the Nazis, hoping somehow to make a better life.
Josef Stalin encouraged settlers in the Jewish Autonomous Region to develop a community that would keep alive traditions such as the Yiddish language and Jewish songs and dances. But the religion itself -- synagogues, holidays, formal worship -- was stamped out.
"Stalin's idea was to get inside the fruit, take out its heart and leave only the peel. That's why there were signs in Yiddish, and there was a school in Yiddish, but as far as the religion .125was.375 concerned, it simply wasn't there," said Rabbi Mordehai Sheiner, who moved to the region's capital, Birobidzhan, from Israel in 2002. "Maybe somewhere in a basement someone observed some rites."
But today, as religion makes a resurgence across Russia in wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, this far eastern Siberian region along the Manchurian border near Khabarovsk has become one of the nation's most important centers of Jewish life.
Last September, Sheiner opened the area's first formal synagogue in seven decades. The Freid Jewish Community, the main Jewish organization in Birobidhzan, now runs a school attended by about 100 children that meets on Sundays, teaching Hebrew, Jewish traditions and activities such as dancing.
SNIP
"There's no question that the Jews there feel much more Jewish than anywhere else in Russia, and not because of their history or what they've gone through, but mainly because of the new opportunities they have there," Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Well if some Russians don't move in there, then the Chinese will some day. Isn't this area depopulating quite rapidly?
The article didn't mention the most important thing, "How good is the deli there?"
An excellent question. Though I hear the former Jewish Autonomous Region is only 1.2% Jewish or so these days. Oh well. It'll be Chinese soon enough.
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