WOMEN'S NETWORK MARKS
15 YEARS WITH TRIP AND GIFT OF TORAH SCROLLS
JTA.org
July, 2004
By Lev Krichevsky
Photo
by Lev Krichevsky
Joan Landau, left, of Croton-on-Hundson, N.Y., and Polina Lyutova
of Ulyanovsk, Russia, take part in a Torah donation ceremony
June 22 at Moscow's Hermitage Theater
MOSCOW, July 1 (JTA) — When the members of Project Kesher
came to the former Soviet Union to celebrate their 15th anniversary
of working on behalf of women in the region, they brought some
sacred gifts with them.
Six Torah scrolls, some of them originally from the region,
crossed the Atlantic to find new homes in provincial communities
of the former Soviet Union, many of which have not had a Torah
scroll for decades.
One of the scrolls that was donated to the Vinnitsa community
in Ukraine came from a synagogue in Helena, Ark., where only
eight elderly members are left from the community that arrived
there in the 1840´s.
“I hope this scroll will help the congregations of my
town to get together around this wonderful gift,” said
Larisa Geller of Bobruisk, Belarus, when accepting the scroll
that was going unused in New York City until Holocaust survivor
Sandra Brand brought it to Project Kesher.
The donations of the Torahs was just the highest-profile aspect
of last month’s Project Kesher trip.
One of the highlights of the visit was a five-day trip down
the Volga River for the 250 activists from both North America
and the former Soviet Union.
Interspersed with seminars on combating domestic violence and
international trafficking in women, the boat trip made stops
in provincial Russian towns along the river where the group
organized events to boost Jewish spirituality and activism.
This was hardly a luxury cruise, and 150 American Jewish women
aboard paid $1,800 each for the trip, covering the cost of the
cruise for themselves and for 100 participants from the former
Soviet Union.
Supported by Jewish women activists in the United States, Project
Kesher has become one of the most successful Jewish women’s
groups in the four former Communist countries where it operates.
The group has become deeply involved with public efforts to
stop international trafficking in women and to alert public
opinion in Russia and surrounding countries to the problem of
domestic violence.
According to U.N. statistics, more than 500,000 women from
the former Soviet countries have been sent to more than 50 countries
during the past 10 years.
Each year in Russia, domestic violence alone results in some
14,000 deaths of women who become victims of their male partners.
Evelina Shubinskaya, a Project Kesher activist from the central
Russian city of Tula, was one of the pioneers of the anti-violence
movement in her community.
Her Jewish group is now a member of a coalition of 18 local
non-profits and government organizations that provide social,
medical and psychological support to victims of domestic violence.
“Project Kesher groups now reach well beyond the Jewish
community in combating domestic violence and trafficking,”
Gershon said.
Svetlana Yakimenko, Project Kesher’s director in the former
Soviet Union, said the organization unites some 3,500 women
in 165 groups in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.
“We unite the women who are active, responsible for their
lives and the society they live in, and we help them to change
spiritually and financially,” Yakimenko said.
The group provides loans of between $600 to $2,000 to help
women who are small-business owners.
The group’s activists say that to operate a successful
women’s movement in the former Soviet Union is a special
challenge given the social status of women in these societies.
“To become what they are now, our activists have had to
overcome much more than American women activists,” Yakimenko
said. “These are the societies where the word ‘feminism’
itself is often perceived as a negative term.”
During the Soviet era and afterward, women have had to step
into high-profile roles because of economic necessity rather
than choice, so some of the assumptions of Western feminism
do not apply.
But Project Kesher activists say women often lose out to men
when applying for better jobs, and they generally are less prepared
for the tough conditions of the capitalist job market of today’s
Russia.
“Our women are generally better educated but less in demand
in better-paying positions,” said Nina Klotsman, an activist
from Cherkassy, Ukraine, who runs a women’s Jewish community
center in her town. It is believed to be the only such center
in the former Soviet Union.
Supported by the World ORT Union, her center and a dozen other
Project Kesher chapters in the area established computer classes
where women learn skills that help them support themselves and
their families.
During the cruise up the Volga, the U.S. and local participants
took turns teaching each other.
American women taught a class on Jewish music; Russian women
taught a Jewish cooking class, showing their counterparts how
to make Russian blintzes and other favorites. The U.S. women
brought with them a blank chupah and a decoration kit and presented
the result of the joint work to the small Jewish community of
Kostroma, Russia.
© JTA.
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