Day in the history of the Jewish Autonomous Region
Photo: Regional Library
November 1, 2000
The first Jewish community center in the Far East opened, housing a library, a computer class, the Hesed charity service, and the Freud religious community. Over the many decades of the region’s existence, for the first time, a genuine center for the preservation of the spiritual heritage, history and tradition of the Jewish people, the development of Jewish culture and education in the Far East has been created.
In 2004, the Beit Menachem synagogue was built, which was inaugurated by the Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar. The Shabbat hall, the Children and Youth Center for Jewish Culture and the Museum of Jewish Studies are located in the same building.
The Birobidzhan Jewish People's University operates under the religious community – the only one of its kind in the Far East. The basis of the curriculum is the study of Hebrew, history, and classical Jewish texts.
Community activities also include creative groups. These are the youth club “Haverim”, a women's club, a club of former juvenile prisoners of ghettos and concentration camps, and the cultural and educational society “Einikait”. Club members hold educational events and celebrate Shabbat and Jewish holidays together.
In memory of the terrorist attack that occurred in India in 2008, on the initiative of Rabbi Mordechai Scheiner, a modest monument was erected near the synagogue. It consists of three candlesticks with electric candles. The two large candles symbolize adults, and the small one symbolizes the unborn child.
Together with the government of the Jewish Autonomous Region, the community is the organizer of international festivals of Jewish culture and art held in the region (0+).
In the courtyard of the community center there is a monument to the victims of the Holocaust, near which memorial rallies are traditionally held (0+).
The Birobidzhan Jewish religious community “Freud”, in agreement with the Rabbi of the JAO Eli Riess and the head of the Birobidzhan diocese, Bishop of Birobidzhan and Kuldur Bishop Ephraim, decided to install a stone with the Ten Commandments inscribed on it near the community center in a prominent place. According to authors from the Freud community, there is no second such monument in the Far East.
The community has a club called “Mishpokha” of the Jewish national-cultural autonomy “Birobidzhan”, headed by Naum Livant. Also, at the Freud community there is a Children and Youth Center for Jewish Culture (0+), which is visited by children of different nationalities, where they enjoy studying Jewish culture, the history of the people, Yiddish, and learning Jewish dances.
“Freud” provides assistance in the development of methodological materials for the popularization of Jewish literary heritage. In 2016, with the support of the Freud community, the textbook “A Short Course in Yiddish for Beginners” (0+) was published. The manual is popular not only in Birobidzhan, but also in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and even in Israel.
The Freud community has a fairly large library, containing about six thousand books. It is replenished every year. There is also a rather rare collection of books in Yiddish. There are many colorful publications for children on Jewish themes.
Jewish holidays organized by the Freud community are attracting more and more attention. Hundreds of townspeople gather at them.
In 2017, construction began on the first mikvah in the history of the JAO. In 2018, the mikvah received kosher certification. This is a document that confirms that it was built in compliance with all the rules and is suitable for fulfilling the commandment.
In 2019, the first Jewish youth center in Russia and the only kosher restaurant in the Far East opened in Birobidzhan.
The community unites Jewish organizations in the region, develops the history and culture of the Jewish people, cooperates with various organizations in the fields of economics, education, culture, religion, and maintains relations with foreign Jewish communities and international Jewish organizations.
Today, the Freud community center is rightfully the “calling card” of Birobidzhan and the Jewish Autonomous Region; every tourist and guest who wants to get acquainted with the Jewish culture and history of the region comes here.
November 1, 2001
Day in the history of the Jewish Autonomous Region. Photo: Photo: Regional Library
The newspaper “Birobidzhan Star” (12+) published an article by Anatoly Kozak “Seekers of Happiness, or Memoirs of an Eyewitness.” “The film was shot in the Amur region – in the Cossack village of Radda, Birofeld, Amurzet and in the vicinity of Birobidzhan.”
Anatoly recalls how, as a child, in the summer of 1936, he ran in a crowd of fans along the busy Odessa Deribasovskaya street in the very center, catching up with the capital’s actor Biy-Brodsky, who played one of the main roles in the film.
“… They had been chasing him for quite a long time and screaming at the top of their lungs: “Shel-ma! Helmet!”
“It was a charming, cheerful comedy (12+), played by excellent actors and stuffed with witty remarks, puns, and also richly “flavored” with wonderful songs of the incomparable Isaac Dunaevsky. But what almost first of all brought the film, as they say, a huge success, was that the picture was Jewish – from the first to the last frame, and it featured the most typical characters from popular Jewish jokes and local legends.”
Since today there are very few people left who once managed to watch the film, the author of the article introduces the reader to the plot:
“A Jewish family, having not found happiness overseas, where they once had to flee from Russian pogroms, comes to Birobidzhan: maybe good luck awaits them here?.. On the Jewish collective farm, guests are greeted warmly, and they are included in a creative working life.
Alas, there is a black mark in the family. Old Dvoira's son-in-law, the nasty, pitiful little man Pinya, dreams of getting rich. He doesn't want to work. While his family members Rosa, Basya and Leva are sowing, mowing and threshing, Pinya wanders through the surrounding hills in search of golden sand… And he finds it! With a handful of yellow grains, the scoundrel wants to cross the border and become the “king of suspenders” – open his own factory. But the insidious plans of the parasite are thwarted by vigilant collective farmers and border guards. And yellow sand turns out to be not gold at all. Black sheep – greedy, dreaming of his own production, Pinya is disgraced and expelled from a working Jewish family.
In parallel, the lyrical lines of the plot develop: Dvoira’s daughter Rosa falls in love with the Russian fisherman Korney and the matter ends with a wedding, and the wife of the damned Pini has a serious sympathy for the chairman of the Roite-Feld collective farm, the Bolshevik Nathan.
… Of course, today such a plot seems naive. But in the 30s, a film about the adventures of Jews in Birobidzhan was taken quite seriously. And it was a real bestseller.”
“The popularity of “Seekers of Happiness” (12+) was so great at one time that the film was again circulated in 1960, but neither Pinya nor old Dvoira aroused sympathy among Soviet viewers at that time: different times had come.
This is how the story of the only Soviet film ended, where purely Jewish problems were solved surprisingly openly and, I would say, too openly,” Anatoly Kozak shares such memories from childhood and impressions of the legendary film in his article.
