Ohr Torah Stone | Features | Newsletter May 2001

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BUILDING JEWISH "HOMES" ACROSS SIBERIA

Joseph Straus Rabbinical Seminary student David Rozenson logs thousands of miles each year crisscrossing Siberia to visit the tens of tiny Jewish communities that dot its vast expanse. As director of a program called Bayit LeMidrash (A Home for Study), under the auspices of the Institute for Jewish Studies in the CIS, Rozenson, 28, is a key figure in the renaissance of Jewish learning and identity in Novosibirsk, Omsk, Irkutzk, Angarsk, Kemerevo and ten other cities.

David Rozenson presents a
siddur to a seminar participant

"These are 'orphaned' Jewish communities because they have too few Jews to justify major educational and programming investments but too many Jewish souls to abandon. And they are extremely far from major Jewish population centers." Rozenson explains. "Bayit LeMidrash is essentially a "do-it-yourself" program that literally creates a Jewish address in each of these communities."

Every one to three months, Rozenson travels from his home in Efrat to organize a Jewish heritage seminar for teachers and leaders in a different location in Siberia. Participants receive special Russian-language texts and home-study materials as well as books and publications to set up a Jewish library in their communities. Upon returning home from the seminars, the participants involve as many local individuals as possible in study groups that meet regularly in a rented room, store or apartment that also houses the library - and essentially serves as a Jewish community center. Rozenson makes a point of visiting each community regularly to provide personal attention and support.

"We now have 16 Bayit LeMidrash groups in 14 cities, some of which have only 40 or 50 Jews," says Rozenson, who was born in Russia, raised in the U.S. and moved to Israel in 1994 to study at Yeshivat Hamivtar-Orot Lev. "And there are at least 15 more communities that can benefit from this program."

The tireless teacher's own renewed connection with the former Soviet Union began several years ago when Rabbi Chaim Brovender, Rosh Yeshivat Hamivtar-Orot Lev tapped him to teach in an Ohr Torah Stone high school program in Moscow. Today, his Bayit LeMidrash program is serving as a model for "orphaned" Jewish communities in other parts of the world.

"Most of the participants in the groups are academics who share tremendous enthusiasm for Jewish learning," Rozenson states with satisfaction. "In fact, many of them are 'children of the Gulag.' Their parents were dissidents who were sent to Siberia as punishment. Now, the next generation is spearheading the rebirth of Judaism in the same region."

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