FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)A new outreach center for Jews opened in the former East Berlin.
“We needed a cool place” for Jews, said Sharon Chernyak of Leipzig, who works as a student leader at the new Lauder Am Echad Center for National Outreach. And “we needed a big place for a big family.” Chernyak was one of several speakers at Sunday’s opening ceremonies, at which philanthropist Ronald Lauder tapped a mezuzah into place.
Jews in Germany used to be afraid to have “too many Jews in one place,” Lauder said to a roomful of rabbis, Jewish students and community leaders. “This place is the missing link.”
The big white house on Kastanienallee, which sits amid cafes, bars and chic boutiques, aims to be a gathering place for young Jews, whether secular or traditional, Rabbi Josh Spinner, the vice president of The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and director of its educational projects in Germany, told JTA.
Spinner said Am Echad will host a new Youth Empowerment program for 20 handpicked participants at a time that will include the study of Jewish texts and professional leadership training.
Local Jewish philanthropists and businessmen Ariel Schiff and Samuel Czarny purchased the building for Am Echad. Program sponsors are the Lauder Foundation and the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
The new program is among several signs of growth and vitality in the German Jewish community, whose membership has grown fourfold to about 105,000 in the past two decades, in large part due to the arrival of Jews from the former Soviet Union.
Activists Gather in Kiev for Interethnic Tolerance
Activists from a leading Jewish women’s organization gathered in Kiev to build interethnic tolerance and civil society in Ukraine.
Leaders and activists of Project Kesher on Monday discussed the impact that its Not in Our Town program is having in the region and changes that have taken place this year in Ukrainian society. The Not in Our Town network provides tools for communities to prevent intolerance and provide solutions when hate crimes occur.
The activists spoke about the rise of xenophobia and the importance of developing a framework of interethnic and interfaith tolerance in Ukraine.
Project Kesher, a major Jewish women’s organization in the former Soviet Union, initiated the Not in Our Town program in the region. It includes leadership training, workshops, exhibitions, posters, educational programs and special creative events to educate the younger generations about tolerance.
Elena Kalnitzkaya, the Kesher director in Ukraine, told JTA that during 2007-08 the group worked with the All-Ukrainian Interethnic Women’s Confederation, which includes women of varying ethnic and religious groups, on a project to unite the activities of nongovernmental organizations and state bodies to counteract xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Nazism and hate violence with women of different ethnic groups and faiths.
Eleven cities and towns from throughout Ukraine participated in the project, supported by the Democracy Grants Program of the United States Embassy in Ukraine. The women expressed their hope to continue to develop the project in 2009.
Anzhela Mindel, the director of the Israeli Cultural Center in Kiev, said the center is ready to cooperate with Kesher and assist in project development in Ukraine.
Australian Leaders Voice Concerns to Foreign Minister
A high-profile delegation of Jewish leaders met with Australia’s foreign minister in a bid to assuage concerns of a rift over U.N. resolutions on Israel.
Representatives of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council urged Stephen Smith in their meeting Nov. 13 in Canberra not to change the country’s recent “proud and principled” voting record at the United Nations.
The meeting follows the Labor government’s decision earlier this month to support two U.N. resolutions critical of Israel that the previous Liberal government had long opposed.
The Jewish delegates told Smith they were “disappointed and concerned” that the Australian government supported two “unmistakably polemical and one-sided” resolutions that call for Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank and for the Geneva Convention to apply there.
The previous Liberal government had opposed or abstained on the two annual resolutions since 2003, making Australia, along with America and the four tiny Pacific islands of Palau, Micronesia, Nauru and the Marshall Islands, among the staunchest supporters of Israel at the United Nations.
In a statement Monday, Executive Council President Robert Goot said the change in Australia’s vote “encourages elements within the U.N. and the European Union that are openly hostile to Israel to continue their one-sided, out-of-context criticisms of the Israeli government.”
Australia will regret its support of these resolutions, he warned.
Jewish lawmaker Michael Danby told the Australian Jewish News that it was a “mistake” for the government to change its vote, but he stressed that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s government is “one of the Jewish state’s principal international friends.” Smith, who visited Israel last month, said the government would “do nothing to jeopardize” its commitment to a two-state solution.