Birobidzhan - Jewish and Yiddish Culture in Birobidzhan

Jewish and Yiddish Culture in Birobidzhan

According to Rabbi Mordechai Scheiner, the Chief Rabbi of Birobidzhan and Chabad Lubavitch representative to the region, "Today one can enjoy the benefits of the Yiddish culture and not be afraid to return to their Jewish traditions. It's safe without any anti-Semitism, and we plan to open the first Jewish day school here." Mordechai Scheiner, an Israeli father of six, has been the rabbi in Birobidzhan for the last five years. He is also the host of the Russian television show, Yiddishkeit. The town's synagogue opened in 2004. Rabbi Scheiner says there are 4,000 Jews in Birobidzhan, just over 5 percent of the town's population of 75,000. The Birobidzhan Jewish community was led by Lev Toitman, until his death in September, 2007.

Jewish culture was revived in Birobidzhan much earlier than elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Yiddish theaters opened in the 1970s. Yiddish and Jewish traditions have been required components in all public schools for almost fifteen years, taught not as Jewish exotica but as part of the region's national heritage. The Birobidzhan Synagogue, completed in 2004, is next to a complex housing Sunday School classrooms, a library, a museum, and administrative offices. The buildings were officially opened in 2004 to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Concerning the Jewish community of the oblast, Governor Nikolay Mikhaylovich Volkov has stated that he intends to "support every valuable initiative maintained by our local Jewish organizations.". In 2007, The First Birobidzhan International Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Culture was launched by Yiddish studies professor Boris Kotlerman of Bar-Ilan University. The city's main street is named after the Yiddish language author and humorist Sholom Aleichem.

For the Chanukah celebration of 2007, officials of Birobidzhan in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast claimed to have built the world's largest chanukia.

One unsettling result of the revivial of Jewish and Yiddish community life in Birobidzhan has been increasing calls from anti-Semitic figures such as Christopher Bollyn and Michelle Renouf to have the area replace Israel as the Jewish state. These calls, which are based around the idea that Palestinians will control the entire area of current Israel, the West Bank and Gaza once Israeli Jews relocate to Birobidzhan, are similar to past proposals for Jews to be relocated (non-voluntarily) to Madagascar, Uganda or Alaska, in that they are based around the idea that the State of Israel should be dismantled.