Russian Community
Over the last decade, many of HFBA's clients have been from the Russian Jewish community and were elderly or ill when they arrived in the United States. Experience has shown that although their Jewish identity may have been hidden or denied in the former Soviet Union, they, or their families, expressed the desire for a proper Jewish burial. HFBA's newsletter, Chesed, has an entire section written in Russian to make sure that this community feels embraced in life as well as in death.
On December 4, 2006, HFBA launched a Russian edition of their website, to further reach out to members of that community.
HFBA now employs a Russian Outreach Coordinator to improve its relationships with the Russian-Jewish Community. In an effort to improve such relationships, HFBA hosted a Russian-Jewish Community Event on February 22, 2009 featuring poetry readings and a silent art auction.
Read more about this topic: Hebrew Free Burial Association
Famous quotes containing the words russian and/or community:
“We are all dead men on leave.”
—Eugene Leviné, Russian Jew, friend of Rosa Luxemburg’s lover, Jogiches. quoted in Men in Dark Times, “Rosa Luxemburg: 1871-1919,” sct. 3, Hannah Arendt (1968)
“The people needed to be rehoused, but I feel disgusted and depressed when I see how they have done it. It did not suit the planners to think how they might deal with the community, or the individuals that made up the community. All they could think was, “Sweep it away!” The bureaucrats put their heads together, and if anyone had told them, “A community is people,” they would not have known what they were on about.”
—May Hobbs (b. 1938)