Returning Judaism to Russian-Speaking Jews

Midreshet Yerushalayim at the Schechter Institute sponsors Jewish education in the Ukraine, in Hungary and in Israel for the large Jewish populations who were deprived of any connection to Jewish heritage under Communist regimes.

Kabalat Shabbat in the Chernowitz TALI (enriched Jewish studies program) school, the first TALI school to operate in the FSU.

Midreshet Yerushalayim has struck a positive chord among Russian-speaking Jews because its intellectually open and rigorous approach to Jewish education speaks to the many educated, sophisticated individuals and families from the Former Soviet Union. The inclusive, pluralistic, and non-coercive approach to Jewish law and communal life stressed by Midreshet Yerushalayim helps cope with sensitive and challenging issues raised by two generations of cultural estrangement and high levels of intermarriage.

Midreshet Yerushalayim in Israel and the FSU is directed and staffed by a growing group of dedicated men and women, graduates of Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies academic and rabbinical programs. Themselves immigrants who found their way to Jewish heritage through Schechter and Midreshet Yerushalayim, they constitute a core of open-minded Jewish educators and spiritual leaders that will ensure continued growth and dynamic creativity in the future.