BY GAL BECKERMAN
The Forward
When hundreds of thousands of Jews began leaving the Soviet Union 20
years ago, American Jews looked at them the way a father beams at his
children. Here was a large part of the tribe, almost lost to forced
assimilation, now taking their first steps into a Jewish future. That
paternalistic feeling only grew, as the immigrants, like all newcomers,
needed a lot of help — to get settled, learn a language, navigate the
realities of their new lives.
A certain relationship was frozen in place, one that has thawed only
very slowly over the intervening two decades. Russian Jews were the
junior partner — provided for, supported, shepherded.
Irina Nevzlin directs her father’s
charity to promote ‘peoplehood.’
But recently in the United States — where this paternalism was most
deeply felt — the relationship has shifted dramatically, and in an area
always thought to be the dominion of wealthy Americans: Jewish
philanthropy.
Rich Russian Jews, bursting with ideas for how they can have an
impact on the Jewish world and informed by their unique histories of
growing up in the Soviet Union, are making their presence felt in
unprecedented ways on the unexpected turf of the United States. They
are interested in promoting a type of Jewish identity — which some call
peoplehood — that could be seen as a kind of Jewish common denominator,
the very basic connection to a global Jewish community that sustained
Soviet Jews behind the Iron Curtain for decades, even as religion fell
away.
Two philanthropic foundations in particular are infusing millions of
dollars into the cash-hungry world of American Jewish organizations in
the hopes of promoting their ideas: The NADAV Fund, started by former
Russian oil executive Leonid Nevzlin and run by his daughter, Irina,
and Genesis Philanthropy Group, a consortium of five Jewish businessmen
based in Russia who have combined their funds to support projects that
help young Russian Jews regain a sense of Jewish identity. Between
these two foundations — each with its own funding priorities — money
has poured into starting university Jewish studies departments,
organizing summer camps and trips to Israel, and sponsoring large
gatherings like the recent General Assembly of the Jewish Federations
of North America.
“What’s remarkable is that having grown up viewing Russian Jewry as
at best a powerless cousin and at worst a segment of our people that
was lost to us, we are now beginning to view them as a source of
creativity and renaissance in Jewish life,” said Jewish Funders Network
Mark Charendoff, who, along with Jehuda Reinharz, president of Brandeis
University, was recently named a senior adviser to the Genesis group.
“We say three times a day in our Jewish prayer, ‘Blessed are you who
brings the dead back to life.’ I think this is a powerful expression of
exactly that, bringing a population that we had thought was lost to us
back to life.” [Read the rest]
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