Jewish Identity beyond the Iron Curtain: Machanayim Marks Twenty Years of Activity in Israel

In a country only sixty years old, an organization which has been serving a community for two decades commands respect. Last month, the organization Machanayim, chaired by Mandel graduate Ira Dashevski, celebrated twenty years since its establishment in Israel, following many years of activity in Moscow. Celebrations took place over a festive week with a range of activities in Jerusalem to mark the momentous occasion.

Machanayim began its activity in the Soviet Union during the period of the Iron Curtain. Members of the organization learned and taught Jewish studies alongside Zionist values underground. Most of the founders of the organization were refuseniks for many years, and battled for immigration to Israel, and Jewish and Zionist education.

When the members of the organization were permitted to immigrate to Israel together with hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews, they discovered that there was a need for their activity in Israel too. For the past twenty years, the organization has been actively fulfilling its goal of providing immigrants with access to Jewish and Israeli content and activity.

Today, the organization focuses on teaching Judaism and Israeli culture to Jewish immigrants and those in the process of converting. Machanayim functions in cooperation with universities in Israel and around the world, the Jewish Agency, the Joint and others to provide the inter-cultural encounter between newcomers and veterans.

Machanayim has cooperated significantly with the Mandel Graduate Unit over the last few months, using MLI as a resource for thinking, planning and even as a location for joint activity. Similarly, the Graduate Unit was involved in the planning and carrying out of the anniversary celebrations.

The opening event of the 20th anniversary celebrations took place at the Jerusalem Municipality and was attended by Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupoliansky, President of the Mandel Foundation, Annette Hochstein, and Members of Knesset, Rabbi Michael Melchior and Yuli Edelstein, who is also a Mandel graduate.

A conference entitled, “Judaism, Culture and Zionism: The identity of former Soviet Union Jewry” was one of the week’s keynote events. It was held at the Knesset, and attended by public figures and academics, amongst them Dr. Daniel Marom of the Mandel Leadership Institute, who spoke about Machanayim's important role in the public discourse concerning Israeli Identity.
 
Chairman of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora, Michael Nodelman, commended Machanayim for their activity in Israel:
“In Russia it was forbidden to deal with religion and Jewish history; there were no synagogues, perhaps one or two in all of Russia – and these people from Machanayim took it upon themselves to learn and to teach Jews what is a Jew and Jewish traditions.

Almost all were refuseniks, and when the mass aliyah began, they came to Israel and here they continued their work. You may ask: why here? So many Jews arrived who did not know Judaism, who didn’t know tradition – and somebody need to help them return to the Jewish people and tradition.”

Further activities included an art exhibition, “Heavenly Jerusalem Earthly Jerusalem”; lessons by Machanayim activists in Jerusalem schools about the history of the latest mass immigration; and a closing ceremony at the Begin Center.


To read selected excerpts from the knesset protocol please click here