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Wonderland in Pod’eliniki Recreation Center

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19.01.2012

alt JCC Emunah prides itself in bringing the world of Jewish traditions and culture to children and their parents through family Shabbatons.

Just like family camps, family Shabbatons are run by an enthusiastic and vibrant team of young leaders from School of Madrichim of JCC Emunah. Their training continues all year round and offers quality programming with an emphasis on informal learning and fun, which also includes Shabbatons. One of such Shabbatons was held in December and featured many dynamic guest speakers. Anastasia Bobrova, a soloist of Belarusian Drama Theater, shared with madrichim secrets of stage speech. Olga Skvortsova, stage director of D.o.z.s.k.i theater of modern choreography, dedicated her session to stage plastique. Alexander Malinkovich together with young leaders explored methods of creative thinking. All the activities at the Shabbaton were called to prepare young people for their role as counselors at family camps and Shabbatons.

The first family Shabbaton in 2012 was held at Pod’elniki recreation center in January and got the name “Jews in Wonderland”. Its 110 participants could plunge into the atmosphere of the novel of Lewis Carroll.

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The event started with a festive Shabbat celebration. The quiz that followed gave the participants a wonderful opportunity to show off their knowledge and discuss disputable issues of Shabbat commandments.

Saturday morning started off with sessions for different age groups. The youngest participants learnt about miracles of Jewish festivals, older children engaged in producing paper toys, while parents listened to Mikhail Galperin delivering a lecture on miracles in Jewish history.

Sessions were followed by a challenging game. Accompanied by characters of Carroll’s book children and their parents played the day away. After the excitement of day’s activities all the participants got together for Havdalah ceremony to mark the end of Shabbat.

Evening entertainment was the time for creative realization. Children and parents were challenged to stage productions on the topic “Jews in Wonderland” and did brilliantly. During the day the participants were asked to give short interviews and share their ideas of miracles. These interviews were recorded and showed in the evening. The climax of the event was a fabulous performance of Belarusian etno-group “Malanka Orchestra”.

“It is always like that… All good things come to an end too quickly”, such a post appeared on Facebook a few hours after Shabbaton participants returned to Minsk. Shortly after the post received many excited comments of other Shabbaton participants.

Do you fancy joining us for our next family Shabbaton?
 
13.04.2012

Tamara Feiman

alt Tamara Feiman belongs to the generation for which growing up in the Jewish environment and living Jewish values is a natural way of life.
Her parents managed to keep their Jewish identity despite growing up in the denationalized environment of the Soviet Union.
Since she was a child Tamara has been actively involved with emerging Jewish organizations. She attended the first Jewish kindergarten in Belarus and then continued her Jewish journey in Chabad religious school «Lauder Shneur College». She has been attending the Young Leadership School for two years and has worked in day camps and family camps as both an assistant and madricha. She has also participated in seminars and Shabbatons, visited the Atlanta, Georgia JCC Camp Barney Medintz, and worked as a madricha in Camp Szarvash. Her warmth and care are well-known to the special needs children from Ivenets orphanage who she visited as part of Helping Hand program.
13.04.2012

Maya Lomakina

alt The life of Maya Lomakina is that of hard work and privation. Her story, however, is that of optimism and hope.
Having cared first for her younger sister when she was a young girl herself and then for her own severely ill husband for most of her life, at 65, with a “bunch” of chronic diseases like acute myocardial infarction,  high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and liver problems, Maya has nobody to take care of her. Her mother and sister made aliyah a long time ago, and her only daughter lives with her family 20 km away from Pinsk and can not visit Maya very often.
21.01.2012

Mikhail Izrailsky (Belen’ky)

alt Volunteers are the heart and soul of any Jewish community. This is also true about Minsk Jewish Campus. It is hard to give an exact number of MJC volunteers, but some 800 people of different ages donating their time and effort to the community can proudly call themselves volunteers of MJC.
There are volunteers dedicated to the Jewish History and Culture Museum of Belarus. One of them is Mikhail Izrailsky (Belen’ky). Having come to the “Mogilev Ghetto” exhibition opening in 2002 he fell in love with the museum and the work done there, and his heart is still in it.
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