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.
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.”
Russian Jews were never disengaged from Jewish philanthropy. Throughout the 1990s, the oligarchs who made money quickly and in great quantities invested in resuscitating Jewish communal life, from establishing the Russian Jewish Congress, to building synagogue and community centers, to sponsoring Chabad-Lubavitch’s missions throughout the former Soviet Union.
But now these Russian Jewish philanthropists are looking outside the bounds of their own community and funding on a larger and less parochial scale. Their massive giving is also having a ripple effect on the American Jewish world, forcing organizations who want to vie for these funds to think creatively about how to get them — in some cases shifting much of their focus to programming for Russian-speaking Jews, which some argue was always lacking.
“What’s interesting about NADAV and Genesis is that they want to give conceptually — not simply that their name will be mentioned, but they really want to give to some concept,” said Natan Sharansky, former dissident and Soviet prisoner and current chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
The concept, in the case of Genesis, is strengthening the Jewish identity of Russian-speaking Jews in various communities all over the world. Started by Mikhail Fridman, who then recruited four other Moscow-based Jewish businessmen, the group has been on a funding streak in North America since it formed in 2007, providing more than 40 different grants. It gave $10.8 million to Brandeis earlier this year to establish the Brandeis Genesis Institute for Russian-speaking Jewry and to provide dozens of scholarships to undergraduate and graduate students. Genesis also entered into a five-year partnership with the Foundation for Jewish Camp, promising $4.4 million to open up camps to young people of Russian-Jewish background. And these are only the larger projects.
According to Stan Polovets, a Moscow-based oil executive who is also president and CEO of Genesis, the group has narrowly focused its funding on keeping Russian Jews and their children from assimilating. As a result, it is not Zionist in orientation and avoids religion. In some ways, this attitude represents a backlash to what has constituted outreach to this community in the past, coming mostly from Chabad or as Israel-focused programming.
“We felt that if we focused on funding religious organizations, we would be writing off 95% of our target population,” Polovets said, “because this segment of the Jewish community can be reached most effectively through cultural, intellectual and other secular types of activities.”
Polovets and the other Genesis businessmen prefer to keep a low profile, speaking in North America through prominent advisers.
Until recently, Misha Galperin, head of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, was one of these advisers. A child of the Russian-Jewish emigration himself, he sees the role of NADAV and Genesis as unquestionably positive despite what he says are “snickering and unseemly comments about mafia and dishonesty” that trail the philanthropists. He thinks that Russian Jews have a lot to teach American Jews, having emerged from a repressive society that denied them their Jewish identity.
“One of the exciting things about all this is that the concept of Jewish identity and the sorts of things that helped Soviet Jews survive in a sort of post-assimilationist society are the sorts of lessons that are going to be invaluable to the American Jewish community,” Galperin said. “The ideas having to do with Jewish peoplehood — with the importance of culture, literature, art, intellect in the preservation and pursuit of Jewish identity — are something that American Jews can learn from Russian Jews these days.”
The other new players in the American Jewish world are NADAV and its main benefactor, Nevzlin. Though most of Nevzlin’s activities have been confined to Israel until recently — specifically his work on resuscitating Tel Aviv’s Jewish Diaspora Museum with a $6 million gift — he sponsored part of, and served as international chairman of the General Assembly in December, giving a high-profile and well-received speech introducing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Nevzlin’s funding concept is broader than Genesis’s. He is not focused on Russian Jews, per se; in fact, he has distanced himself from Russia, where he was recently convicted in absentia for contract killings during his days running Yukos Oil Company. His goal of promoting Jewish peoplehood, though, is similar to Genesis’s objective in that Nevzlin wants to return a sense of Jewish identity based not necessarily on religion, but on membership in a global community.
His daughter, Irina, who in 2007 left a career in public relations to join her father’s venture, described peoplehood as “belonging to one big Jewish family,” and as “the glue that will keep the Jewish people together.” The foundation, in partnership with UJA-Federation of New York, has just started a think tank called the Jewish Peoplehood Hub to help further define the criteria for the types of projects NADAV might fund.
The availability of this new money — particularly when North American Jewish organizations are suffering in the economic crisis — has caused some to adjust their own message and mission in order to receive grants. In NADAV’s case, this means looking for projects that answer the peoplehood call. For Genesis, it’s more concrete: a renewed focus on the Russian-speaking community, one that many say has been neglected since the initial resettlement.
“I think that for the first time in a very long time, with this influx of money from Genesis and Nevzlin’s fund, the minds of Jewish program people are working in an incredibly productive direction,” said Marina Belotserkovsky, director of Russian communications and community outreach at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
The Foundation for Jewish Camp has started a whole new program aimed at Russian-speaking youth. Certain Birthright Israel trips are specifically planned to accommodate this community. Brandeis inaugurated a department devoted to Russian-Jewish studies. The Wexner Foundation has established a leadership program specifically geared toward Jews from Russian backgrounds. All these programs have attracted the new funds. And Polovets has said that he has made funding any project contingent on recruiting leaders from the Russian-speaking community to lead them.
As of yet, there has been no backlash from American Jewish leaders, even though the introduction of these Russian-Jewish billionaires into the conversation constitutes a shift in power and focus. Asked if American Jews had reason to be threatened by the Russians’ arrival, Charendoff answered, “If they are, my response would be, threaten me some more.”
Contact Gal Beckerman at beckerman@forward.com
The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, the Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason.
Copyright © 2013, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Tracing the Jewish Origins of the Holy Ghost
Cleveland Kidnapping, Elizabeth Smart and Us
Forced Out by Nazis, Grandmother Returns With Family to Germany
Magen Tzedek, Ethical Kosher Seal, Stalled Amid Orthodox Opposition
Remembering French-Jewish Writer Viviane Forrester
You've successfully signed up!
An inspiring Article, and on such a day !!! When the Sun goes down we lite the Lights, and declare publically the Miracle ... Not the First Miracle, and surely Not the Last Miracle Ha'Shem shall do for His Chosen Few ... It matters not where we get our strength from ... What matters is that we grow in strength and get ourselves back to the fullest measure of the RIGHTS Guarantee'd us by the Constitution in this country, so that we no longer have to assimilate to survive, but can be openly proud to be Jewish without any trepidation or reprisal ... especially in this pathetically Faithless and embarassing mind-set of Political Correctitude, that limits the Truth in all aspects because weaklings and satanic sychophants are scared witless that they are going to offend the Moslems ... We NEED, the strength to expand our influence all over the world, and particularly in the U.S. ,not so much for the Judification of the universe, but so that we are not finally victimized a la Hitler, by the insidious Islamization of the world, which the Moslems have been carrying out subrosa since 1950 ... Let us not allow Sectarianism to defeat our best efforts to unify all Jews, and to keep Israel unified ... Let all Jews work together, to grow, and to bring pressure to bear on all nations, particularly the U.S.,justifiably so, to finally and for once in all History, keep their word to Israel and The Jews ...
No doubt, love of Judaism needs to be instilled into our People's lives -- not cash into nonprofits that are also most universally noneffective. Russian Jews were not accepted generations ago when they confronted Reform/German establishment Jews, so this is another cycle of an older story (same with Sephardim). It's a simple premise -- Jews have a covenant with God, have been opposed by evildoers over the millenia, now how to be relevant or bundle several streams into a river or torrent? I've got some ideas ajcwerfel@yahoo.com
All is not as it seems.
I can sense the discomfort of the Jewish leftists who would rather that U.S. Jews continue to assimilate into useful idiots for Obama. I recall their opposition, years ago, to the Jackson-Vanic amendment designed to pressue the Soviet Union to allow Soviet Jews to eimigrate. Senator Henry Jackson stood up against these Jewish traitors and was not intimidated by them. I also recall that it was Rabbi Meir Kahane and the Jewish Defense League that had to embarass the meek Jewish establishment to finally take up the cause of Soviet Jewry. Today it is J Street and even the staff at The Forward that is uncomfortable with the rise of anything authentically Jewish.
Open your eyes, your dreaming wake up!
Read....why the world is as it is...Isaiah, Jeremiah and the others and why.
Foreign businessmen and the Russian Mafia-----to seek their fortune and to cash in on the transition from a communist to a free markt?capitalist society. Priest hool-----please, and a pretty girl,NO! This is all businessmen-- is to them the second great "GOLD RUSH"! And all want in , it is called building their tower of wealth that will lead them to power over all. Yes all---all the nations. It is the Tower of Babel, to clime up and take over G-D'S kingdom.
The war of heaven still goes on with the sons of darkness, and the sons of G-D. This was not just a bed time tale.
Fallen angels, and their children, why church fathers suppressed the book of Enoch and It,s startling revelations. The Origins of Evil and the seeds that live here. Now I am not saying every Russian is in the Mafia, but they all know someone.
We need to see, more, do more to protect, what every country your in from the evils that rome the earth. Not only America, but now Russian oranized crime could yet again expand, this time in European Union.
Russians emigrated from Russia Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as these had ethnic German descent from the forefathers that settled in Russia in the 18th century. The estimated 3 or more million came.
However, over time these Germans had already assimilated and were now considered fully Russian. when the Soviet Union collapsed Germany opened fro these immigrants to receive German citizenship.
The crimial activities are endless as the sins on the face of this world....if money or power can be obtained.
child pornography, human trafficking,nuclear weapons, smugging oil and gasoline, rape, reality televison, religious corruption, Jewish or Catholic or other, you have the cash...your in bussiness. The infiltration of Legitmate businesses, infiltration of Politics.....wake up! Open your eyes, before it is to late. Soon the power behind them will control the world, and you live in it.
It's heartening to know that in every generation, when hope seems to be waning, a new or dormant branch of our tribe comes back to life to renew us from within. From the bowels of the old atheist USSR has come forth a branch that seemed lost and dead. And yet, as our sages foretold, wherever there is a "pintela yid," i.e., a drop of Yiddishkeit still remaining, a new spring of Jewish life will come forth. Even from within a stagnant swamp, beautiful flowers can still arise. When all is said and done, we Jews are a nation - a tribe that refuses to lay down and die. Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel yet lives.
JGarbuz, my friend, Not all Russians, but they need to be screened before coming in. This mafia, is a shandeh un a charpeh, and remember wolf loses his heair but not is nature. Many Russians have suffered under them, so are we to be fools. Once a fool, a nahr bleibt a nahr.
I took a Jewish Leadership course in AJC a few years ago. Every lecture there ended with a discussion - who is a Jew. There was no such question in the Soviet Union because person's "nationality" - ethnicity - was written in the identification papers. Thus, I was a Jew because my parents were Jews.
But, as they used to say in my old country, - "they don't hit you in your passport, they hit you in your face." Many of us don't have to wear yarmulke to "look Jewish." There is not denial - it is in our genes.
I think Walter Reich provided the best definition I've seen so far on what unites Jews all over the world into a community - Jewish heritage, Jewish vulnerability and the Jewish state. One just follows the other... His full answer - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerGuest.jhtml?itemNo=670656
Miriam, it is important not to confuse a messenger with a message, but your concern is well-taken, especially considering that the article is published on a one year anniversary of Madoff affair.
Mark, most Russian and Israeli Jews are secular. While Judaism has preserved Jewish identity over centuries of persecution, there are other ways today to continue to be Jewish. And this is what the article is all about.
Bert, American Soviet Jewry movement was started in 1964 by Jacob Birnbaum who founded and directed Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ), which was famous for its many marches and demonstrations. For 10 years SSSJ was pretty much the only Jewish organization fighting for Soviet Jews. Meir Kahane was initially member of SSSJ before he started his own Jewish Defense League. JDL's many irresponsible actions did not help and were counter-productive because it delegitimized the Soviet Jewry movement in the eyes of many Jews and non-Jews.
Will this stay! Forward...free speach....
A lot of Russians faked a Jewish passport among them Russians criminals. Durty money, now becomes bribs and gifts to the Jew. Russian Organized Crime was unleashed unto the world. Jewish organizations now stretch out their hands. Look at the money and not were it might of come from. The Gift, in Boston to keep a school opened, could it be. Think! Take care of the poor, ture Russian.
The branches are to "bear fruit" not guns, or hands full of money that comes from all kinds of crimes, seen by our G-D. This vineyard has failed to enact its true character. What did they do when in Russia for the poor then? NOTHING! Open your eyes, they are looking for Power and the evil that is in them will turn and bit your hand that has been held our to get money.....
Moment Magazine the Magazine of Jewish Culture and Opinion, had an article pg 44 called 'HOOKERS IN THE HOLY LAND". In it they discuss the thriving prostition with blonde Russian's girls as and "NATIONAL INSTITUTION". It goes on to talk about the customers who even include rabbing ridding bicycles to the whore houses. It blatantly goes on to describe the girsl, who are mostly East European Gentile young woman and some young Palestinians woman, are virtual SLAVES WHO ARE PUT ON THE SLAVE AUCTION BLOCK. Just becouse there not Jewish woman...the goverment...turns there head. Russian money at work.... Look first before you leap! Once the girls arrived in Israel, the crime bosses take over, the girls ususlly are taken to an auction house where the owners of various massage parlors can bid on the talent. It is in the land that our G-D set aside for Him to Dwell....the City of Peace, is now the city of tears. And we do nothing...we send our money and take from people that hands are dipped in crime up to their necks. Just becouse you do not do the crime were the money comes from, taking such money, makes you a part of it. Think!
Miriam, from where first charity in America did grow? It was American Jewish Mafia and that was fine Seems like it really make you feel bad ,that Russian Jews are succeseful every where I understand you guys were looking for needy people who would make you feel good and important ,but got the people who in the short time did show that we could be very productive and extremely generios to our beleives. And JEWISH AMERICAN LEFTISTS DESTROING THIS COUNTRY MORE THEN RUSSIAN JEWISH MAFIA
Two Jews, three opinions... but I think, Miriam, you are painting with a very broad brush.
However, what you do is very Jewish - we fight each other too much. Even we - "Russian" Jews - differentiate among ourselves - who is from Moscow, who is from Leningrad, who is from - (G-d forbid :-) ) - Odessa. I am from Kiev, and my wife would argue that the worst Jews come from that city (obviously she was born and grew up in a different place).
This article is really about efforts on how to find common roots. After all, for two thousand years Jews dreamed to have their own country where - to paraphrase Ben Gurion - a Jewish policeman would chase a Jewish prostitute.