Moscow JCC Named for Ralph Goldman
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
One of Moscow’s largest Jewish community centers, the Nikitskaya, was renamed in honor of the late Jewish leader Ralph Goldman.
The institution, which opened in 2001 with support from the JDC, was rededicated as the Ralph I. Goldman Nikitskaya Jewish Cultural Center in a ceremony Wednesday.
Goldman, a former head of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, died Oct. 7 in Jerusalem at the age of 100.
“Renaming this institution in his honor is a fitting tribute to a man whose story was so inextricably bound with that of his people and who was one of the visionaries who helped rebuild Jewish life in Russia,” said Penny Blumenstein and
Alan Gill, the JDC’s president and CEO, respectively, in a statement.
Goldman was a driving force in JDC’s low-profile activities behind the Iron Curtain, and in the 1970s and ’80s brought JDC programs back into the open in communist countries. He led sensitive negotiations with Soviet leaders, navigating JDC’s return to what would become the former Soviet Union almost immediately after its collapse.
Russia is home today to an estimated 600,000 Jews. JDC supports 55 JCCs in Russia.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
