OUR TIMELINE: 2006 - TODAY

The very first Limmud FSU took place in 2006, in “Dom Uchenih” (“House of Scientists”) in Moscow. Hundreds of community activists, age 18 - 45 years old, from throughout the former Soviet Union and the Russian capital participated at the opening ceremony of the one-day event. On that day, Limmud FSU was launched.

Limmud FSU held a conference for the first time in Israel with more than 1,200 participants. Gathering for an innovative festival of Jewish learning, at Ashkelon College, Limmud FSU launched its first program for Russian-speaking Israelis. A kaleidoscope of programs with 160 outstanding presenters and over 130 lectures, panels, performances, and discussions, all with Jewish themes, framed the content the for the two-day event. Many of the sessions were broadcast live over the web.

In 2009 Limmud FSU had its first conference in the United States, and it took place at Westhampton Beach NY with more than 500 people. The participants from throughout the New York area exchanged ideas, thoughts and perspectives with more than 80 educators, lecturers and expert panelists at 35 sessions covering a wide variety of subjects, from anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, to Russian-Jewish cooking and dance, to Muslim-Jewish relations and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

In 2010 Limmud FSU was held for the first time in Odessa in October with 500 participants. Over 500 young Russian-speaking adults from all over Ukraine and some from Russia, Moldova and Belarus, together with 50 presenters from Ukraine, Russia, Israel and the US took part. Odessa, with its remarkable role in Jewish cultural and literary life prior to the Second World War, was undoubtedly the star of the event, featuring its own special brand of Odessian language, literature and humor.

More than 40 Russian-speaking leaders of Limmud FSU coming from Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., Belarus, Moldova and Israel participated in an intensive four-day conference in Jerusalem.A series of professional training master-classes and workshops were held on various aspects of topics such as the use of the Internet for organizational purposes, data base and client management, public relations and publicity, quality as the cornerstone of Limmud FSU events, fundraising and volunteer engagement.

In 2012 the very first Limmud FSU Moldova was held, as a one-day conference with more than 400 participants. Also during the conference, an emotional event took place when Matthew Bronfman, Limmud FSU International Steering Committee chair, visited the town of Ataki, Moldova, where his family legacy began. This was the first time a member of the Bronfman family has visited Ataki since Matthew’s grandfather, Samuel Bronfman, immigrated to Canada.

A central square in the capital of the Galilee, Upper Nazareth, was dedicated in the name of the 11 Israeli athletes murdered at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. The event, marking 40 years since the tragedy, launched Limmud FSU “Olympics,” an educational program for Russian speakers taking place in Upper Nazareth. Nearly 1,000 participants are registered, including 150 Jewish young people from the FSU who are currently in Israel on a Masa program run by the Jewish Agency. 

2013 was the year the first Limmud FSU Belarus was launched, in the city of Vitebsk, in June. The Conference was an intensive celebration of Jewish culture and identity. More than 100 presenters, panelists, and moderators included prominent journalists, artists, educators, and philanthropists. The conference included a number of special events, including the opening of a permanent photo exhibition to mark the 90th birthday of President Shimon Peres, who was born in Vishnyeva.

Limmud FSU Israel was held on the Kinneret in 2014. The festival of the Sea of Galilee, which included many first-time participants, celebrated the Zionist poet Rachel Bluwstein, known as Rachel the Poetess (Rachel HaMeshosheret in Hebrew). Rachel was born in Saratov, Russia, then lived and worked in the Galilee. She is considered the founding mother of modern Hebrew poetry by women. The opening event was an original musical based on Rachel’s songs and produced by the Acting School “Beit Zvi”.

First ever Limmud FSU Volga-Urals regions of the Russian Federation took place in the city of Kazan in September. The conference featured a series of exceptional events among them the “Interfaith Dialogue – Islam, Judaism, Christianity”, a conversation between religious leaders in the region with the participation of the Chief Rabbi of Russia, the Chief Rabbi of Tatarstan, the head of the local Russian-Orthodox church, the Grand Mufti of Tatarstan, senior Islamic clerics and two prominent rabbis from Israel.

Limmud FSU Belarus was held in May for the first time in the capital of the country- Minsk. It included about 150 trainings, workshops, concerts, tours and exhibitions. Among top speakers at the conference was former Israel Defense Forces Gen. Uzi Dayan, whose family roots trace back to Belarus. Other guest speakers included descendants of Abba Ahimeir, a right-wing Zionist activist, and Berl Katznelson, a socialist founder of Israel, both of whom hail from Belarus.

Limmud FSU marked the end of 2016 with a three-day Jewish festival of learning in Israel’s southernmost city, Eilat. The weekend celebrated a decade of educational work with young Russian-speaking Jews worldwide. The dynamic volunteer-driver and pluralistic event gathered more than 2,000 participants, and featured some 250 lectures, workshops, presentations and discussions by leading figures.

Some 800 people came together for the first ever Limmud FSU West Coast conference in the San Francisco Bay Area, the largest event geared towards the Russian-speaking community in the region. The participants – mostly the children, and grandchildren of Soviet-era Jews – included over 120 elementary school age children and teenagers. Most of those attending were previously unaffilaited with the Jewish community.